{"id":25872,"date":"2025-10-29T23:35:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T23:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/25872\/"},"modified":"2025-10-29T23:35:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T23:35:10","slug":"florida-prosecutor-renews-calls-to-close-juvenile-sex-crime-loopholes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/25872\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida prosecutor renews calls to close juvenile, sex crime \u2018loopholes\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. \u2014 Orange-Osceola State Attorney Monique Worrell renewed her calls<\/a> to reform Florida\u2019s juvenile justice system, which she has long considered inflexible and ill-equipped to handle younger violent offenders.<\/p>\n

During a press conference Wednesday, Worrell said she was continuing to get caught between her two options for young teens facing serious charges.<\/p>\n

One option is to upgrade their charges to adult and try them, potentially setting them up for life in prison.<\/p>\n

That may be an easy decision for cases like the 2024 Halloween mass shooting<\/a>, where a 17-year-old is accused of killing two people and starting a mass panic in downtown Orlando.<\/p>\n

However, it\u2019s more difficult when the shooter is 10 or 11 years old, as Worrell has seen before<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Her other option isn\u2019t ideal: keeping them in juvenile court, where the typical offender is released before 18 months.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think any of us think that that\u2019s sufficient for a child that commits an offense of that level of seriousness,\u201d Worrell said.<\/p>\n

Worrell proposed giving prosecutors and judges a say over juvenile sentences, which could keep an offender in custody for a more \u201cappropriate\u201d amount of time.<\/p>\n

She also called on lawmakers to change the juvenile probation system to punish teens for violating their probation.<\/p>\n

Finally, Worrell defended her recent decision to not prosecute a man for committing a lewd act near a child in a public park, which added to Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier\u2019s<\/a> criticisms of her.<\/p>\n

Worrell said a 1992 Florida Supreme Court decision<\/a> prevents prosecutors from pressing charges unless the child witnesses or is aware of the act, and is not merely present for it.<\/p>\n

She said it was the second time she had to turn away clear-cut evidence because of that decision.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt shouldn\u2019t matter whether a child is sleeping or aware of this disgusting conduct or not,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Click here<\/a> to download our free news, weather and smart TV apps. And click here<\/a> to stream Channel 9 Eyewitness News live.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

TOP STORIES FROM WFTV CHANNEL 9<\/p>\n

\u00a92025 Cox Media Group<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. \u2014 Orange-Osceola State Attorney Monique Worrell renewed her calls to reform Florida\u2019s juvenile justice system,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25873,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1060,2777,2646,1061,28,30,29,19575,634,19572,19574,115,19573,13140,19571,139,6505,11103,4219,232,1045,6280],"class_list":["post-25872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-channel_9","tag-channel_nine","tag-downtown_orlando","tag-eyewitness","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-florida_supreme_court","tag-local","tag-monique_borrell","tag-monique_correll","tag-news","tag-nick_paantona","tag-nick_paantonis","tag-orange_and_osceola","tag-orlando","tag-osceola","tag-republican","tag-republicans","tag-tallahassee","tag-video","tag-worrell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}