But parents, child advocates and some school officials are deeply troubled by handcuffing and arresting these children, especially because many have conditions that prevent them from fully controlling their own behavior. It amounts to punishing them for their disabilities, they say, and often does nothing to address the underlying reasons for their outbursts. These arrests even bother some of the officers called to make them. Ed Short of the Pinellas Sheriff's Youth Services Division. For a lot of us, we went through four years of school majoring in criminology.
Younger children can wait in the main room with older kids or a separate room.
Some places can't handle the very young Out behind his light blue house in the rural community of Dunnellon, Mikey Rao can dart through clumps of backyard grass with his four pet dogs. Mikey Rao collects eggs from the coop behind his home in Dunnellon. Mikey was arrested last year, when he was 8, and taken to an adult jail. But scenes with Mikey are not always so idyllic. Diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and with oppositional defiant disorder, a condition characterized by hostility to people in authority, Mikey can be a handful for his parents, Michael and Lydia, and sometimes for his teachers.