HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES STAFF ANALYSIS
BILL #: CS/HB 21 Dozier School for Boys and Okeechobee School Victim Compensation Program
SPONSOR(S): Judiciary Committee, Salzman, Michael and others
TIED BILLS: CS/HB 23 IDEN./SIM. BILLS: CS/SB 24
REFERENCE ACTION ANALYST STAFF DIRECTOR or
BUDGET/POLICY CHIEF
1) Judiciary Committee 20 Y, 0 N, As CS Mawn Kramer
2) Appropriations Committee 28 Y, 0 N Saag Pridgeon
SUMMARY ANALYSIS
The Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys (Dozier School) opened in Marianna, Florida on January 1, 1900, as the
Florida State Reform School. The Dozier School housed children as young as five committed for criminal and
other offenses ranging from theft and murder to “incorrigibility” and truancy; the school also housed orphaned
and abandoned children when other placements were unavailable. In 1955, the Florida School for Boys at
Okeechobee (Okeechobee School) opened to address overcrowding at the Dozier School, and some of the
Dozier School’s staff transferred to the Okeechobee School.
Allegations of abuse at the Dozier School began as early as 1901, with reports of children being chained to
walls in irons, whippings, and peonage; allegations of abuse at the Okeechobee School began shortly after it
opened, with reports of children receiving severe beatings and being forced to fight one another for the staff’s
entertainment. Reports of sexual abuse, beatings, torture, and mysterious deaths at both reform schools
continued in the subsequent decades, and a succession of reports and commissions called for reforms at the
schools with little success. Indeed, a 2010 state investigation found no tangible physical evidence to support or
refute the abuse allegations; however, the U.S. Department of Justice reported in 2011 that it had found
“harmful practices” that put the reform school’s residents at “serious risk of avoidable harm.” The state closed
the Dozier School in 2011, citing budget constraints, and the Okeechobee School in 2020.
In recent years, more than 400 men sent to the Dozier School or the Okeechobee School in the 1950s and
1960s have come forward to recount their experiences. Calling themselves the “White House Boys” after a
white structure on Dozier School property where many beatings reportedly occurred, these men recount brutal
whippings, sexual abuse, disappearances, deaths, and other tortures they either witnessed or suffered
personally. Additionally, between 2012 and 2016, forensic anthropologists from the University of South Florida
leading an excavation of Dozier School property uncovered human remains in 55 unmarked graves, some with
gunshot wounds or signs of blunt force trauma. At least one set of remains belonged to a child listed as
missing in school records. A similar excavation has not been possible at the Okeechobee School, as the land
sits on what is now private property.
CS/HB 21 creates the Dozier School for Boys and Okeechobee School Victim Compensation Program
(Program) within the Department of Legal Affairs to compensate living persons who were confined to the
Dozier School or the Okeechobee School at any time between 1940 and 1975 and who were subjected to
mental, physical, or sexual abuse perpetrated by school personnel while they were so confined. The bill also
directs the Commissioner of Education to award a standard high school diploma to a person so compensated
who has not completed high school graduation requirements.
The bill does not appear to have a fiscal impact on local governments but may have an indeterminate fiscal
impact on state government. The Program created in the bill is subject to legislative appropriation; as such, any
appropriation provided by the Legislature will have an indeterminate fiscal impact on state government and the
private sector.
The bill provides an effective date of July 1, 2024.
This docum ent does not reflect the intent or official position of the bill sponsor or House of Representatives .
STORAGE NAME: h0021b.APC
DATE: 2/21/2024
 FULL ANALYSIS
I. SUBSTANTIVE ANALYSIS
A. EFFECT OF PROPOSED CHANGES:
Background
Florida Reform School History
Dozier School History
The Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys (Dozier School) opened in Marianna, Florida on January 1, 1900,
as the Florida State Reform School.1 The Dozier School housed children as young as five committed
for criminal and other offenses ranging from theft and murder to “incorrigibility” and truancy; the school
also housed orphaned and abandoned children when other placements were unavailable.2
By design, the Dozier School was meant to be a refuge for the children housed there, a place where
they would receive education and training intended to mold them into productive citizens. 3 However,
archival records and documented narratives indicate that the State’s reform goal was quickly
abandoned, replaced by a system of child labor and corporal punishment; even the name of the Dozier
School changed, with the reference to “reform” discarded.4
Allegations of abuse at the Dozier School began as early as 1903, with reports of children being
chained to walls in irons, whippings, and peonage.5 Reports of inadequate medical care, sexual abuse,
beatings, torture, and mysterious deaths at the Dozier School continued in the subsequent decades.6
Indeed, in March of 1958, Miami Psychologist and former Dozier School staff member Dr. Eugene Byrd
testified before the United States Senate Judiciary Committee that “[blows with a heavy, three-and-a-
half-inch-wide leather strap approximately a half-inch thick and ten inches long on a wooden formed
handle] are dealt with a great deal of force with a full arm swing over [the perpetrator’s] head and
down.”7 “The blows are severe,” said Dr. Byrd, and “it is brutality.” 8
The call for reform was eventually answered when, in 1968, Florida officially banned corporal
punishment in its reform schools.9 However, that same year, Florida Governor Claude Kirk visited the
Dozier School and found holes in leaking ceilings, broken walls, bucket toilets, bunk beds crammed
together, overcrowding, and a lack of heat in the winter.10 Gov. Kirk said of the school that it was “a
training ground for a life of crime,” and that “[i]f one of your kids were kept in such circumstances, you’d
be up there with rifles.”11
1 The Dozier School originally housed both boys and girls but became The Florida School for Boys (FSB) in 1913 with the opening of a
separate school for girls. In 1959, an overflow FSB campus opened in Okeechobee, Florida, as the Florida School for Boys at
Okeechobee (Okeechobee School). For the purposes of this analysis, both campuses are referred to by the phrase “Dozier School .”
2 Note that until 1968, the Dozier School was segregated into two campuses, one for white students and one for African -American and
other “non-white” students. University of South Florida, Florida’s Industrial Reform School System: Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys
1900-Present, https://guides.lib.usf.edu/dozier (last visited Feb. 13, 2024).
3 Id.
4 Arthur G. Dozier was a long-time Dozier School Superintendent. Id.
5 The earliest report, from 1903, described the Dozier School not as a reform school but as a “prison for children,” with some children
chained to the wall in irons, and others beaten, like “common criminals.” Ben Montgomery and Waveny Ann Moore, They Went to
Dozier School for Boys Damaged. They Came Out Destroyed, Tampa Bay Times, Aug. 18, 2019,
https://www.tampabay.com/investigations/2019/08/18/they-went-to-the-dozier-school-for-boys-damaged-they-came-out-
destroyed/#:~:text=In%20March%201958%2C%20a%20Miami,Eugene%20Byrd%20testified . (last visited Feb. 13, 2024).
6 In its first two decades, investigators discovered that Dozier School administrators hired out the children to work with stat e convicts
and brutally beat children with a leather strap attached to a wooden handle. In 1914, at least six child ren, and possibly as many as ten,
died in a fire at the Dozier School while trapped on the top floor of their locked and burning dormitory; investigators learn ed that the
superintendent and most staff were in town for a “pleasure bent” when the fire began, and differing reports meant that the actual
number of children lost could not be determined. Id.
7 Id.
8 Id.
9 Id.
10 Id.
11 Id.
STORAGE NAME: h0021b.APC PAGE: 2
DATE: 2/21/2024
 In 1969, a reporter visited the school and found a 16-year old boy in solitary confinement; the boy had
eaten a light bulb and used a glass diffuser from a lighting fixture to slash his arm a dozen times from
wrist to elbow.12 Around that time, a U.S. Department of Health official called the Dozier School a
“monstrosity,” and a juvenile court judge noted, after touring the school, that it was so understaffed that
children were left alone at night and “sexual perversion” was common; another juvenile court judge who
toured the school around this time vowed to never again send any juvenile offenders there. 13
Calls for additional reforms were again answered when Dozier School administrators were replaced,
with new administrators adopting a reform-based program.14 However, change was short-lived. In 1979,
Jack Levine, a teacher at a Tallahassee short-term residential center for delinquent youths was
speaking to residents of the center when they mentioned the Dozier School to him, saying it was “a bad
place.” That November, Mr. Levine, who held Florida Health and Rehabilitative Services (HRS)
credentials, went to the Dozier School unannounced; there he found a lockup facility at the back of the
campus, consisting of a long hallway with metal doors enclosing cells reeking of body odor and urine.15
A guard informed him that there were children in the cells and, upon asking to meet one, Mr. Levine
discovered that the cells had bottom slip locks and bolts; one bolt on the cell door the guard intended to
open stuck, so the guard had to whack it with a Bible until it loosened and the door could be opened. 16
Inside, Mr. Levine found a very thin, small boy with a shaved head and pajama bottoms but no shirt
lying on a concrete slab with no mattress; the guard informed Mr. Levine that the boy had been in the
cell for some time for his own protection, as the other boys were sodomizing him with a broom handle. 17
According to the guard, the boy’s head was shaved because he had been pulling out his own hair. 18
Mr. Levine informed his supervisors in Tallahassee of the conditions at Dozier School but nothing was
done until he brought his concerns to the attention of an Americans for Civil Liberties Union attorney,
who, in 1983, filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of students at the Dozier School and two other
State-run reform schools.19 The lawsuit raised numerous allegations, including that some students were
held in isolation cells for weeks at a time, sometimes “hogtied” – in other words, they were forced to lie
on their stomachs with their wrists and ankles shackled together behind their backs.20 However, the
allegations were never brought before a jury as the State settled the lawsuit in 1987, on the eve of trial;
in the settlement, the State agreed to sharply reduce the population at Dozier and another reform
school.21 Again, however, these reforms did not last, as by the early 1990s, attitudes towards juvenile
offenders were hardening.22 By 1994, the State had asked a federal court to throw out the population
caps at the reform schools after teenagers attacked and killed two British tourists at a rest stop near
Monticello, Florida; the court granted the State’s request. 23
From July 2004 to March 2009, the Florida Department of Children and Families investigated 316
allegations of abuse at the Dozier School, 17 of which were verified and 33 of which had “some
indicator of legitimacy.”24 After a 2007 abuse incident was caught on a security camera and uploaded to
YouTube, state officials criticized the Dozier School for operational problems spanning “the chain of
command from top to bottom” and fired the superintendent.25
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) reported in 2011 that its own investigation had found “harmful
practices” that put the children confined to the Dozier School at “serious risk of avoidable harm in
12 Id.
13
Id.
14 Id.
15 Id.
16 Id.
17 Id.
18 Id.
19 Id.; Bob b y M. v. Chiles, 907 F. Supp. 368, 369 (N.D. Fla. 1995).
20 Id.
21 Id.
22 Montgomery and Moore, supra note 5.
23 Id.
24 Id.
25 Id.
STORAGE NAME: h0021b.APC PAGE: 3
DATE: 2/21/2024
 violation of their rights protected by the Constitution of the United States.”26 Many of the problems,
found the DOJ, were the result of “systematic, egregious, and dangerous practices exacerbated by a
lack of accountability and controls.”27 Specific findings included:
 Use of excessive force on youth (including prone restraints), sometimes in off-camera areas not
subject to administrative review;
 Discipline for minor infractions through inappropriate use of isolation and extended confinement
for punishment and control;
 Staff inappropriately trained to address the safety of suicidal youth and dismissive of suicidal
behavior; and
 A failure to provide necessary and appropriate rehabilitative services to address addiction,
mental health, or behavioral needs, which failure served as a barrier to the youths’ ability to
return to the community without reoffending.28
The State ultimately closed the Dozier School in 2011, citing budget constraints. 29
Recent Investigations
In recent years, more than 400 men confined to the Dozier School in the 1950s and 1960s have come
forward to recount their experiences. Calling themselves the White House Boys Survivors Organization
(White House Boys) after a white structure on Dozier School property where many abuses reportedly
occurred, these men recount brutal whippings, sexual batteries, disappearances, deaths, and other
tortures they either witnessed or suffered personally while confined to the Dozier School.
In 2008, the State directed the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) to determine, in
pertinent part, whether any crimes warranting criminal prosecution were committed at the Dozier
School from 1940 through 1969 and, if so, the identity of the perpetrators of such crimes. 30 In its
Investigative Summary issued on January 9, 2010, FDLE concluded that “school administrators used
corporal punishment as a tool to encourage obedience,” noting that former students and staff generally
agreed about how the punishment was administered but disagreed as to the number of “spankings”
administered and their severity.31 The report ends with FDLE’s ultimate conclusion that, “with the
passage of over fifty years, no tangible physical evidence was found to either support or refute the
allegations of physical or sexual abuse [such that would warrant criminal prosecution].” 32
However, between 2012 and 2016, forensic anthropologists and archaeologists from the University of
South Florida (USF) leading an excavation of the former Dozier School’s campus uncovered human
remains in 55 unmarked graves, some with signs of blunt force trauma and others belonging to children
listed as “missing” in school records.33 The USF team’s investigation focused on deaths occurring
between 1900 and 1960; school records from this time period were, according to the report ultimately
issued by the team, “incomplete and often provide conflicting information.” 34 “The cause and manner of
death for the majority of cases is unknown,” noted the report, and “infectious disease, fires, physical
26 U.S. Dept. of Justice, Investigation of the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys and the Jackson Juvenile Offender Center, Marianna,
Florida, Dec. 1, 2011, https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/crt/legacy/2011/12/02/dozier_findltr_12 -1-11.pdf (last visited Feb. 13,
2024).
27 Id.
28
Id.
29 The Okeechobee School was privatized in 1982 amid allegations of abuse and deplorable living conditions and finally closed in
December of 2020 when the State declined to renew its service contract. Id.
30 Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Office of Executive Investigations, Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys Ab use Investigation,
Jan. 9, 2010, https://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/images/03/11/dozier.pdf (last visited Feb. 13, 2024).
31 According to FDLE’s report, this disagreement cannot be neatly divided amongst students and staff. Id.
32 Id.
33 Though there were 55 graves uncovered, the graves only yielded 51 sets of human remains; this is because the remains of the 1 914
fire victims were comingled and scattered in several graves. Erin H. Kimmerle, Ph.D., et al., Univ. of S. Fla., FL Inst. of Forensic
Anthropology and Applied Sciences, Report on the Investigation into the Deaths and Burials at the Former Arthur G. Dozier School for
Boys in Marianna, Florida, (Jan. 2016) https://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/wusf/files/201601/usf-final-dozier-summary-2016.pdf
(last visited Feb. 13, 2024).
34 Id.
STORAGE NAME: h0021b.APC PAGE: 4
DATE