The recent arrests of two 6-year-old students in Orlando, which prompted outrage and the firing of the officer who restrained one child's hands with flex cuffs, mirrors a persistent problem confronting law enforcement and schools with thousands of children arrested annually and treated like "mini-adults," experts said.
Stunning annual crime statistics compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) show that between 2013 and 2017 (the most recent year for which complete data is available), at least 26,966 children under the age of 10 were arrested in the United States. And the numbers skyrocket for children between the ages of 10 to 12 with 228,017 arrested during the same five-year time span, according to the data.
