What is direct file?
Direct file is the State Attorney filing an information charging a child in adult court, without a judicial transfer hearing. The decision belongs to the prosecutor.
The consequence people don't know about is permanent. Under § 985.557(2)(a), once a child has been transferred for criminal prosecution and found to have committed the presenting offense or a lesser included offense, that child is handled as an adult for any subsequent violation of state law.
Once an adult, always an adult. A sixteen-year-old direct filed and adjudicated loses access to the juvenile system entirely — for anything that happens afterward, until they turn eighteen and beyond.
That's not a consequence of the sentence. It's a consequence of the transfer, and it outlasts the case by years.
The statute also provides that when a child is transferred, other pending felony cases are transferred and certified to adult court as well.
This one decision affects every case your child could ever have. That's why the first weeks matter. ---
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