Carla Stalnaker, a juvenile probation official in downstate Clinton County, reported that hardly a few children younger than 12 have found themselves in her business in the past more than 20 years. And only a small number of those were put in a detention centre.
The former of juvenile justice believes that this choice should be phased out.
The “old scared-straight factor” that doesn’t work, according to Stalnaker. ” They want help. They haven’t but expressed their feelings about the program.
Children under the age of 10 are not permitted to remain held in detention facilities in Illinois. But last year, there were about a hundred admissions of children under 12 and more than 60 of babies who were 12 years old, according to statistics from the Illinois Juvenile Justice Commission.
A bill passed last week in the state Senate that, if approved by the House and signed by the governor, would deal with such situations. With some exceptions for 12-year-olds accused of specific violent crimes, JB Pritzker had largely outlaw the confinement of children 12 and under.
The costs would do away with an opportunity for young offenders that a statement from the country’s Juvenile Justice Commission described as “potentially life-altering” and overwhelmingly destructive to Black kids.
According to advocates, detention may increase stress for children who, in many cases, have already had issues before actually getting into trouble with law enforcement, as well as adding to risk factors that could cause them to act out once more.
In addition, younger children may be exposed to danger or bad effects from older adolescents in detention or face isolation issues if they are sequestered away for their own defense, according to Patrick Keenan-Devlin, professional director at the Moran Center for Youth Advocacy.
But critics say the change may place the onus for overseeing troubled younger boys on an already overburdened societal service system.
The Illinois Sheriffs ‘ Association, which opposes the alter, and its executive producer, Jim Kaitschuk, questioned whether there are enough choices to what is essentially prison for 10- or 11-year-olds accused of violent acts.
Who will take them, exactly? Kaitschuk asked, pointing as an example to the difficulty the state’s Department of Children and Family Services has in finding placements for hundreds of children in its care. Right away, that’s the rub, to be sure.
The Juvenile Justice Initiative, an advocacy group based in Evanston, and the Illinois Probation and Court Services Association, a professional organization Stalnaker leads, came together to form a deal. The legislation also is backed by the state Department of Juvenile Justice, spokesperson Dominique Newman said.
Beginning in the middle of 2027, the bill would increase the age at which children can be detained from the age of 10 to 12 to include those accused of committing a specific violent crime, including first-degree murder, aggravated criminal sexual assault, and some instances of battery involving guns and aggravated carjacking.
The bill would also give the Juvenile Justice Commission the opportunity to look into the possibility of raising the minimum age to 14 and make recommendations for services that could be used as alternatives to detention.
Detention for any amount of time can be detrimental to juveniles, and the youngest ones are in an especially critical period, said Sara Thomas, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine who studies adolescent development.
In a recently published yearslong study co-led by Thomas, which included measures of basic success like getting a high school degree, working, and maintaining a social support system, juveniles who have been incarcerated for any length on average only managed to achieve five out of eight of the study’s five measures. Even among those who started out with comparable risk factors, she said, those outcomes generally got worse the longer a person was incarcerated.
The study focused on more than 1, 800 youths sampled at intake at the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center in the 1990s, and it didn’t differentiate between different ages of detained youth.
Teenagers and especially younger adolescents ‘ brains are so uniquely sensitive to their social environments, and incarceration during that time is profoundly disruptive to their development, Thomas said in an interview. It” sets kids up for consequences that will inevitably lead to adulthood” ( p.
And at the youngest ages that are the subject of the pending legislation, a disproportionate number of Black children are detained, the Juvenile Justice Commission found in its 2021 report on the issue. Although only 15 % of children in the state are Black, according to the report, they made up more than two-thirds of detention admissions for 10- to 12-year-olds in 2019.
Despite this, the bill that would end detention for that age group has received opposition from those who claim that some children’s social services that could be used as alternatives are constrained or unsuitable.
Law enforcement doesn’t “overutilize” its ability to detain children, and taking the option off the table could put other children in the community in danger, Kaitschuk of the sheriff’s association said in an interview.
” I don’t want to lock all these kids up, I’m trying to be nice with you.” Kaitschuk said,” I don’t,” ” I want services available to them”.
The bill was passed by the Senate with two Republicans in favor and a few lawmakers who were absent. It is likely to be brought up in the House following last week’s vote in which moderate Democrats defeated a , a measure relating to resentencing reform.
During the Senate floor debate, Republican state Sen. Steve McClure of Litchfield said he feared the detention bill would result in more kids diverted into DCFS, which” could be more detrimental than a few hours of detention”.
Dependent on the child’s circumstances and the gravity of the alleged crime, DCFS may be a place for juveniles who have been taken from custody or in care.
According to Elizabeth Clarke of the Juvenile Justice Initiative, those options could include returning the child home or visiting a relative’s home to cool off. Others are referred to counseling or crisis and mental health services.
Probation and court services are required to share any instances where alternatives “failed or were lacking,” according to the bill, which was sponsored by Chicago-based state senator Robert Peters.
Even the delivery of crisis services in rural Clinton County can take a while, according to Stalnaker. Her assessment is in line with the Juvenile Justice Commission’s 2021 report, which found gaps in emergency placements for kids outside of Cook County.
Stalnaker said she is supporting the bill because it provides a pathway to supporting those services as an alternative to detention.
Clarke said the legislation gives the Juvenile Justice Commission an opportunity to “frontload the system” with alternatives to detention that could prevent kids from repeatedly committing crimes into adulthood in addition to another Senate bill passed this year to create a reform task force within the system.
Chicago has seen a smattering of very young kids accused of violent crimes, with several cases seared into the city’s memory.
Robert” Yummy” Sandifer, an 11-year-old who was on the run after allegedly killing his 14-year-old neighbor when two of his fellow gang members, both 14 and 16, killed him in 1994.
Prior to the dismissal of the charges, two boys, ages 7 and 8, were falsely accused of killing Ryan Harris, 11, before the charges were dropped. Since they were too young to be placed in detention at the time they were accused, the boys spent three days in a hospital before being sent home with custom-fitted monitoring bracelets. Romarr Gipson, one of the boys who was later exonerated in that case, was later given a 52-year prison sentence for a double shooting he did in 2006 when he was 21.
Even though they are noteworthy, those instances are uncommon. According to the 2021 report from the Juvenile Justice Commission, the most common charge against preteens locked up from 2017 to 2020 was aggravated battery — also a violent crime, but a broad charge that covers a range of alleged actions.
According to the Juvenile Justice Commission, there were 77 admissions of children between the ages of 10 and 12 in total last year, with the exception of one case involving an 11-year-old and one case involving a 10-year-old. There were 20 incidents in Cook County, with the exception of one in which a 12-year-old was involved.
” I’ve been to the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center so many times I couldn’t even count”, Keenan-Devlin added. ” The image of my 10-year-old in that facility should shock the conscience,” I said.
Eric Anderson supports increasing the maximum number of people allowed to enter the juvenile Temporary Detention Center, citing his experience there.
At 15, he , opened fire trying to hit a gang rival , and instead shot two 13-year-old girls in a double murder that made headlines in the mid-1990s. He was charged as an adult and given a life-long prison term.
Before being sentenced as an adult, he spent months at the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center. His earliest experiences with detention” set the stage for what is a lifelong battle” in building relationships and finding acceptance with others, he said.
Anderson, who was resententialed after being released in 2023, works on the South Side of the city at the Precious Blood Ministry of Reconciliation.
According to Anderson,” children need trusted caregivers for safety.” ” To cry to, or to express their hurts or their fears to. None of that can be found in a detention facility. Not for children or anyone else.
The bill would not change any policies for people detained at 15, as Anderson was. However, he claimed that he was in favor of restricting the options for younger children.
He claimed that doing that to an 11- or 12-year-old is “fundamentally harmful.”
Peters, the bill’s sponsor, said part of his backing of the bill comes from his own personal experience as a kid who “acted out”.
He said,” I was very lucky, and I don’t believe we should have luck play such an active role.”
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