Recently, WNIJ’s Peter Medlin reported on Illinois’ county juvenile detention system. Two new state laws look to reform it. He spoke with Elizabeth Clarke, founder of the juvenile detention watchdog Juvenile Justice Initiative, about the impact the laws could make…
Peter Medlin (PM): One of the laws does a couple things, but I think two of the big highlights are ending the practice of detaining young children under 12, and then 13 next year, and establishing the Child First Reform Task Force is another big part of it. Can you talk a little bit about some of the big pieces that are really important to that legislation?
Elizabeth Clarke (EC): Well, it was a 14-year battle to end pre-trial detention, really, jailing, of children under the age of 13. All through those 14 years, the numbers went down, thankfully. The research is clear that removing children, especially such young children, from their home is profoundly harmful and has lifelong implications, including higher mortality rates; profoundly damaging.
Despite that, it was difficult to pass because opponents said, "Well, what else are we going to do with them?” So, part of the bill that passed is, in cases where children can't be detained but you can't find alternative resources, probation will document that. Because one of the things we've never known is where the resources are missing. Where are they needed, and what resources are needed? Temporary interventions? Behavioral health? Some kind of home placement? Documenting that is going to be a key part.
A year from now, we're going to know a lot more about what resources people in the system feel are missing and where they're missing, and that's going to help us improve our system dramatically.
(PM): And the other big part of that legislation is the establishment of the Child First Reform Task Force. Can you tell us a little bit about what that work? What are they going to do?
(EC): So, a recommendation that’s been on the books for three decades now, is that the juvenile detention system be reformed. The whole system is murky; there’s no enforcement. It needs to be completely overhauled. The Child First Reform Task Force’s first part is just to address that, to look at that. But we have very little data.
We have changed the standard of detention in that bill, as well. Not only did it raise the age, but it said we can't detain children anymore for property offenses. We don't detain adults anymore for property offenses. We’re not going to lock them up anymore for “harm to self,” danger to self. I mean, that was always absurd. If they're a danger to themselves, that's a behavioral health issue. That's not something where you punish them.
The other change is in “failure to appear in court,” which is absurd because you're talking about children who have no agency over where they go each day, and who are legally required to go to school, then you're going to jail them because they don't appear in court? So, the standard is changing too. I think a year from now we'll know a lot more about who the population is that we're actually talking about.
(PM): If we're going to have a lot more data in the next year, what do we hope that data tells us?
(EC): I think it will tell us that we need far, far fewer beds than we have right now, and something about where we need them, so that we can begin thinking about regionalization rather than having 14 [county juvenile detention centers] scattered across the state.
You’ve got Vermillion, Champaign, and Sangamon counties all in a row. I mean, they're just scattered haphazardly across the state right now. So, where we actually need beds, how many we need, what resources we need to put in place. All of that we've got to figure out.
But this is all going to be under the lens of Child First Justice, which is transformative. It'll be we will be leading the country in using this lens of Child First Justice; child first, offenders second. Looking at children as children, starting from the framework of the aspirations of the Convention on the Rights of the Child: what their needs are, what our obligations are to them as a society, and then all through a restorative justice lens. The governor just signed a bill that will encourage the use of restorative justice in juvenile cases.
(PM): You've talked about how a lot of that work and a lot of that push for restorative justice in this system comes from work that has been happening in Northern Ireland. You and others have taken trips to Northern Ireland to learn more about this.
(EC): It's astonishing. It's an approach towards justice, and now they're hoping to expand it to the adult system in Northern Ireland. It’s an approach to justice that really teaches peace-building skills and it’s critical in communities particularly hard hit by conflict and violence. Northern Ireland tells us you can start up a system training people on how to dialogue with each other, how to work out conflict peacefully through these restorative measures.
(PM): The Juvenile Justice Initiative released a big report about a year and a half ago about the need to overhaul juvenile detention in Illinois. It lists a series of recommendations, some of which seem to have made it into these new laws; I'm sure not all of them. For you, what are some of the more urgent areas that still need reform?
(EC): The other thing I want to mention that's just a really big thing in the lives of children is that there's only one county in Illinois that does a review of a decision to lock up a kid 24/7. So, if a kid comes into most counties in Illinois, other than Cook, on a Friday, they're not going to have a court hearing of that decision to lock them up until Monday.
On the other hand, if you come in on Friday and you have a court decision that Friday and the court says, "Well, you're not really a danger to the public, so we're going to send you home with these conditions,” then you can go right back into school Monday morning, and you won't miss as much.
Every player in the system is guilty of dragging their feet and saying, "Oh, we can't do detention hearings on the weekends,” but, you know, hospitals are open 24/7. Why can't courts do 24/7 detention hearings? And, really, no hearing should ever be done without a lawyer in-person with the child — that's really important too.
