Troubled Kids

2010 Policy Recommendations to Get Troubled Kids Back on Track

Law enforcement is doing a good job addressing juvenile crime and making sure offending juveniles are taken off the streets - almost 45,000 juveniles get arrested every year.  The most dangerous of these young people are put behind bars.

The problem - a problem with disastrous consequences for public safety -- is that police officers and sheriffs find themselves continually arresting the same kid again and again.  Our state's attorneys are forced to prosecute the same kid again and again. About 3,000 juveniles are committed to a state facility every year and, after they are released, 73% of them are arrested again within two years.  Forty-eight per cent of them wind up right behind those same bars within three years.

Maintaining a broken juvenile corrections system is clearly not cost-effective, and it does not effectively serve troubled kids or their communities. These extraordinarily high rates of re-offending indicate that troubled kids with mental health problems are not being properly identified and treated; our secure corrections facilities are not effectively counter-acting and correcting criminal behavior; and that kids who serve time are not being adequately monitored with proven interventions when they return to their communities.

2010 (FY11) Policy Recommendations:

A. Support allocating the resources necessary for the Department of Juvenile Justice to begin hiring after care (parole) workers dedicated to young offenders. Governor Quinn's proposed budget outlines a merger of the Department of Juvenile Justice into the Department of Children and Family Services.  Details on the proposal are scarce at this point and we will be interested to find out more to determine if this proposal will lead to increased utilization of innovative, proven, evidenced-based approaches that will improve outcomes for both public safety and the youth involved.

B.            Community-based interventions with troubled youth. There are a number of community-based interventions that we believe deserve continued funding in FY 2011.  Along with well-run youth centers, effective community-based interventions are essential if we are to turn the lives of troubled youth around.  The following are the interventions we are monitoring and working to improve because of the promise they show:

(1) Redeploy Illinois,

(2) The Illinois Children's Mental Health Partnership.

Both of these programs are slated for budget reductions in the proposed budget and we urge that those reductions be restored.