Probation officer Jerry Crowley took a chance on Luis, a 17-year-old with a charming manner that belied his criminal record. On paper, it was a big chance.
Luis had been arrested eight times in 1 1/2 years for charges ranging from graffiti and burglary to possession of a weapon and aggravated assault. The state`s attorney wanted to send Luis to prison when he violated his probation.
But Crowley`s job is to look beyond the court records and into the lives of delinquent youths. He found that Luis` problems with the law began after his parents underwent a bitter divorce and that two of the charges brought against Luis came from his girlfriend`s disapproving relatives.
Crowley stuck his neck out. He pleaded with the juvenile judge to send Luis to live with relatives in Mexico rather than to a prison cell. He convinced the judge that Luis was a worthy risk.
Luis proved them wrong. That happens a lot in Cook County Juvenile Court. ”The bottom line is that for an awful lot of kids coming through here, probation is a gamble,” said Jack Browne, chief juvenile probation officer for the county. ”No matter how sophisticated your methods get, when you`re dealing with human behavior, it is a gamble. And we gamble a great deal.”
A Tribune study of the juvenile justice system in Chicago found that probation officials lost the bet on 77 percent of the youths whose probation ended in 1984. That percentage committed a new crime while on probation or within three years. Most of the new offenses were felony-level crimes.
The computerized study of court records also found that:
— About 26 percent of juvenile probationers are charged with violating the terms of their sentences. Twenty percent of those charged are convicted of the new crimes.
— It is not unusual for judges to sentence juveniles to probation for as many as five charges simultaneously.
— About 90 percent of those who violate their probation get probation again, or nothing at all. About 10 percent go to prison.
— Juveniles charged with murder, arson, armed robbery and rape have been given probation.
About 54 percent of the youths convicted in juvenile court are sentenced to probation instead of jail or prison terms. Unlike adult offenders, juveniles convicted of even the most serious crimes are eligible for probation.
In theory, youths who show promise for reform are sentenced to probation
–rather than to jail or prison–as a privilege, not as a right. The juvenile justice system was founded on the belief that young people can be deterred from criminal behavior, and probation is supposed to be the last, best hope for rehabilitation.
Cook County`s Juvenile Court, founded in 1899, was known in its early days as ”sociological court,” but the probation department, with about 5,000 youths under its charge currently, is the last outpost of the social worker in the juvenile justice system.
”The hue and cry of the society today is `lock `em up.` But once you lock a juvenile up, you have lost a kid,” Browne said. ”Locking them up is an admission of failure.”
The juvenile probation system is not much more effective than jail for delinquents, The Tribune found. Those who oversee juveniles on probation are often called upon to do the impossible–to build a family, a sense of self-worth and a value system upon a shattered foundation of poverty, unemployment, street violence and inadequate schooling.
”Social conditions have deteriorated in my 12 years as a probation officer,” said Diane Brunson, whose South Side area includes youths from the Robert Taylor Homes public housing complex. ”I`ve seen parents become younger and younger. They`re really afraid of their kids. They`ll tell you they can`t control them, but they don`t even want to try.
”Probation would work much better if lawmakers would make parents more responsible,” she said. ”But some of these families will never be workable; not when they are hungry or the kids have no shoes. We have to solve some of the basic problems for them before we can work with them.”
Probation officials said they are also frustrated by some judges who sentence youths to ”probation upon probation.”
Arthur Hamilton, presiding judge of Juvenile Court, said he agrees with probation officers that sentencing youths to one probation on top of another and not punishing them for violating probation only serves to devalue the work of the probation department. ”But I don`t hear all the cases in court,”
Hamilton said. ”Occasionally there may be circumstances to justify it.”
Juvenile probation officers earn $18,000 to $30,000 a year and handle an average of 37 cases at a time, compared to adult officers with 95 cases on average. Juvenile officers also spend more time in the field than adult officers, talking with youths at home and in school. The bulk of a juvenile probation officer`s time is spent preparing and presenting background reports at sentencing hearings.
Cuts in federal and state funding of social service agencies, mental health facilities, residential treatment programs and group homes cripple probation officers in their attempts to find help for juveniles, probation officials said.
The Unified Delinquency Intervention Service, a referral agency for juvenile agencies, had 100 programs to offer statewide six years ago. Now it has 25. Those remaining agencies have been told that their 1987 operating budgets may be cut as much as 26 percent.
Residential programs for the mentally handicapped and for foster placement are in critically short supply as are alternative schools for youths who can not make it in their regular classes, Browne said. Spending cuts also have ended a Boy Scout troop for troubled youths sponsored by the probation office and a ”whole group of Law Enforcement Assistance Administration programs,” he said.
Browne criticized the state government for directing money at ”the back door” by building more adult prisons, while refusing to approve funding for programs aimed at straightening out juvenile criminals before they become adults.
”Damn it, they should have thrown money at the front door,” Browne said.
The available treatment programs are often geared not at the young person just beginning to display delinquent behavior–by skipping school or running away from home–but instead at the youth who already has a substantial criminal history.
The juvenile probation office`s showcase program is its Intensive Probation Supervision (IPS) unit begun in 1983. The state-funded program–one of three in the nation–was launched to ease overcrowding in juvenile detention facilities by making a final, intensive effort to reach youths with one foot in the door of juvenile prison.
Intensive probation costs about $3,000 a year per youth compared with $500 annually for regular probation and $25,000 per year for each youth in the St. Charles medium-security youth prison. The program has a current budget of about $350,000 in Cook County, according to Barry Bollensen, who oversees county probation departments for the Illinois courts system.
Cook County juvenile probation officials claim that the intensive probation program has succeeded with 70 percent of the youths who have entered it. But the state officials who fund the program say the success rate–those juveniles who do not pick up new charges while in the program–is actually only about 42 percent.
Of the 88 juveniles in Cook County who have completed the program since it began three years ago, 40 failed and were sent to prison. Another seven ran away and their whereabouts are unknown. Four were removed from intensive probation supervision and placed in other programs, Bollensen said.
Bollensen, who supports the program in general, said Cook County juvenile probation officials, seeking to bolster the program, improperly claim as successes the youths still enrolled in it.
