The strains on the criminal justice infrastructure in Illinois were supposed to ease in the next decade-providing a breather after 20 years of building new jails and prisons and hiring more prosecutors and judges, all in an expensive effort to cope with an onslaught of crime.
Criminal justice planners had a theory to back up their optimism:
Lawlessness, they figured, would decrease through the 1990s as Baby Boomers aged and the baby-slump generation reached the crime-prone years.
Unfortunately, only part of this theory is coming true.
The number of people between the so-called crime-prone ages of 17 to 29 has declined and the number of people between the ages of 30 and 44 has increased as the state`s population ages, according to a soon-to-be released report by the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority.
But the state`s overburdened criminal justice system continues to creak under the weight of an increasing number of arrests, exploding jail populations-particularly in the Chicago metropolitan area-and higher caseloads for judges and prosecutors, according to the same report and interviews with law enforcement officials throughout Illinois.
What has happened is that dramatic increases in drug crime and changes in society`s attitudes toward substance abuse have shattered the foundation on which demographic planning was built, according to law enforcement officials and criminal justice planners.
”Drug traffickers don`t have to age out of the system,” said John Firman, associate director of the state Criminal Justice Information Authority, which addresses the impact of drug crime in its report ”Trends and Issues 89,” due to be released early next month.
In the Chicago area, Firman says, the capacity of the criminal justice system no longer can cope with the number of drug arrests.
”We`re in the most dangerous position for the criminal justice system to be in,” Firman said, ”playing catch-up.”
Drug use is a problem in every corner of the state, says Rick Kozak, assistant deputy director of the Illinois State Police.
”We`re buying dope everywhere,” he said. ”The dope situation is prevalent throughout every county in the state-rural, urban, it doesn`t make any difference.”
Illinois is not alone in facing an increase in drug crime. Drug violence in the nation`s capital has been well-publicized, and New York City`s courts and jails are barely able to cope with a flood of drug arrests this year.
But all the criminal justice ills in Illinois cannot be blamed on drug crime. The crackdown on drunken driving in suburban counties, for example, also put additional strain on jail facilities because many motorists convicted of driving while intoxicated served time in jail rather than prison.
Other factors also have contributed to the growth in jail populations, according to Firman and Michael Mahoney, executive director of the John Howard Association, a prison watchdog group. Judges are setting higher bonds, so more people are going to jail rather than being released on bail, and a change in state law prohibits counties from sending people convicted of lesser crimes to the state`s prisons.
Tougher enforcement of child-support orders, the increasing attention given child molesting cases and the growing complexity of county government add to the workload of state`s attorneys and their staffs.
In Quincy, Ill., Adams County State`s Atty. Scott Walden notices ”a big upsurge” in child molestation cases as well as drug crimes.
”It seems that about half your cases are either sex or drugs,” Walden said.
The number of drug arrests in Adams County nearly doubled between 1977 and 1987, the latest year for which complete statistics are available from the state police.
Between 1983 and 1987, drug arrests statewide increased by 33 percent-40 percent in Chicago, 24 percent in suburban Cook County and the collar counties and 17 percent Downstate, according to the Criminal Justice Information Authority`s report. The report also says that a growing percentage of the arrests involve drug trafficking rather than possession.
W. David Coldren, executive director of the authority, told a group of law enforcement officials recently that drug arrests statewide are expected to exceed 50,000 by the end of the century, which would be a 34 percent increase over 1987 figures.
Experts say that if the number of violent crimes and property crimes such as theft and burglary holds steady as predicted, the number of drug arrests statewide will nearly equal the number of arrests for property crimes by the year 2000; drug arrests are expected to surpass arrests for property crimes in Chicago by then. The number of arrests for property crimes in 1987 was more than twice that for drug crimes.
”The cumulative effect of these trends, if they continue, threatens to overwhelm a criminal justice system already facing record caseloads, growing court backlogs and severe overcrowding in its correctional facilities,” says a draft of the introduction to ”Trends and Issues 89.”
The report notes that arrests have increased, although some studies suggest overall drug abuse is declining among many segments of the population, especially the young.
While drugs may be available in every corner of the state, the projections by the Criminal Justice Information Authority and others result primarily from the magnitude of Chicago`s arrests. The strains on the state`s criminal justice system are a lot more serious in the Chicago area than they are in rural reaches of the state.
In many counties, the number of drug arrests dropped in the early 1980s, according to state police statistics, but now has begun to climb back toward the levels experienced in the late 1970s.
Whatever the reason, the problems facing the state`s jails are one of the more visible chinks in the criminal justice infrastructure.
Four years ago, Lake County officials began planning for a new jail. The jail opened in March and already has been filled on three occasions, according to officials.
Firman says Lake County officials were presented with a series of options and decided to balance future needs against what they could afford at the time. Lake County State`s Atty. Fred Foreman put it more bluntly; he says the new jail, as planned, wasn`t big enough.
In Cook County, officials have been forced to release more than 30,000 accused criminals on their own recognizance in the past year to control overcrowding at the jail. Despite the releases, the county is paying $1,000 a day in fines because inmates have been forced to sleep on the floor in violation of a 1983 consent decree. So far, the county`s tab totals $130,000. Elsewhere in the state, jail populations have increased by 30 percent in the last four years, according to the state Department of Corrections.
”With the end of the Baby Boom, planners figured jail population levels would be going flat,” Firman said. ”The problem is that the theory is being disproved.”
Since 1980, more than 30 counties have built new jails or renovated existing jails, according to the Criminal Justice Information Authority. Most of the new jails built or planned Downstate were needed replacing aging facilities rather than cope with overcrowding.
But the trend toward growing jail populations seems to be following the population migration from Chicago to the suburban counties, according to a spokesman for the state Department of Corrections, which sets standards for local jails.
”Even those counties that built new jails are running into problems,”
said Nic Howell, corrections spokesman.
Will County is building a $21 million jail that is scheduled to open in September. The new jail will be three times the size of the current facilities, but Sheriff John Johnsen predicts it will be full soon after it opens. Officials in Du Page County have begun planning to more than double the size of its jail, which opened just five years ago.
Downstate, new jails are planned or under construction in Massac, Montgomery, Kendall, Macoupin, McLean, Mason, Franklin, Effingham and Jackson Counties.
In Cook County, the overcrowding at County Jail can be blamed on the volume of criminal prosecutions, according to Thomas Fitzgerald, presiding judge of Criminal Court.
The number of criminal cases in Cook County pending at the end of last year had tripled since 1981, according to statistics from the administrative office for the state court system.
The number of pending criminal cases statewide had grown by 64 percent between 1981 and 1988, but, again, Cook County`s figures have a major impact on the statewide totals. The number of cases pending at the end of 1988 had declined by 26.7 percent since 1981 in the collar counties and increased by just 11 percent Downstate, according to the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts.
Fitzgerald says the average caseload for Cook County Criminal Court judges has more than doubled to 370 from 145 in 1982.
Increasingly, the cases involve narcotics offenses. Of the 4,500 people indicted on felony charges in Cook County in the first two months of this year, 42 percent were accused of using or selling drugs, Fitzgerald said.
Judge Michael Getty, who teaches a course on drugs and the courts at the National Judicial College, estimates that at least four out of every five defendants in his court ”are there because of some drug-related matter.”
”It`s mind-boggling,” said Getty, who`s been a Criminal Court judge for six years.
What starts on the streets eventually ends up in the state`s corrections system.
In 1978, violence at Pontiac state prison and unrest at Stateville prompted the General Assembly to pump much-needed funds into the state corrections system. Since then, the number of inmates has doubled, to 21,743. And despite the new prisons-another two prisons are set to open this year-corrections officials say the prison system is more crowded now than it was three years ago.
The department estimates that the population will reach 26,500 by 1998.
A recent report says that the number of inmates imprisoned for drug crimes has nearly doubled since 1985. But the primary reason for the growth in the state`s prison population in the last 10 years has been the length of sentences mandated by the state`s determinate sentencing and Class X crime laws.
What is becoming clear to many involved in the criminal justice system is that the state cannot build jails, courthouses and prisons fast enough to cope with future drug arrests-that tougher laws and longer sentences won`t solve the problem of crime.
At a recent meeting with a group of legislators, Michael Lane, state corrections director, talked about the futility of building more and more prisons. But his words might as well apply to the rest of the criminal justice infrastructure.
”I don`t think we can build ourselves out of this. There isn`t enough time,” Lane said.
”One prison at this point doesn`t do anything. This problem is of a scope that is greater than one or two prisons. At some point a choice is going to have to be made, and I hope that point arrives before we collapse from our own weight or something just totally falls part.
