Nearly half of all juvenile offenders in Illinois will return to the state’s youth prison system within three years.
That’s a disgrace. It doesn’t have to be that way, though. Other states, with Missouri leading the pack, are radically reforming their juvenile corrections systems. The first step is to separate the juvenile division into its own, independent department. The results can be seen in thousands of lives turned around, lower recidivism rates and small numbers of youths in prison.
Therein lies one beauty of youth; research shows adolescents are far more amenable to rehabilitation than adults.
But the Illinois correctional system is virtually incapable of distinguishing between adult and juvenile inmates. That’s because juveniles make up only 3 percent of the total inmate population. They’re pretty much an afterthought for the Department of Corrections.
Don’t take our word for how bad Illinois’ system is. Take it from Will County Sheriff Paul Kaupus. “When juveniles in Illinois are removed from society and sent to the Illinois Department of Corrections, they are punished, put behind barbed wire and bars. But they usually don’t `learn their lesson.’ They learn more about being criminals and frequently come right back into the system for more punishment at a high cost to taxpayers, as well as the child’s future,” Kaupus wrote in Tuesday’s Joliet Herald News. “The juvenile correctional system in Illinois has become more a breeding ground for future criminals than a system aimed at rehabilitating youths.”
Unfortunately, the political debate on this has turned more on who might lose their jobs in a prison reorganization–and who might lose their political base among state prison workers–rather than on how well kids would be rehabilitated.
If you better handle kids who are in trouble, you will improve public safety.
Nothing short of a cultural revolution inside the state’s youth prisons will turn this situation around and put Illinois on the track that other states are on.
State legislators have the opportunity right now to do something about it.
The General Assembly is poised to vote on a measure to separate the juvenile correctional system from the adult system and to increase education and training standards for youth officers. That’s a critical step toward changing the juvenile corrections culture so it focuses more on treatment, counseling and planning for what happens after a youth is released.
Legislative leaders, Gov. Rod Blagojevich and others have worked out a way to accomplish this without creating a large new bureaucracy and adding significant expense for the state.
Forty states have recognized it makes no sense to mix kids and adults and have created separate penal systems. Today it should be our turn.
