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Listen to thisWhen Illinois effectively banned punitive solitary confinement at juvenile detention centers, we eagerly bid adieu to such cruel and unusual punishment.
But it didn't dawn on us that there would be organized push back by staff at any of Illinois' six juvenile detention centers. After all, who would know better the harm that can result from locking youth in their cells for up to 22 hours a day, denying them human contact, a book to read, or access to counseling that might teach them to avoid the behavior that landed them in trouble in the first place?
So we were both surprised and disappointed to learn in a lawsuit filed last week by the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois that some staff at a Southern Illinois youth detention center have allegedly found another damaging way to deal with juveniles who break the rules.
From January 2016 through March of 2017, more than 40 youth at the Illinois Youth Center in Saline County "have been unfairly and unnecessarily prosecuted by the local state’s attorney’s office for what are often trivial charges, including spitting on staff members," the ACLU said.
Jennifer Vollen-Katz, executive director of the John Howard Association, is among those who are alarmed that staff members who work at IYC Harrisburg are going outside the juvenile justice system to local law enforcement and bringing formal complaints as victims and complaining witnesses.
Once those who recently turn 18 are charged with aggravated battery, a felony, they are in danger of getting swallowed up in a revolving-door adult system. With the deck stacked against them, many will remain trapped there for the rest of their lives.
ACLU-Illinois says the criminal charges "appear to be orchestrated by a group of rogue staff at the Harrisburg center who object to federal court approved policies that limit the amount of time that a youth can be subjected to solitary confinement."
Ms. Vollen-Katz offers the example of a young man sentenced to six years in the Department of Corrections for spitting on a staffer. "This kind of excessive punishment is ruinous for young lives," she said.
It also helps create hardened, lifetime criminals, instead of fostering future productive adult members of society, the very mission of the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice.
So far, the rash of criminal prosecutions appears to be isolated to Harrisburg IYC, where ACLU accuses staff of acting out of anger over their inability to lock-down misbehaving offenders. Staff members counter that county prosecutions are necessary because of a chaotic environment at Harrisburg IYC.
Ms. Vollen-Katz is right that, "If staff at Harrisburg feel unsafe and that the facility is dysfunctional such that they feel they must involve outside law enforcement and prosecutors, these are serious issues and worthy of attention."
But it should come from the Department of Juvenile Justice not county prosecutors or the DOC. That will happen if a federal court grants the ACLU's reasonable request and orders the DJJ to develop a plan to address problems in Saline County.
Even if it doesn't, DJJ should act to do its duty by the young charges in the state's care by launch its own throughout investigation of the Harrisburg IYC.
Editorial, The Dispatch-Argus-QCOnline
22 July 2017
