Kane officials dreading change in juvenile law
All the recent hype of Kane County taking DuPage County’s juvenile prisoners may prove overblown as officials say a new state law will result in far fewer youths ever entering the Illinois Department of Corrections.
A state law change will go live Jan. 1 that requires court service departments to find “less restrictive” alternatives to incarceration for juvenile offenders. That includes figuring out if a youth has had access to counseling, family therapy, diagnosis of learning disabilities, attempts at behavior changes by the local school district and help for any medical problems that may have contributed to the illegal activity. If the youth hasn’t had access to those interventions, court services staff must figure out why and if such services could be a better alternative to incarceration.
“It’s going to be exceedingly difficult to sentence a minor to the department of corrections once this takes affect,” Kane County Court Services Director Lisa Aust said Friday.
That’s not a bad thing, she added. It’s just a role court services has never had before.
“This isn’t a task that should be on the court system,” Aust said. “This is all stuff that should be done before a juvenile gets to the court system. This is the tail wagging the dog.”
Aust said the law will also impact local schools in terms of the role they will have in preventing a youth from becoming a criminal or in rehabilitating youths who’ve already broken the law.
“All schools will have to do plans that they may or may not have done before,” Aust said. “The whole system is going to have to revise how we do business. In theory, it’s a good idea. Lawmakers are instituting the idea of rehabilitation. They want to give the minor the opportunity to be rehabilitated. But the devil is in the details.”
The major detail is state lawmakers have provided no funding for the labor-intensive change.
Mark Davoust, chairman of the board’s Judicial and Public Safety Committee, said unfunded mandates are a way of life for politicians in Springfield.
“We need legislators who do their homework and ask the right questions first,” Davoust said.
Aust said she doesn’t even know what steps must be taken if a school or local community doesn’t have the required interventions or counseling services available. For instance, state funding for truancy prevention programs in Kane and other counties no longer exists. As a result, truancy is at a 10-year high in Kane County.
A committee is now forming to create a better understanding of the new roles for court services and the financial impact. Members of the Kane County Regional Office of Education, which is also in charge of addressing truancy and administering GED programs, are being asked to provide answers to some of the unknowns. That, in itself, may be a problem, county board member Jim Mitchell said.
“The state isn’t paying anyone over there right now,” Mitchell said. “So I’m not sure how much of a good idea that is. This is going to cost us some money, and we need to be aware of it.”