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Illinois youth prisons fail inmates, society, report says

Illinois' youth prison system is an expensive failure with more than half of young offenders returning within three years of their release, many of them for trivial problems such as skipping school and staying out late, according to a new report.

The Illinois Juvenile Justice Commission made the report for Gov. Pat Quinn and the legislature and issued it publicly Tuesday. The report makes recommendations it says could save nearly $80,000 per imprisoned youth annually, without sacrificing public safety.

“We can do a better job,” said commission chairman Judge George Timberlake, retired chief justice of the Second Circuit Court. “We can make the public safer. We can improve the outcomes for kids who come into contact with the juvenile justice system and we can do it at a lower cost than we do now.”

Recent Daily Herald stories have focused on conditions at the Illinois Youth Center in St. Charles, where the John Howard Association, a prison monitoring group, found crumbling buildings, filthy showers and overflowing garbage cans during a tour in May. “Safety beds” designed to minimize suicide risk had not yet been installed in all rooms, nearly two years after a 16-year-old boy killed himself using a bed railing and other materials.

Illinois has more than 1,000 young people in custody in eight prisons, with an additional 1,600 on parole. The Department of Juvenile Justice's operating budget for 2012 is nearly $124 million.

The report, required by a 2009 state law, was based on an examination of the system, including observations of nearly 240 prisoner review board hearings, which had never before been open to public review. The commission also analyzed the files of 386 young people whose parole was revoked from December 2009 through May 2010.

During those six months, more than half the youths whose parole was revoked — 54 percent — were sent back to prison for technicalities such as truancy and curfew violations. Problems beyond a young person's control, such as adults at home not paying a phone bill, also can land a young offender back in prison.

Parole officers handle both adults and youths with caseloads averaging 100, Timberlake said. They receive no special training for dealing with young people, he said. Rarely do they refer young parolees to programs that could help them with jobs, substance abuse or mental health issues.

“You have officers who are overworked and who don't have adequate training,” Timberlake said. “It's easy to say, ‘It's a violation. I'm writing it up,' and the kid goes back inside the prison.”

What's more, young offenders typically stay on parole until their 21st birthdays, increasing the likelihood of returning to custody. The report recommends that the length of parole should be limited.

The retired judge said he was surprised to find that Illinois youths are systematically deprived of their constitutional rights in decisions regarding parole revocations. The report recommends that judges preside over parole revocation hearings, rather than prisoner review boards.

“I did not suspect some of these things,” Timberlake said. “The lack of opportunity for kids to understand and exercise their rights on revocation was a huge revelation to me.”

A pilot program in Cook County offers an alternative model that should be expanded, according to the report's recommendations. The Department of Juvenile Justice has hired 20 “aftercare specialists” and two supervisors in Cook County who are trained to focus on young people getting out of prison. Funded through federal stimulus dollars, the aftercare specialists started handling cases in late April.

The governor's office is reviewing the report and its recommendations, said Quinn spokeswoman Brooke Anderson. A committee already is developing a training program for prisoner review board members on juvenile issues, she said.

“The governor is very interested in pushing forward with reform and substantially reducing the recidivism rate,” Anderson said.

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Ÿ Daily Herald politics and projects writer Kerry Lester contributed.

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