Protesters want action at Illinois Youth Center in St. Charles
A small group of protesters on Monday vowed to keep pressuring the state to investigate and clean up the Illinois Youth Center in St. Charles, where a 16-year-old detainee committed suicide in September.
About 20 people from Chicago gathered outside the medium-security male juvenile facility. The group demanded to go inside the center to examine the conditions, and wants Gov. Pat Quinn investigate the facility.
The group ultimately was turned away, but not before airing their concerns.
Protesters said they heard from former inmates that rodents often ate the prisoners' food and left droppings in shower stalls and other areas.
They said the state needs to improve conditions at the facility, which houses many of the juveniles who enter the state's justice system, according to its Web site.
"This has to stop. This has to stop right now," said Jean E. Mooore, founder of the 21st Century New Beginnings Foundation, a nonprofit group that helps counsel female inmates after they're released.
Rev. Gregory Daniels, pastor at the Marble Rock Church in Chicago, said Quinn has been "asleep a the wheel" and just because he is running for office it should not preclude him from investigating the youth center.
"We're going to continue to fight," Daniels said.
Dorothy Walton, who is seeking the Democratic nomination in February for the 9th District state representative seat, said a pattern of abuse now can lead to consequences down the road.
"How will (the mail inmates at the youth center) be re-integrated into our population if they are mistreated at these facilities?" she said.
Quinn's office responded in an e-mail statement that the governor recently signed off on $2.5 million in improvements to the St. Charles facility and one in Joliet. In St. Charles, the money will be used to replace furniture and install video surveillance cameras.
"While the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice recognizes there are some physical deficiencies at the St. Charles facility, the conditions there do not pose an immediate risk to the youth in the state's care. The care and security of the young people in the juvenile justice system is of paramount importance to the Quinn administration," the governor's office said.
Monday morning, St. Charles facility superintendent Bobby Moore did not let the group inside, saying they needed to call first and make an appointment. Contacted later by phone, Moore deferred questions to Januari Smith, spokeswoman for the Department of Juvenile Justice, in Springfield.
Smith said she could not respond to the group's allegations because she had never personally been to the St. Charles location. She said she would leave a message for Department of Juvenile Justice Director Kurt Friedenhauer.
State justice officials still have not released any information on the inmate who took his own life, but they did spend about $85,000 to replace tubular steel bunk beds. A 2007 report by a prison reform group, the John Howard Association, said the bunk bed design could help enable someone to commit suicide.
The youth center opened in 1904 and has a capacity of 318 but an average daily male population of 328, according to the state's Web site.