A boy dies on the state's watch, and we know little

A 16-year-old boy died inside a juvenile prison in St. Charles a few weeks ago. And that is nearly all we know.

A 16-year-old boy. He is someone's son. Maybe someone's brother. Our state had a responsibility to guard and protect him. To keep him safe. He is dead and that is nearly all we know.

Officials from the Illinois Youth Center in St. Charles, the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice, the Illinois Department of Corrections, the Illinois State Police and the Kane County Coroner's office all refused to say any more nearly 17 hours after the death was reported Sept. 1.

On Sept. 2, officials with Kane County Coroner Chuck West's office said the boy had "self-inflicted" injuries, but would not say the cause of death was suicide or release any other information. They said then that the boy's relatives had not been notified, but that claim was contradicted by juvenile justice department spokesman Januari Smith, who said that same day that her office had notified the boy's relatives. So for at least a good 18 hours until someone did say publicly that the family had been notified, every single person who has a loved one among the 300-plus inmates could have heard and been tormented wondering if it was their loved one who was gone. In fact, we heard from someone who knew an inmate and was trying to determine if he was the dead boy.

It remains unclear how long it took state officials to tell relatives. Just about everything about this death in a state, taxpayer-funded facility remains unclear. And that ought to alarm us all. That ought to outrage every single one of us.

Normally, information about juveniles involved in crimes is kept from the public so the juveniles may have a chance to rehabilitate themselves and move on to productive adulthood without the scars of youthful errors.

But this teen is dead. Someone failed to protect him. There really is no reason to withhold so much information about him and his death now. There is every reason to stand up for him, every inmate in St. Charles now and every inmate who will be there in the future. For him and all of them, we must have more information from the state and county officials who are wrongly refusing to provide any.

The public probably does not need to know this boy's name. But we do have a need to know how he died, how his death was discovered by state employees, what they did then, what procedures they followed or did not follow. We should know why he was there, what town he comes from, whether he needed psychiatric treatment and whether he got any.

Gov. Patrick Quinn, we need answers. Illinois Department of Corrections Director Michael P. Randle, Illinois Youth Center Director Bobby Moore, we need answers.

On Sept. 8, an audit of the youth prison was released that found overtime hours had doubled in the past two years while employees were not getting required training. During the 2008 budget year, the audit said, staff in St. Charles worked nearly 40,000 overtime hours. The numbers of correctional workers dropped by 41 from a high of 169 in 2006 to 128 in 2008.

This is troubling, to put it mildly. It only underscores the need for more transparency, not less. It only heightens our concern that the boys who are inmates could hurt themselves, each other or the overworked guards on duty.

A 16-year-old boy died. We are told he injured himself. We have no other information to help us judge what happened. Five public agencies were involved and still we know next to nothing. Are there still dangers there?

Some guardian somewhere failed to protect that boy. And now he is gone. And the state's silence is an abomination.