Future uncertain for aging St. Charles youth prison

Once the crown jewel of the state's youth prison system, the Illinois Youth Center in St. Charles is catching a reputation these days as a place where juvenile offenders are under-supervised in deteriorating conditions.

In September, one of the prison's 275 male inmates - a 16-year-old Chicago boy - killed himself with the assistance of a bunk bed that prison experts say shouldn't have been in use.

A week later, a state audit was issued showing overtime for prison employees had doubled in the last year, while training dwindled. All of it was followed last month by the John Howard Association of Illinois highlighting "appalling" structural deficiencies and the use of equipment that lends itself to suicides.

State officials, including Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice Director Kurt Friedenauer, refused repeated requests from the Daily Herald for interviews, and Gov. Pat Quinn has yet to weigh in on the situation.

But people who work inside the facility and at other youth prisons across the state say the problem is systemic - a result of years of underfunding and concerns that went ignored under former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who pulled youth prisons out from under the umbrella of the state corrections department and created the juvenile justice department in 2006.

"The reality of this is, if we don't do something this year, next year's going to be worse," said Norm Neely, a former supervisor at the St. Charles facility and a representative of union prison workers in the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31. "These places are deteriorating right around us."

Violence against guards and between inmates is on the rise at the St. Charles facility and at others across the state, Neely said. Since 2005, four inmates have killed themselves in state juvenile prisons, and the recidivism rate for Illinois youths topped 50 percent in recent years, state records show.

Last December, two boys escaped the youth center in St. Charles by prying off a piece of metal used to cover up the deteriorating wall in their cell.

Meanwhile, state funding has remained relatively flat, while overtime skyrocketed to nearly 40,000 hours in 2008, exacerbated by the loss of 41 correctional officers.

Stephanie Weber, executive director of the nonprofit Suicide Prevention Services in Batavia, sees it as a dire situation.

"I don't think the state of Illinois values human life," Weber said. "We are such a corrupt state. There is so much money going in the wrong direction. We need to do everything in our power to provide the very best to keep people safe."

The Illinois Youth Center on Route 38 in St. Charles opened more in 1904 and remains Illinois' largest juvenile prison with a capacity of 318.

The medium-security campus on 25 acres is dotted with buildings the state described as "abandoned, dangerously dilapidated and accessible to youth," according to a 2007 report aimed at overhauling youth corrections in Illinois.

"The site layout is inefficient and sprawled with no discernible functional organization," the report states. "St. Charles was designed at the turn of the century for youth with different delinquent issues than the high risk youth of today."

Strategies outlined in the report were intended to reduce annual housing costs some $13.3 million by relying more on transition centers and programs to help rehabilitate nonviolent offenders. But the state has yet to act on the recommendations.

According to the proposal, the number of incarcerated youths statewide was expected to drop to 964 in 2016 from 1,452 in 2007. Eventually, the report said, youth prisons wouldn't need more than 150 beds each, with a goal of keeping individual populations at less than 100. And more resources would be put toward educational, vocational and mental health programs.

More than 60 percent of the state's juvenile offenders in 2007 had been incarcerated for felonies that were Class 2 or higher, including murder, and more than half identified themselves as members of a street gang. But the state acknowledges that offenders at most of its seven youth prisons are not receiving adequate rehabilitation services.

"(There are) serious shortfalls in programming such as lack of full-day education at most facilities, lack of mental health staff at each facility and lack of 24-hour medical care," the 2007 report said. "Most of the facilities are outmoded, do not meet contemporary standards, are functionally obsolete and in poor physical condition."

State Rep. Annazette Collins, a Chicago Democrat and chairwoman of the state Juvenile Justice Reform Committee, did not respond to requests for comment for this story. But she told the Daily Herald in October that she supports closing youth prisons across the state and moving to a different model.

"It costs us so much money to keep these big facilities open, and we don't need them," she said.

Critics, however, argue the state has yet to show how a different system would work.

"We're never against doing something that will benefit the kids," said Neely, the union representative. "But we would like to see some real results."

Last month, the state took one of its first steps in addressing concerns in the John Howard Association report by spending more than $71,000 to replace bunk beds in the St. Charles youth prison.

While the state said the "emergency" expense would address "physical deficiencies," it has not acknowledged any particularly high risk for suicides at its facilities.

"While we recognize physical deficiencies at the aging facility, the conditions don't pose an immediate risk to youth," said IDJJ spokeswoman Januari Smith.