Illinois allows kids as young as 10 to be put in detention. A bill before the state House could change that
CHICAGO - In more than two decades as a juvenile probation officer in downstate Clinton County, Carla Stalnaker said barely a handful of children younger than 12 have found themselves in her office. And only a small number of those were put in a detention center.
But the juvenile justice veteran thinks it's time to phase out that option.
"The old scared-straight thing … that doesn't work," Stalnaker said. "They want help. They're not hard and bitter about the system yet."
Illinois doesn't allow children under 10 to be held in detention facilities. But last year, there were about a dozen admissions of children under 12 and more than 60 of children who were 12 years old, according to data from the Illinois Juvenile Justice Commission.
Cases like those are the subject of a bill that was passed in the state Senate last week that, if approved by the House and signed by Gov. JB Pritzker, would essentially ban the detention of kids 12 and under, with some exceptions for 12-year-olds accused of certain violent crimes.
The bill would do away with an option for youthful offenders that a report from the state's Juvenile Justice Commission described as "potentially life-altering" and disproportionately detrimental to Black children.
Advocates argue detention can add to trauma for children who in many cases have already experienced problems before they ever get into trouble with law enforcement, adding to risk factors that may lead them to act out again.
Beyond that, younger children can be exposed to danger or negative influences from older teenagers in detention, or face potential issues from isolation if they're sequestered away for their own protection, said Patrick Keenan-Devlin, executive director at the Moran Center for Youth Advocacy.
But opponents say the change would place the onus for overseeing troubled young kids on an already overburdened social services infrastructure.
The Illinois Sheriffs' Association opposes the change and its executive director, Jim Kaitschuk, questioned whether there are sufficient alternatives available to what is essentially jail for 10- or 11-year-olds accused of violent crimes.
"Who's gonna take them?" Kaitschuk asked, pointing as an example to the difficulty the state's Department of Children and Family Services has in finding placements for hundreds of children in its care. "That's the rub, right out of the gate."
The bill came together as an agreement between the Juvenile Justice Initiative, an Evanston-based advocacy group, and the Illinois Probation and Court Services Association, a professional organization that Stalnaker leads. The legislation also is backed by the state Department of Juvenile Justice, spokesperson Dominique Newman said.
In addition to raising the age that kids can be detained from 10 to 12, starting in mid-2027 the bill would also raise the standard for 12-year-olds to be detained to those accused of specific violent crimes including first-degree murder, aggravated criminal sexual assault, some instances of battery involving guns and aggravated carjacking.
The bill also would allow the Juvenile Justice Commission to study the possibility of further raising the minimum age to 14 and make recommendations on services that can be used as alternatives to detention.
Detention for any amount of time can be detrimental to juveniles, and the youngest ones are in an especially critical period, said Sara Thomas, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine who studies adolescent development.
Juveniles incarcerated for any amount of time on average only achieved five out of eight measures of basic success in a recently published yearslong study co-led by Thomas, including in areas such as earning a high school degree, holding a job and maintaining a social support system. Those outcomes generally got worse the longer a person was incarcerated, even among those who started with similar risk factors, she said.
The study focused on more than 1,800 youths sampled at intake at the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center in the 1990s, and it didn't differentiate between different ages of detained youth.
"Adolescents and especially younger adolescents' brains are so uniquely sensitive to their social environments, and incarceration during that period of time is profoundly disruptive to their development," Thomas said in an interview. "It sets kids up to have long-term consequences that follow them into adulthood."
And at the youngest ages that are the subject of the pending legislation, a disproportionate number of Black children are detained, the Juvenile Justice Commission found in its 2021 report on the issue. While about 15% of children statewide are Black, they made up more than two-thirds of detention admissions for 10- to 12-year-olds in 2019, the report said.
Still, the bill that would end detention for that age group has faced opposition from people who say social services that could be used as alternatives are strained or unsuitable for some children.
Law enforcement doesn't "overutilize" its ability to detain children, and taking the option off the table could put other children in the community in danger, Kaitschuk of the sheriff's association said in an interview.
"I'm not pleading with you to say I want to lock up all these kids. I don't," Kaitschuk said. "I want services available to them."
The Senate passed the bill 33-17 with two Republicans voting in favor and a handful of lawmakers sitting it out. If it's brought to a roll call in the House, it likely will follow a vote that saw moderate Democrats defeating a measure related to resentencing reform last week.
During the Senate floor debate, Republican state Sen. Steve McClure of Litchfield said he feared the detention bill would result in more kids diverted into DCFS, which "could be more detrimental than a few hours of detention."
While DCFS can be a possible placement for juveniles diverted from detention in cases of abuse or neglect, there are other alternatives depending on the child's situation and the severity of the alleged crime.
Those could include sending the child back home or to a relative's house to cool off, Elizabeth Clarke of the Juvenile Justice Initiative said. Others are referred to counseling or crisis and mental health services.
The bill, sponsored by state Sen. Robert Peters of Chicago, directs probation and court services to share any instances where alternatives "failed or were lacking."
In rural Clinton County, even crisis services can take a long time to arrive, Stalnaker said. Her assessment is in line with the Juvenile Justice Commission's 2021 report, which found gaps in emergency placements for kids outside of Cook County.
Still, Stalnaker said she is backing the bill as it provides a path to support those services as an alternative to detention.
Along with another Senate bill passed this year to create a reform task force within the Juvenile Justice Commission, Clarke said the legislation creates an opportunity to "frontload the system" with alternatives to detention that could keep kids from repeatedly committing crimes into adulthood.
Chicago has seen a smattering of very young kids accused of violent crimes, with several cases seared into the city's memory.
In 1994, Robert "Yummy" Sandifer was a 4-foot-6-inches tall 11-year-old on the run after allegedly killing his 14-year-old neighbor when he was killed by two fellow gang members, who themselves were only 14 and 16.
Just a few years later, police wrongly accused two boys, ages 7 and 8, of killing 11-year-old Ryan Harris before the charges were dropped. Since they were too young to be placed in detention at the time they were accused, the boys spent three days in a hospital before being sent home with custom-fitted monitoring bracelets. One of the boys exonerated in that case, Romarr Gipson, was later sentenced to 52 years in prison for a 2006 double shooting when he was 21.
Those cases, while memorable, are rare. According to the 2021 report from the Juvenile Justice Commission, the most common charge against preteens locked up from 2017 to 2020 was aggravated battery - also a violent crime, but a broad charge that covers a range of alleged actions.
In total, there were 77 admissions of children ages 10-12 placed in detention last year, including only one instance of a 10-year-old and 12 instances involving 11-year-olds, according to the Juvenile Justice Commission. Cook County saw 20 instances total, all but one involving a 12-year-old.
"I've been to the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center so many times I couldn't even count," Keenan-Devlin added. "The image of my 10-year-old in that facility should shock the conscience."
As someone with experience in the the Juvenile Temporary Detention Center, Eric Anderson is in favor of raising the limit on who can be put there.
At 15, heopened fire trying to hit a gang rival and instead shot two 13-year-old girls in a double murder that made headlines in the mid-1990s. He was charged as an adult and sentenced to life in prison.
He spent months at the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center before he was sentenced as an adult. His earliest experiences with detention "set the stage for what is a lifelong battle" in building relationships and finding acceptance with others, he said.
Now in his 40s, Anderson, released in 2023 after being resentenced, works at Precious Blood Ministry of Reconciliation on the South Side.
"Children need the safety of caregivers who are trusted," Anderson said. "To cry to, or to express their hurts or their fears to. And in a detention center, there is none of that. Not for children or for anybody else."
The bill would not change any policies for people detained at 15, as Anderson was. But he said he supports limiting the possibilities for younger kids.
"To do that to an 11-year-old or a 12-year-old is fundamentally harmful," he said.
Peters, the bill's sponsor, said part of his backing of the bill comes from his own personal experience as a kid who "acted out."
"I was very lucky," he said, "and I don't think we should have luck play such an active role."
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