General

The state of Illinois has diverted thousands of youth from prison and onto the right path, while saving $60 million in incarceration costs, according to the 2012-2013 Redeploy Illinois annual report recently released by the Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS).

In Illinois' statehouse, legislators are debating a proposal that would give judges the power to determine whether kids should be tried in juvenile or criminal court, regardless of the crime they are accused of committing. This would change Illinois' current law that empowers prosecutors to automatically transfer kids they charge with certain violent offenses to adult court, without the possibility of judicial review.

An experimental program that keeps young offenders out of prison is being called a success. Redeploy Illinois has helped more than a thousand young offenders in the past decade. It's changing behavior for those teens and saving millions in taxpayer dollars.

Thousands of young adults in Cook County are missing out on getting a clean start in life by failing to take advantage of the state’s liberal expungement laws for individuals who’ve committed crimes as a juvenile.

The state of Illinois has diverted thousands of youth from prison and onto the right path, while saving $60 million in incarceration costs, according to the 2012-2013 Redeploy Illinois annual report recently released by the Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS).

The Quinn administration is experimenting with a new way to pay for social services for adolescents, starting with a concerted effort to keep wards of the court out of trouble and out of group homes or juvenile detention centers.

New Research Confirms 30-Year Trend of Poor Outcomes and Nearly Exclusive Impact on Minority Youth from Automatic Transfer to Adult Court. Illinois is one of few states giving unreviewable power to prosecutors.

A 32-year-old Illinois law that requires juveniles accused of the most serious crimes to be charged as adults may be discriminatory, prevents judges from exercising their judgment and makes it more likely that those who are convicted will commit violent crimes in the future, according to a study released Tuesday.

Out of 257 Cook County, Ill., cases between 2010 and 2012 where juveniles were charged as adults, one involved a white defendant, according to a study (PDF) released Tuesday by the Juvenile Justice Initiative. Eighty-three percent of the defendants were black, and most of the cases in the study were from Chicago's west and south sides.

The Mistakes Kids Make campaign seeks to raise awareness about juvenile justice issues. When you visit the site, you’re asked to take a quiz on the immature things you did when you were younger: shoplifting, driving under the influence, vandalism, breaking curfew, getting into fights, or doing drugs. Of the visitors to the site, 27% admit to shoplifting, 17% to driving under the influence, 50% to breaking curfew, 15% to vandalizing property, 40% to fighting, and 24% to illegal drug use.