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DECATUR — Retail theft committed by juveniles has become too prevalent in the community to ignore.

Forty years after its birth, the landmark federal Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act could be reauthorized by Congress this year.

The two brothers should have been choosing the colleges they would attend, but instead they were behind bars, unsure whether they would graduate from high school at all. After getting arrested three years ago for breaking into businesses in the northwest suburbs to steal booze, the teens remained in jail for a few months as they waited their turn to attend a four-month boot camp as their sentences. At 17, they had been charged as adults with felony burglary. Had circumstances unfolded a few years later, everything might have been different.

The recent Tribune article "Video visits at Illinois jails praised as efficient, criticized as impersonal" (News, Jan. 12) explains the benefits of families improving communications with loved ones behind bars and the shortcomings inherent with electronic communications, including the cost and the occasional technological glitches.

Court evaluations, new commitments, and technical violations are three ways in which youth may be admitted to the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice, the state's juvenile corrections agency. This article is the first of a three-part series examining the use of incarceration to address juvenile delinquency in Illinois. Admissions to IDJJ for court evaluations is examined, including admission trends and the impact court evaluation admissions have had on the profile of committed youth.

A pair of police officers on Chicago’s South Side are helping teens learn radio production in an effort to keep them off the streets and improve their views on cops.

https://www.kfvs12.com/story/29223237/southern-il-program-helps-youth-stay-out-of-juvenile-justice-system/ KFVS-TV (Cape Girardeau, MO) June 2, 2015 CARTERVILLE, IL (KFVS) – A new program is coming to southern Illinois to help children stay out of the juvenile justice system. It’s called Multi-Systemic Therapy, a program that’s been used around the world. The Caritas Family Solutions wanted to incorporate the program and bring it to

The Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority released The Intersection of Homelessness and the Criminal Justice System, an overview of state and national homelessness including prevalence and causes of homelessness, criminal justice system contacts with the homeless and recommendations to address homelessness with a focus on justice-involved populations. The report concludes that justice system stakeholders can

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.

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.