A new Injustice Watch investigation into Chicago’s attempts over two decades to offer social services to kids who are arrested and divert them from the courts revealed an inept, grindingly slow response that falls far short of addressing the problem.
Here are some of our key findings:
Only 35 kids have graduated so far from the city’s latest effort to provide services and keep them out of the courts and jail.
The latest product of the city’s decadeslong push to build a functioning program to route kids away from the justice system – the Youth Intervention Pathways program – was designed during former Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration and launched at the start of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s term. The $10 million program is supposed to offer optional social services, such as help with school, mentoring, and other services to kids who get arrested.
But while police arrested about 3,600 kids last year, they referred only 286 to the program in its first 11 months. Of those, just 35 completed the program between the beginning of June 2023 and the end of April. That’s roughly one for every 100 kids police arrest.
The city’s program still does not include a long-promised feature: giving kids services without an arrest.
City officials previously said the program would include services for kids without arresting them, but those haven’t started. Every kid in the program was arrested but not referred to court.
Experts on the treatment of kids in the legal system said the city should start giving services to kids without potentially harmful and traumatic arrests.
The city’s post-arrest services are provided by some nonprofit groups with troubled histories, including one with a tainted past doing city business.
The Chicago Department of Family and Support Services contracted with SGA Youth & Family Services for its new program, even though the group played a key role in the city’s disastrous past youth justice effort.
In 2020, then-Chicago Inspector General Joe Ferguson wrote a damning report on the Juvenile Intervention and Support Center, saying SGA — which coordinated services at the center — had kept such “inconsistent and frequently inaccurate” records investigators couldn’t determine whether JISC was fulfilling its goal to reduce recidivism.
Another Youth Intervention Pathways service provider, Think Outside Da Block, failed to register as a charitable organization with Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s office last year and hadn’t filed the papers as of June, even after the threat of legal action.
Contractors’ past performance was not part of the vetting process for the new program, said Lisa Hampton, who oversees the effort for the Chicago Department of Family and Support Services.
The Chicago Police Department, historically slow to adopt change, was nearly five years behind in writing court-ordered rules telling officers how to deal with children.
A sweeping 2019 court order — enacted during the uproar over a police officer murdering 17-year-old Laquan McDonald — in part commanded the department to encourage officers to route kids away from arrest and court and toward services.
The department was nearly five years behind schedule when it finally changed the policy in December. Advocacy groups say the new policy is still too lax because it gives officers too much discretion.
While arrests are down dramatically from a decade ago, enormous racial disparities remain. In 2023, police arrested more Black and Latinx kids — 3,496 — than they did white kids across the entire past decade.
Kids are less likely to be arrested in Chicago these days, just like adults, records show. There are several possible explanations, including drug decriminalization, fewer reported crimes, the pandemic, and increased scrutiny of the police nationwide.
Youth arrests for nearly all types of offenses decreased precipitously from 2013 to 2023, with the exception of a few high-profile categories, according to police data. Weapons-related offenses have remained relatively steady, while arrests for vehicle theft and carjacking have increased.
