Juvenile Courts
Cook County created the first juvenile court system in the country in 1899. The juvenile division hears more than 2,400 delinquency cases and about 1,000 cases of alleged abuse and neglect against children each year.
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While youth arrests are way down, Chicago has failed to fix its long-broken approach to providing support for kids who get arrested, lagging far behind mayoral promises and serving only a fraction of kids who might need help.
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More than 160 juvenile offenders in Illinois were serving de facto life sentences in 2019, despite recent court decisions limiting life sentences for youths. Following this project, the Illinois Supreme Court issued a landmark decision that opened resentencing possibilities for many juveniles serving lengthy prison terms of more than 40 years.
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Rare criminal trial of former Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center employee expected to start Thursday
For decades, allegations of child abuse and employee misconduct have swirled around Chicago’s juvenile detention center. But on Thursday, a Cook County judge will begin proceedings in a rare trial of a former employee accused of physically harming a child at the facility. Kevin Walker, 58, a former rapid response team specialist at the Cook…
Superintendent of Chicago’s youth jail might not live here, records show
Leonard Dixon has run the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center — one of the largest youth jails in the country — for a decade. Records and interviews suggest he might not live in Chicago and is rarely seen at the facility.
Illinois lawmakers demand probe of Chicago center for troubled youth
Leading Illinois Republican lawmakers on Friday asked the state Auditor General to probe state oversight failures at a now-shuttered South Side youth facility where foster children were physically and sexually abused. The move followed an Injustice Watch investigation published Sept. 20 detailing abuses by staffers hired at Aunt Martha’s Integrated Care Center despite felony convictions,…
Abuse allegations went unchecked for years at state-funded center for troubled foster kids
Soon after Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker took office in 2019, his administration elevated Aunt Martha’s Integrated Care Center on Chicago’s South Side as a model for how Illinois would serve abused foster children with mental health diagnoses. The fortress-like red brick building was touted by his administration as a haven for court-supervised youth scarred by…
Your child was arrested in Chicago. What happens next?
Leer en español It’s the news no parent wants to hear: Your child has just been arrested. It can feel scary, confusing, or overwhelming. Perhaps you don’t know where your child is or what they were arrested for. You might be wondering what happens next and what role police, prosecutors, probation officers, and judges play…
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