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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
Time: 12:05 am
Time: 12:05 am
Results for juvenile courts (illinois, u.s.)
1 results foundAuthor: Illinois Juvenile Justice Commission Title: Raising the Age of Juvenile Court Jurisdiction: The future of 17-year-olds in Illinois' justice system Summary: In Illinois, 17-year-olds cannot vote or play the lottery; they need permission to join the military or pierce their ears; they are unable to obtain a full driver’s license or credit card. Abusing a 17-year-old is child abuse; failing to provide adequate food to a 17-year-old is child neglect; teachers and other professionals who work with 17-year- olds must report such incidents or face criminal charges themselves. When 17-year-olds damage someone’s property, their parents can be sued. A 17-year-old arrested for shoplifting an iPod Touch is subject to the juvenile justice system. In all of these respects, the law treats 17-year-olds as it does 16-year-olds: as minors. Yet Illinois law treats a 17-year-old who shoplifts an iPhone as an adult criminal: held with adults in jail, tried in adult criminal court, sent to adult prison if incarcerated, and issued an employment-crushing permanent criminal record—an adult felony conviction. In 38 other states, such a youth would go through the juvenile justice system instead. In 2009, in keeping with legal, criminological, and scientific trends, legislative advocates in Illinois supported moving 17-year-olds from criminal to juvenile court jurisdiction. The proposal was vigorously debated, with opponents raising concerns over public safety, staggering probation caseloads, overcrowded detention facilities and unmanageable fiscal costs. In response to these concerns, the General Assembly passed an innovative compromise; Illinois would be the first and only state in the nation to send exclusively misdemeanants through the juvenile system. Any and all felony charged 17-year-olds would stay in adult criminal court for the time being—until the effects of the change were known and the impact of further change could be considered. Since the misdemeanor age change took effect on January 1, 2010, none of the predicted negative consequences on the juvenile court system have occurred: Adding 17-year-old misdemeanants to the juvenile justice system in 2010 did not crash it. In fact, due to a sharp decline in juvenile crime, there are currently fewer juvenile arrests than when the General Assembly began debating the change in 2008. Public safety did not suffer. In fact, both crime reports and juvenile arrests have continued to decline, including a 14 percent decrease in violent crime statewide since the law was changed. County juvenile detention centers and state juvenile incarceration facilities were not overrun. In fact, one detention center and two state incarceration facilities have been closed and excess capacity is still the statewide norm. Illinois is not wasting costly resources on youth who will not change. In fact, we now know that even felony- level 17-year-old offenders are very good candidates for juvenile court interventions and that there is a net fiscal benefit from sending youth to juvenile rather than adult court. Multiple federal juvenile policy briefs have now offered new insight into the potential for adolescent offenders to grow and change—and have also warned of serious negative public safety consequences of sending minors through an adult criminal system. Illinois’ seemingly reasonable compromise did not, in the end, draw a wise, safe, or clear distinction between minor and serious offenses. In fact, years after the change, jurisdictional questions still regularly arise when 17-year-olds are arrested; some are being unnecessarily housed in adult jails and others are receiving adult convictions for misdemeanor offenses; decisions with lifelong collateral consequences for youth are being made without judicial oversight or a clear, uniform statewide process. Regardless of legislative action on this jurisdictional issue, Illinois cannot continue its status quo of housing felony-charged 17-year-olds with adult inmates without financial cost. In fact, monitoring for compliance with new federal Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) guidelines begins in 2013. PREA will require all offenders under 18, even those in the criminal system, to be housed separately from adults in all lockups, jails, detention centers, and prisons. Noncompliance can result in a 5 percent penalty on several federal formula funds and block grants, which support state and local law enforcement agencies throughout Illinois. The operational impact of raising the age for approximately 4,000 17-year-olds arrested for felony offenses will not crash the system. In fact, most practitioners interviewed for this report believe the change will relieve some administrative burdens inherent in a “bifurcated system” in which some 17-year-olds are handled as adults and others are considered juveniles. Of course, adding felony arrests cannot be expected to have the same operational effects as adding misdemeanor arrests. Some of the original fiscal projections and concerns over raising the age focused primarily on expensive interventions for more serious offenders (detention, incarceration, more intensive probation); these were minimally affected by adding up to 18,000 misdemeanor arrests to the juvenile system but do become more relevant concerns upon shifting 4,000 felony youth arrests from the adult system to the juvenile system. yet many original objections to raising the age focused on the effect of the raw numbers being shifted to front-end processing and diversion functions (arrest, probation screening, juvenile court caseloads, and probation services). At the front end of the system, the hardest stage of change is over, and it has been much more successful than anticipated. While serious youth crime continues to afflict communities, the overall reduction in juvenile crime and increased diversion options have created a smaller and more resilient juvenile justice system. Appropriately resourced, it will be able to absorb the second phase of raising the age while increasing public safety. Since the juvenile jurisdiction compromise changes went into effect in 2010, taking the next step with felonies has become less risky and more manageable, while the enormous economic and safety costs of maintaining the destructive status quo have become more apparent in many neighborhoods, as well as in the research. A great deal of the resistance to further change has dwindled and our state is being presented with the opportunity to do right by youth, their parents, the public, and practitioners. It is time to treat 17-year-olds who are arrested in Illinois as we do their 16-year-old classmates. Details: Springfield, IL: Illinois Juvenile Justice Commission, 2013. 74. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 4, 2013 at: http://ijjc.illinois.gov/rta Year: 2013 Country: United States URL: http://ijjc.illinois.gov/rta Shelf Number: 127823 Keywords: Juvenile Court JurisdictionJuvenile Courts (Illinois, U.S.)Juvenile Offenders |