Looking Back--Justice For Juveniles

This week I am recalling an incident involving my work with juveniles. One day a call came regarding a fifteen year old boy who was being held in the Cook County Jail awaiting trial for allegedly committing a serious crime. Lock up a child in that place and you will probably create a life-long criminal. This lad been in this hell-hole for almost a year awaiting trial as an adult. When I arrived at the jail I was introduced to this sullen, frightened, 15 year-old child. During that encounter I discovered that there were a dozen others awaiting trial as adults. In Illinois a child was tried as an adult after a transfer hearing that would remove a youth from the protection of the juvenile authorities. These juveniles were being held in that facility because there was no other place to house them.

I decided something had to be done, so I asked a friend to design an official-looking document titled “THE COOK COUNTY CITIZENS COMMITTEE ON JUVENILE JUSTICE.” It listed me as the Executive Director and included the made-up names of a non-existing committee. The entire document was an official looking fake. There was no such organization.(I guess I was a bit bolder in those days.) I sent it to the Chief Judge of the Juvenile Court asking for a meeting. A few weeks later I was invited to meet with him. I suspected he knew what I was doing, but realized that something needed to be done about a problem he could not solve, so he played along.

During the meeting I asked that the Citizens Committee be allowed to monitor all the hearings transferring children from the protection of the juvenile court into the adult criminal system. Under the rules these hearings were to be held in private. Permission was granted, and for the next year a group of us observed every hearing and made careful notes on what went on. When these young people were dragged from the Cook County jail to the courthouse for the hearing, you can imagine the mood they were in. Since there was considerable hostility accusing the county of gone soft on crime, very few of these juveniles escaped the adult system and its consequences.
When we had gathered enough evidence of how rotten the system was, we found lawyers who filed a class action civil rights suit in Federal Court on behalf of all juveniles who were awaiting hearings or who had already been transferred. The defendants were the Chief Judge of the Juvenile Court, Mayor Daley, the Chairman of the Cook County Commission and several other officials. For the most part the defendants supported our cause and were themselves looking for a new legal procedure, which would move these juveniles into a safer facility. We won the case, and the County was required to build a separate facility. No longer would any juvenile be held in the Cook County jail. Of course, this did not solve the problem, but it offered a safer venue for these children, most of whom had committed violent crimes.

While society must take violent crimes seriously, I find it hard to believe that anyone, particularly a juvenile, is beyond redemption. When does the most hardened murderous sociopath become beyond help so must be locked up for the rest of his/her life? There are, no doubt, those who are so deranged that they can never again be allowed on our streets. All I knew at the time was that incarcerating juveniles in the county jail with a collection of adult criminals only generated hardened dangerous adults. Beyond that, I have never known what society might do about kids who are being made into thugs. I would be interested in hearing from anyone about your experiences with serious juvenile offenders.