Closing youth correctional facilities sets stage for necessary reform in Illinois
The closure of certain juvenile-justice facilities in Illinois could be a positive development for public safety, especially if some of the savings are used to improve community-based services.
Gov. Bruce Rauner announced on June 2 that the Department of Juvenile Justice, or DJJ, will begin identifying “one or two juvenile correctional facilities” to close as part of a larger plan to help the state shrink a nearly $4 billion budgetary shortfall.
News reports indicated the governor may choose the Illinois Youth Center at St. Charles, which currently holds 328 youth offenders, and the Illinois Youth Center at Warrenville, an all-female corrections unit with 50 occupants. The DJJ currently has bed space for 1,200 people, but less than 700 of those spaces are occupied today. How soon these closures would occur is unclear: a spokesperson for the DJJ said the department “will need to conduct a comprehensive review of all facilities before commenting on closure timelines.”
Are these closures good for Illinois? Given there’s no overcrowding problem in the state’s juvenile justice system, unlike adult facilities, closing the facilities may make sense.
Illinois stands to save millions by closing these facilities. The DJJ has had an annual budget of over $130 million in recent years. The Warrenville youth center costs $208,000 per inmate and the St. Charles facility costs $190,000 per inmate. The state’s smallest youth facility, a minimum-security unit at Pere Marquette, holds 35 people and costs $136,000 per inmate.
Despite all that spending, reports by the nonpartisan John Howard Association found that conditions in these facilities were less than ideal. St. Charles struggled to provide adequate teaching staff to meet the education requirements of its occupants, and had insufficient staff to provide effective mental-health support for residents. Warrenville had a better assessment, but the report still concluded that youths “would be better off in community-based treatment settings, rather than secure confinement facilities.”
The DJJ also appears to believe that prisons are not the best place for juvenile offenders. According to its 2015 operating plan, the state created the department because of “a growing recognition that a traditional prison-based system does not work well for youth,” and that youth prisons often do a “poor job” of providing mental-health, substance-abuse and educational services. It goes on to note that since many youth leave incarceration “posing a greater threat to the public than when they entered,” it’s not in the public’s interest to view incarceration as a solution to all of the state’s crime problems. It’s just one among several tools, and should be limited to cases where there are no viable alternatives.
In addition to high costs, the DJJ’s incarceration system had a recidivism rate of 48 percent in 2014. That means nearly 5 out of 10 people who leave the system end up reincarcerated within three years. Improving access to educational options or vocational programs that prepare youth offenders for work could help them keep away from crime and get their lives on the right track.
In sum, the closures may be helpful to address the current budget gap, but they are only the beginning of what the state needs to bring costs under control while effectively addressing the problem of juvenile crime. Over the long run, evidence-based policies that help safely reduce the prison population will also be essential.