Describing ongoing conditions at the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center as "unacceptable and dangerous," Northwestern University Law Professor Thomas F. Geraghty, who serves as the court-appointed "Next Friend" representing the interests of the youths housed at the facility, today asked the Court to appoint a Receiver with complete, independent authority to oversee and implement needed reform to the troubled facility. The request comes more than four years after the County signed on to a court-approved Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) and one year after the County promised to make long-delayed changes under an Agreed Supplemental Order (ASO) mandating an expedited timeline for reforms.

Despite consenting to both agreements - and promising the Court they would abide by all the provisions of both documents - a court-appointed Compliance Administrator recently reported that the County's progress in bringing reforms to the facility had been "limited," and that the County likely could not comply with the MOA or the ASO. Given this reality, Professor Geraghty, and his counsel at the ACLU of Illinois and Kirkland & Ellis LLP, told the Court that a receiver is the only option available to protect the health and safety of children detained at the facility.

"The children at the JTDC have waited many years for reform and cannot wait another day," said Professor Geraghty, director of the Bluhm Legal Clinic at the Northwestern University School of Law. "The court should act with dispatch to appoint and empower a receiver to manage the facility and implement reforms - reforms that will ensure that abusive staff members are kept away from children or dismissed, that a comprehensive, effective system exists to track the physical and mental health care needs of children at the facility, that these children have shoes so that they can attend school, and other very basic services."

"The chaotic conditions at the JTDC are hurting children - they must change," added Geraghty.

As evidence of problems at JTDC that remain unresolved at the hands of the County, Geraghty pointed to:

• The critical lack of leadership at the facility -- currently the top leadership at the facility consists of an Acting Superintendent, a part-time individual on loan from the Department of Public Health and an assistant who is the sister of a County Commissioner and has no experience operating a juvenile detention center;
• On-going abuse of juveniles and lack of oversight of staff previously found to have abused children - three youth counselors were rehired who previously had been terminated for abusing young people, others who have been accused of abuse have not received training and oversight promised in the MIP, and the County still has not filled an internal position to investigate allegations of abuse;


• Lack of mental health care services - staffing in the medical and mental health departments do not meet minimum standards despite that fact that a high percentage of children at JTDC face serious mental health issues;


• The lack of basic services for children - the County still has failed to provide children at the detention center with the bare necessities, including adequate clean clothes and shoes required to attend school; and


• Lack of any management comprehensive management and tracking system - the County has failed to develop a meaningful, effective management system to track critical events affecting the children and staff in the facility.

“In June, it will be eight years that we have waited for County officials to meet the basic, human needs of our clients. Unfortunately, they have proven unable to carry out even the most basic reforms," said Colby Anne Kingsbury, a partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP.

Today's action is the latest development in a lawsuit originally filed in 1999. Three years later, the County agreed to develop and implement a plan to improve conditions at the facility. By 2005, little improvement could be seen, according to experts who investigated the situation inside the facility. In October 2005, for example, published reports described concerns about the continued use physical restraints on juveniles by adult staff, including the use of a "chokehold" that the children described as "putting someone to sleep." The ACLU of Illinois also expressed concern about the overuse of room confinement, often resulting in children being isolated in their rooms for up to 36 hours or longer in violation of the MOA and state regulations.

Responding to these and other grave concerns, the ACLU of Illinois and Kirkland & Ellis LLP returned to court and asked Judge John A. Nordberg to appoint a panel of experts to develop a modified implementation plan and a Compliance Administrator with expertise in juvenile correctional planning and administration to help the County to implement it. Judge Nordberg asked the parties to mediate the defendants' noncompliance, which resulted in a supplemental court order that mandated a new reform plan and gave the County a short timeline in which to implement the reforms.

In a letter dated May 17, 2007, Compliance Administrator Brenda Welch reported that with four months of the six-month implementation period having elapsed, the County had made "little progress" in bringing reforms to the JTDC.

The Illinois legislature recently approved a proposal to shift the power to appoint the superintendent of the JTDC from the President of the Cook County Board to the Chief Judge of the Circuit Court of Cook County. The legislation, however, leaves the ultimate authority over all purchasing and budgetary decisions with the Cook County Board. The ACLU supported that legislation but said today that the pending shift did not obviate the need for a Receiver.

"Our clients cannot wait for the Governor to sign this bill and for another six months to pass before limited administrative functions at the facility are passed to the local courts," added Benjamin S. Wolf, Associate Legal Director of the ACLU of Illinois. "The delay must stop - the time for real reform is now."