Illinois is not meeting its promise to ensure children and families who receive health care through a new managed care system are receiving the medical, psychiatric, and other health care they need in a timely fashion, according to testimony offered to an Illinois Senate committee today. The Senate Human Services Committee hosted a hearing today to update members on the experience of DCFS youth and families are faring with transition to a managed health care system known as YouthCare.
 
In testimony offered by the ACLU of Illinois, which has represented children in the care of DCFS through the B.H. litigation for nearly twenty years, the organization noted that while problems with access to health care for DCFS wards did not begin with the transition to YouthCare, the managed care system has not solved longstanding problems. 
 
“Many of Illinois’ foster children simply are not receiving the care that they need at the time when they need it,” Heidi Dalenberg, Director of the Institutional Reform Project, ACLU of Illinois. “That was true before the rollout of the YouthCare plan. It remains true today.”
 
The ACLU pointed out that some flaws in the YouthCare system and network is creating real harm for children in DCFS care. Ms. Dalenberg related the story of one teen taken to a local emergency room in the midst of a mental health crisis, in true distress. Although all the medical professionals at the hospital agreed that the teen needed to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital, DCFS and YouthCare could not find a hospital for the teen to enter. After ten days, waiting in the emergency room, the youth was determined to be ready to be released – but never was provided the necessary psychiatric care. 
 
“It would be sad if this were the only instance of this harm to a teen,” added Dalenberg. “It is not. We know that in the month of September alone, at least ten other foster children who experienced similar circumstances– being stuck at an emergency room because a placement was not found for them. YouthCare needs to address this today.” 
 
The ACLU also shared results of a project it conducted in recent weeks to test the experience of families with finding care under YouthCare by calling physician offices in Belleville, Peoria and suburban Harvey. The ACLU tests revealed that a family calling a provider’s office for the first time would be able to secure an appointment for a child to see a physician in just 3 out of 10 calls during that first call. 
 
Among other reasons that appointments were not available:

• Phone numbers were out of service;
• Doctor offices had closed;
• Offices indicated that they had never heard of YouthCare;
• Offices said they would not accept YouthCare (in error);
• Offices said that they would not schedule new patients until after the COVID pandemic was ended; and,
• Offices said they needed complete medical records – not in possession of the parents – before scheduling an appointment.

“The network cannot serve children if physicians can’t or won’t respond to the needs of these families. YouthCare and DCFS needs to fix this soon – so that no family gets unnecessarily refused,” said Dalenberg.

The story of mass incarceration in Illinois is a familiar one. Our state’s experience has mirrored the national trend of skyrocketing incarceration rates which took flight in the 1970’s and peaked fewer than 10 years ago, driven by punitive policies enacted in legislatures and fueled by “tough on crime” political rhetoric.

Although these harsh penalties often were presented as appropriate punishment for those who threaten our neighborhood’s safety and security, the reality is that they simply created overly-long sentences even for non-violent offenses. As an example, a person who steals items from a neighbor’s unoccupied garage faces a mandatory prison sentence of 4-15 years in Illinois. Even if it is a first offense, probation is not an option. And a judge passing this sentence is not able to consider any other factors, including what circumstances might have led to the criminal activity.

So, like other states, Illinois has seen an explosion in those behind bars. In 1980, Illinois’ prison population was 11,768. Today, it stands at more than 30,000, after reaching a historic peak of nearly 50,000 in 2013.Across the country, the United States incarcerates its own people at a much higher rate than any other country in the world: more than 2 million people are incarcerated nationwide, most of them in State prisons and local jails.

The biggest drivers of Illinois’ prison population have been sentencing policies that significantly increased the length of prison sentences: the unsuccessful War on Drugs, mandatory minimums, three strikes, and truth in sentencing. While the ostensible reason for these changes was to reduce crime, in fact overall rates of violent and property crime have been declining for decades even as more punitive sentencing policies took hold.

The reality is that increasing the severity of sentences does little to deter or reduce crime, but the overuse of incarceration has actually harmed public safety in communities where its impact is concentrated, especially within communities of color. These harmful policies drain these communities of economic resources, break up families, and contribute to social conditions that produce intergenerational cycles of over-policing, trauma, and incarceration.

Illinois’ Black and Latinx communities have borne the brunt of these misguided laws. While Black Illinoisans make up 14.5% of the State’s population, the prison population is 54.8% Black. Black people are imprisoned at 8.8 times the rate of whites—one of the worst disparities of any state. And the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed that our overuse of prisons and jails also jeopardizes public health and deepens existing social inequities.

Along the path to our current predicament, there have been moments of self-reflection by Illinois policymakers. When the state’s incarcerated population was exploding, there were no fewer than four different task forces and commissions tasked with recommending reforms to address failures in our criminal legal system. As recently as 2015, a bipartisan Commission was appointed by former Governor Rauner to formulate policies that would reduce Illinois’ prison population and create a less punitive and more rehabilitative criminal legal system.

Like the expert panels that preceded it, the Commission’s work led to policy recommendations which - had they actually been implemented - would have resulted in more families staying together, fewer people returning to communities with criminal histories weighing them down, and more investment in communities. But, like the plans put forth under prior Governors, few of the Commission’s recommendations were ever implemented.

Today, there are still far too many people in Illinois prisons who could be safely released, and many who never should have been sent there in the first place. The Illinois Department of Corrections budget alone is $1.5 billion a year, far too much for people in our state to support an unjust system that produces little public safety benefit.    

ACLU polling shows that most Illinois voters support lawmakers committed to reducing incarceration, and support taking significant steps to reform sentencing in Illinois’ criminal legal system. These findings belie the widely held view that the public would be opposed to such changes in sentencing for fear of a political attack labeling an officeholder as “soft on crime.”

In this moment, we have a unique opportunity. The Illinois prison population is at its lowest level in 20 years as a result of declining arrests for drug and property crime, as well as temporary holds on transfers from county jails to state prisons during the pandemic. After decades of making policy based on anecdotes and political mailers, lawmakers have finally begun to demand and rely upon data around our use of prisons and jails. At the same time, people across the country are finally awakening to the ugly reality that racism is deeply ingrained in many of our institutions, especially in policing and the criminal legal system, and demanding change.

Governor Pritzker recently unveiled seven “principles to build a more equitable criminal justice system,” including modernizing sentencing laws for drug and property crimes and reducing the length of excessive prison stays. “[W]e spend billions of dollars a year keeping too many people in an overcrowded prison system that has proven itself too expensive, too punitive and wholly ineffective at keeping Illinois families safe,” said the Governor. “As we move forward with the General Assembly to pass comprehensive criminal justice reform, it is my hope that the nation will look to Illinois as a leader in true equity and justice for generations to come."

Illinois must not turn back. The time has come for real sentencing reform, and we must commit to these four essential elements to have real impact:

• Reducing minimum sentences and eliminating mandatory minimums.
• Reclassifying minor drug and property offenses.
• Reducing the length of commitments to the Department of Corrections.
• Applying reforms retroactively to currently incarcerated people.

The below statement can be attributed to Rachel Murphy, Police Practices Project Staff Attorney, ACLU of Illinois: 

"It is unacceptable that, yet again, the Chicago Police Department ignored the voice of community members in the process of bringing real change to the City’s broken policing system. Excessive use of force by police has killed and harmed people across the City and cost millions of dollars to taxpayers over many years. After years of abuse, CPD cannot be trusted to fix this policy on its own.

As Mayor Lightfoot and Superintendent Brown both stated, the purpose of the Use of Force Community Working Group was to bring community members to the table to partner with CPD in revising and improving use of force policies. We were proud to serve with many members from neighborhoods and organizations across Chicago, whose range of lived experience and professional expertise resulted in a comprehensive set of recommendations to dramatically reform when and how CPD officers can use force.  

But instead of drawing on the Working Group’s knowledge and perspectives to reflect the way forward, CPD ignored and dismissed the input of the group. CPD adopted a few symbolic changes to language, but rejected dozens of substantive recommendations related to de-escalating incidents, limiting the situations in which force can be used, respecting the dignity of those harmed by the police, and improving reporting and investigation processes. 

The Mayor and the Superintendent made clear when the Working Group was established that they welcomed input. Not even hearing that input further destroys public trust and sets back police reform in our city."