The Chicago Tribune published an article about the recently released expert reports examining conditions in detention facilities operated by the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice. The reports are a result of an agreement reached in the ACLU of Illinois lawsuit R.J. v. Bishop, and are the foundation for assessing improvements that can be made so that youth are no longer detained in facilities with substandard conditions.

Their findings, part of a federal class-action lawsuit brought last year by the ACLU of Illinois, set the stage for negotiations between ACLU attorneys and the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice on a plan to fix the shortcomings.

The experts found that there were too few mental health and security staff in the state's prisons for juveniles, that some youths were being confined for 22 hours a day and that the education programs were "grossly inadequate." In addition, the entire juvenile justice department doesn't have a single psychiatrist specializing in children or adolescents on staff, they said.

Read the article.

WBEZ has an in-depth piece on stop-and-frisk, a practice used by police departments that has been ruled unconstitutional in New York City, and has just recently come under scrutiny in Chicago. A stop-and-frisk is a random encounter initiated by a police officer that escalates to a pat down for weapons. The ruling in the New York City case found that the NYPD's stop-and-frisk program disproportionately targeted minorities.  The process of investigating stop-and-frisk practices in Chicago has proven to be fraught with obstacles. In 2011, the ACLU of Illinois filed a FOIA to look at the nature and number of stop-and-frisks performed by the Chicago Police Department. Unfortunately, stop-and-frisk encounters are not being recorded in the system implemented by the CPD, and the documentation gathered as a result of the FOIA request was subject to extensive redaction.

The ACLU wants the police to do better documentation, which they say would allow for better review.
“This is the most powerful tool the police department has and it is not reviewed by another branch of government,” Grossman said.

Read the entire article.