In August, an Illinois state audited pointed to troubling conditions in juvenile detention centers. But little has changed, reports ProPublica, in a piece with Capitol News Illinois that describes all the ways in which the detention centers have defied reform, because no agency has the strength of oversight to change them, the piece contends.
The August audit had called the Franklin County Juvenile Detention Center in rural Benton a “facility in crisis” because it routinely kept kids locked up for upwards of 24 hours at a time, a “significant violation” of state standards. It had failed to offer them much in the way of mental health or educational services, the audit said. An overwhelmed and undertrained staff routinely called on the sheriff’s department to help keep the youth in line, even for seemingly minor behavioral disruptions.