CCJTDC Fact Sheet: Calendar Year 2011

According to data from the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center, in 2011, 5185 youth were admitted to the JTDC. 4655 of the detained youth were male and 530 were female. 83% of the jailed youth were Black while over 14% were Hispanic/Latino. Only 3% were white. Nearly 60% (58.5%) of the youth were ages 15 and 16. Young men were detained for an average of 23 days and young women for an average of 17 days. It costs $501.93 per day to house a youth at JTDC.

We’ve put together a new 2011 Fact Sheet. You can download it HERE (PDF).

It takes us quite a bit of time to track down these numbers and to publish them here. We would very much like to know if/how you use the information that we present on this site. Please take a minute to let us know if you would like us to continue to offer this information to the public (chiyouthjustice@gmail.com). Thanks.

JTDC Admissions Maps: Top Zip Codes

These maps are by Liz Kooy from the Juvenile Justice Initiative

2008 Cook Detention Admissions by Top Zip Codes

2009 Cook Detention Admissions by Top Zip Codes

2011 Cook Detention Admissions by Top Zip Codes

2011 Cook County Detention Admissions Map (PDF)

25 Arrests A Day on CPS Properties…

From Catalyst Chicago:

The student group Voices of Youth in Chicago Education held a City Hall press conference Tuesday to urge CPS to stop having students arrested for misdemeanor offenses, citing its analysis of school arrest data and claiming that the city arrests 25 students, on average, every day.

[...]

VOYCE says police made 2,546 school-based arrests between September 2011 and February 2012, according to data supplied by the civil rights organization Advancement Project. The VOYCE analysis pointed out that the arrestees included three 9-year-olds, eight 10-year-olds, and 17 children who were age 11. Of those arrested, 75 percent (1,915) were African-American, 21 percent (540) were Latino and 3 percent (75) were white.

[...]

The most common misdemeanor charge was battery causing bodily harm, which 366 people were charged with. Another 358 were charged with “physical contact” battery and 313 with “reckless conduct,” criticized by VOYCE members as a catch-all charge for rowdy students.

CPS Arrests-by-age-and-race (PDF, September 2011 to Feb 2012)

CPS Number-of-juvenile-arrests-by-statute (PDF, September 2011 to Feb 2012)

Cost of Detaining Juveniles at JTDC

Cook County Board President, Toni Preckwinkle, has announced a new portal for accessing data about the County.

For example, information is now available comparing the per-day cost to house a juvenile detainee at the JTDC, to those of the Chicago Public Schools, and the Cook County Health & Hospitals System (CCHHS).  You can find the data here.

The current average daily population at JTDC is 305 juveniles.

Average daily costs -

Chicago Public Schools — $74.21

Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center — $501.93

 

 

Chicago Police Department: Some New 2010 Numbers

For those who are interested in a more comprehensive report about juvenile arrests in Chicago (2009-2010), you can review our Arresting Justice report which was released in June 2011. However, today I noticed that the Chicago Police Department has officially released its 2010 Annual Report. It includes some findings that we didn’t have when we released Arresting Justice last year. Namely more details about how CPD handles station adjustments and the exact number of cases that CPS referred to juvenile and criminal courts.

Disposition of Juveniles Processed by the Department, 2009-2010

Source: Chicago Police Department 2010 Annual Report: A Year in Review

As you can see in the table below, many juvenile cases involve school absenteeism (43.4%) and curfew violations (27.1%).

Note: CPD defines youths as people under 17 years old in their annual report. Arresting Justice mostly defined youth as people under 18 years old.

**Status offenses are those if committed by an adult would not be crimes. These include running away, truancy and possession of cigarettes.

	2009	2010	% Change
School Absentees	41,808	37,257	-10.9%
Curfew Violations	23,275	23,275	0.0%
Station Adjustments	7,471	8,773	17.4%
Referred to Agencies	1,826	2,764	51.4%
Referred to family	5,645	6,009	6.4%
Directed to Juvenile Court	12,603	16,138	28.0%
Directed to Criminal Court	104	77	-26.0%
Released w/out charging	117	101	-13.7%
Status Offenses	169	256	51.5%
TOTAL	85,430	85,7760	0.4%

New Report: Rogers Park Juvenile Justice Snapshot 2010

Community members need timely and accessible information about how youth are faring in their neighborhoods.  Such data provides a platform for advocacy and organizing to redress social problems.  Our first Rogers Park Juvenile Justice Data Snapshot was released in November 2010 and mostly included data from 2009.

Today, we are pleased to release our second Rogers Park Juvenile Justice Snapshot which primarily relies on 2010 data to describe the plight of youth in conflict with the law in our community.  We believe this publication will provide our local educators, policymakers, parents, and community members with a deeper understanding of the issues facing Rogers Park youth.

We hope that our community will join us as we mobilize to dramatically decrease the arrest, detention, and general juvenile justice system involvement of our young people.

Thanks go out to John Bentley, Andrew Fernandez, Cait Patterson, and Jennifer Welch for their help with data collection. Special thanks to Chez Rumpf and others at the Center for Urban Research and Learning for their support in creating this report!

Key findings from the report include:

1. According the Chicago Police Department (CPD), there were 708 total arrests of youth 17 and under in 2010 in the 24th district. The 24th district had the seventeenth highest number of juvenile arrests in 2010. In 2010, 71 arrests happened on public school grounds in the 24th district.

2. In Chicago, more youth are arrested for misdemeanors than felony crimes. The same is true in the 24th district where the top three misdemeanor offenses in 2010 were: miscellaneous non-index offenses, drug abuse violations, and simple battery.

3. In 2010, detectives in the 24th district issued 21 formal station adjustments and 171 informal station adjustments for a total of 192 station adjustments.

4. Based on data from the Juvenile Probation and Court Services Department, in 2010, there were 19,726 court referrals in Cook County. In the 24th district, 449 juveniles were referred by law enforcement to the Office of the State’s Attorney in 2010.

5. The clear majority of juveniles (61%) referred to the State’s Attorney from detectives in the 24th district were 16 and 17 years old.

6. Based on data from the Juvenile Probation and Court Services Department, in 2010, 7,375 juvenile petitions filed in the Circuit Court of Cook County. In the 24th district, the Office of the State’s Attorney filed 165 delinquency petitions with the court in 2010.

7. There were 49 juveniles with active formal supervision/probation cases in 2010 and 52 juveniles with informal supervision/probation cases in the 24th district. 78% of those with active formal supervision/probation cases were African-American and 86% were male. The majority of these youth (70) were 15 and 16 years old.

8. Based on Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center (CCJTDC) data, there were 44 admissions from the 60626 zip code and 21 admissions from the 60645 zip code from January through August 2011. This means that Rogers Park youth accounted for an insignificant percentage of total admissions to the detention center over that time period.

9. Data was not specifically available for youth committed to the Department of Juvenile Justice (youth prisons) from the 24th district. We were however able to secure data from the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority (ICJIA) about Rogers Park youth who were admitted to parole in FY11. An ICJIA analysis shows that 11 Rogers Park youth were admitted to parole in FY11.

New Fact Sheet: Chicago’s School-to-Prison Pipeline By Numbers

We receive regular requests from people who are interested in local Chicago information that might describe the school-to-prison pipeline. In response to these requests, we have created a new FACT SHEET that we hope will provide some relevant data.

by Seth Tobocman

Please let us know if you find the fact sheet useful to your work!

New Release: Policing Chicago Public Schools

“Our schools have become almost like satellite police stations.” – Steve Drizin[1]

Project NIA (www.project-nia.org) is releasing a new report titled “Policing Chicago Public Schools: A Gateway to the School-to-Prison Pipeline.” The report relies on data from the Chicago Police Department (CPD) to show (for the first time in seven years) the type of offenses and the demographics (gender, age and race) of the juveniles arrested on CPS properties in calendar year 2010.  We were limited in our findings because CPD reports data by police district rather than by individual school.

The report was written by Mariame Kaba and Frank Edwards.

The key data points in the report are that:

1. Too many young people are still being arrested on CPS properties.  Over 5,500 arrests of young people under 18 years old took place on CPS properties in 2010.  If we include those between 18 and 20 years old, the number increases to over 6,100 arrests.
2. Black youth are disproportionately targeted by these arrests. While they represent 45% of CPS students, black youth account for 74% percent of juvenile school-based arrests.  This mirrors the general trend of disproportionate minority contact within the juvenile legal system. For example, while they comprise only 34% of youth ages 5 to 17 in the city of Chicago, African American youth accounted for 76% of citywide juvenile arrests (youth 17 and under) in 2010.
3. Young men are much more likely to be arrested on CPS properties than are their female counterparts [73% vs. 27%].
4. Male youth under 21 years old are most often arrested on CPS property for simple battery followed by drug abuse violations and disorderly conduct.  Females under 21 are most often arrested for simple battery, disorderly conduct and miscellaneous non-index offenses.  Nearly a third (27%) of school-based arrest offenses on CPS property is simple battery.  This suggests that a significant number of CPS students are probably being arrested for fighting.
5. Certain police districts are more likely to arrest youth in schools than others. In particular, the highest aggregate[2] numbers of juvenile school-based arrests are in the 4^th, 6^th, 8^th, 22^nd, and 5^th police districts.  Together these five districts account for 39% of total juvenile school-based arrests on CPS properties.

In discussions about the school-to-prison pipeline, we need concrete examples of how the process works. As such, it is important to understand the role that police and security staff play in our schools.  Yet reports about police involvement in CPS have unfortunately not been readily available to the public.  There is no easily accessible citywide or statewide data that illustrate how many students are arrested in schools each year.  The last report that was written about the role of police in Chicago Public Schools was published in 2005 by the Advancement Project.  That report, “Education on Lockdown,” found that Chicago Public Schools (CPS) referred over 8,000 students to law enforcement in 2003. Forty percent of these referrals were for simple assault or battery with no serious injuries. Most of these cases were dismissed[3].

You can download the report HERE.

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[1] Quote by Steve Drizin, director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth at Northwestern University http://cwcy.org/resources/396_attach_Taking%20a%20hard%20look%20at%20police%20in%20schools%20by%20Tony%20Mauro%202.9.11.pdf

[2] We wish that we could compare arrest rates per district but we cannot access total numbers of youth in each district in order to do those calculations.  Arrest rates would tell us more about whether certain districts are disproportionately targeting youth for school-based arrests.

[3] Education on Lockdown (2005) – http://www.advancementproject.org/digital-library/publications/education-on-lockdown-the-schoolhouse-to-jailhouse-track

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Policing Chicago Public Schools – A New Report – January 25th

Youth Art from Suspension Stories

Join us on Wednesday January 25th from 10:30 am to Noon for the release of our new report “Policing Chicago Public Schools: A Gateway to the School-to-Prison Pipeline.”

The report written by Mariame Kaba and Frank Edwards relies on data from the Chicago Police Department to show (for the first time in seven years) the type of offenses and the demographics (gender, age and race) of the juveniles arrested on CPS properties in calendar year 2010.

In our discussions about the school-to-prison pipeline, we need concrete examples of how the process works. As such, it is important to understand the role that police and security staff play in our schools. Yet reports about police involvement in CPS have unfortunately not been readily available to the public. There is no easily accessible citywide or statewide data that illustrate how many students are arrested in schools each year. The last report that was written about the role of police in Chicago Public Schools was published in 2005 by the Advancement Project. That report, “Education on Lockdown,” found that Chicago Public Schools (CPS) referred over 8,000 students to law enforcement in 2003. Forty percent of these referrals were for simple assault or battery with no serious injuries. Most of these cases were dismissed.

Our purpose in writing this report is to ensure that the public is informed about the scope and extent of policing in Chicago Public Schools. We hope that this will galvanize educators, parents, students, policymakers and community members to advocate for a dramatic decrease of CPS’s reliance on law enforcement to address school discipline issues. Instead, we would like to see an increase in the use of restorative justice, which is an effective approach, to respond to student misbehavior in our schools.

In light of a push for budget austerity, limited resources should be re-directed away from policing and into affirming programs and opportunities for students. This, we believe, will improve the overall well-being of all stakeholders in the educational system (most especially students). We also call on our city council to improve data transparency by passing an ordinance requiring CPS and CPD to report quarterly on the numbers of students arrested in the district. Having timely and reliable information will support efforts to hold CPS and CPD accountable.

Finally, we believe that student privacy should be protected rather than further eroded. Current reporting practices between schools and law enforcement do not need to be reformed to increase the exchange of student information between these parties.

When: January 25, 2012
Time: 10:30 am to Noon
Where: Northwestern University Law School, Booth Hall (Room 204), 357 East Chicago Ave.
RSVP: projectniaevents@hotmail.com

This event is co-sponsored by the Children and Family Justice Center.

Youth on Parole in Illinois: Maps

These maps created by Michael Stiehl from Northwestern University comprise all youth on parole in Cook County and in the state of Illinois on 3/23/11.  It is a single point in time snapshot of the population but provides a sense of which communities youth who were on paroled come from. The data also provides us with a sense of where they return to when they leave the Department of Juvenile Justice.