Reply to Understanding Juvenile Carjacking: A Panel Discussion Moderated by Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen

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[quote=Anonymous]Yes, this was something mentioned in one of the two recent articles on youth car jacking (there was one in Hill Rag and one in East of the River Magazine, I can't remember which but I'll try to post both in a minute -- they are worth reading).

A lot of the obstacles to intervention are legal challenges due to a system that does not make sense together. Like we know kids who have a large number of unexcused school absences are both more likely to commit crimes AND more likely to victims of crimes (including child abuse and neglect). But CPS is not actually allowed to pull a student's attendance record without a court order, which means as a practical matter, CPS can rarely pull in that piece of the puzzle.

Like these are kids who have often already been abandoned by their families by the time they enter the system. But then the system fails them just as badly, through incompetence and tripping over their own feet.

I do think Allen and other Council Members should have their feet held to the fire on this, because while they advocate for leniency on youth offenders, they do nothing to create the support services that would provide an alternative path to incarceration. And then of course they don't allocate money to detention facilities anyway, so those are always full and often in poor condition -- you cannot detain a juvenile offender if there are no beds available in a juvenile facility.

I am SO tired of the argument that Allen and others on the council have no power over any of this. Of course they do! They can propose and pass legislation, they can hold hearings and investigate problems, they can work with the mayor (who yes, has a lot of culpability here as well) to actually solve this problem.

I'm so tired of it. These are not serious people.

Oh, and just so more people can yell at me: school closures are partially at fault here too, that's a major reason we have so many kids in the city who, left to their own devices for over a year during an extremely high stress time, developed the criminal habits we are now seeing come to fruition. We should have opened schools about 8 months before we did because yes Covid sucks but turns out it's not as bad for kids or communities as just providing them with no structure or accountability for key years of their adolescence.[/quote]

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