Report calls for Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center to be shut down, replaced with smaller facilities
CHICAGO (CBS) -- A scathing new report calls for a Cook County juvenile detention center to be permanently shut down and replaced with smaller community-based facilities. The focus, it says, should be on rehabilitation, not severe treatment.
The report is from a blue ribbon committee convened last year by Cook County's Chief Judge Timothy Evans. It calls the "Temporary Juvenile Detention Center" isolating and deprivational. Among other things, it states most of the children there spend at least 13 hours a day locked in small cells, left to sleep from 7 p.m. until 7 a.m. It also states that jail staff often discipline the youths by confining them to their cells for several additional hours.
Judge Evans' office said he is forming another committee to implement changes but did not give specifics.
The center is where juveniles charged with a crime await trial.