CWLA Responds to Release of "Drugs and Disparity: The Racial Impact of Illinois' Practice of Transferring Young Drug Offenders to Adult Court"

The Juvenile Justice Division of The Child Welfare League of America promotes and advocates for the individualized review and response of each case entering the justice system. Shay Bilchik, Executive Director of CWLA and former Administrator of the U.S. Justice Department's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, said "This report emphasizes that the utilization of laws that try to fit every youth into the juvenile or adult justice systems based solely on a formula of offense plus age, cannot meet the needs of young offenders or the public. States and communities must collaborate in an effort to better understand racial disparities, where they exist and implement the necessary reforms."

The new report, released on April 25, 2001, was commissioned by the Building Blocks for Youth Initiative, a national effort to promote a fair and effective youth justice system, and prepared by the Justice Policy Institute. The report analyzes data from various state criminal justice agencies in Illinois and national prison databases to conclude that Illinois' practice of automatically sending 15 and 16-year old youth charged with drug crimes to adult court has produced one of the most racially disparate outcomes in the nation. Of the 259 youth automatically transferred to adult court from Cook County last year, only one was White. 99% of Cook County youth tried as adults are African-American or Latino.

Other significant report findings include:

• Over one-third of the juvenile drug transfer cases (34%) had no previous referral to the juvenile court and over half had never received juvenile court services.
• Between 1986 and 1996, the number of White youth entering Illinois prisons increased by half while the number of African-American youth entering prisons more than tripled.