Even as Illinois Court Permits Detaining Pre-Teens, Across U.S. Fewer Youth Being Held

There has been an effort in many states across the country to lower pretrial incarceration, reduce prison populations, and to draw age lines to exclude entire cohorts of youth from pretrial detention, said Marsha Levick, deputy director and chief counsel for the Pennsylvania-based Juvenile Law Center.

“The effort that was challenged to do something locally, I would say, is entirely consistent with what the sort of platform for reform of the juvenile justice system is looking like across the country,” Levick said of the Cook County ordinance rejected by the divided appellate court.