A report from the John Howard Association of Illinois (JHA), a non-partisan prison watchdog group, states that the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice is making strides toward research-driven reforms, but that significant progress is yet to be made, particularly in regard to mental health services. In Moving Beyond Transition, supported by MacArthur, JHA offers 10 findings and recommendations based on its monitoring of the department in 2012-2013. JHA reports that the state’s youth prisons now hold fewer than 900 juvenile offenders, reduced from 1,500 when the department was created in 2006. However, the report states that the system struggles to provide adequate mental health treatment and reports a disproportionate number of minority youth receiving no mental health treatment.
