Eye On Illinois: Time, money not enough to fix certain state challenges

Sometimes government challenges simply boil down to time and money.

Take road repair. Aside from construction constricting traffic flow, a state with limitless financial resources could keep all its bridges and highways in top shape. In reality, leaders must set priorities, which means picking winners and losers. That can get into stickier personal issues, but there are no moral questions with blacktop and concrete.

On the other end of the spectrum are tasks so difficult even a constant supply of blank checks wouldn’t provide complete resolutions.

Consider Saturday’s Associated Press headline: “Children face solitary confinement in cells at Illinois juvenile detention facility, ACLU says.” The story details a recent lawsuit alleging violations of 14th amendment rights at Franklin County Juvenile Detention Center in Benton, such as children being made to ask permission to flush a toilet, being kept from schoolwork for days or weeks and having no access to mental health professionals.

That lawsuit trails reports of hearings on conditions at Cook County’s Juvenile Temporary Detention Center. The Chicago Tribune reported four different reports shed light on questionable treatment, with conditions similar to the Franklin County allegations: repeated, prolonged solitary confinement, falling short of educational and mental health expectations and more.

More money would help, of course, because more and better trained staff are essential. But even if we’re talking about the kind of cash it would take for the earlier dream scenario where roads are in such good perpetual shape there’s not a pothole on the entire highway system, we simply can’t buy our way out of the kind of trauma and brain chemistry that factors into how kids end up in a county holding center waiting for their case to proceed to trial.

The AP interviewed clinical forensic psychologist Apryl Alexander, experienced in working with young people in similar situations.

“We’re supposed to be using the juvenile legal system for rehabilitation and not punishment,” Alexander said. “These are youth who are capable of change – we recognize that developmentally and personally. And so we should be treating them as such.”

It sounds so right on paper and what most parents would want for a child in need: a chance to start over, to be seen as a person and not a crime.

Gov. JB Pritzker just signed House Bill 3140, the End Youth Solitary Confinement Act. It has a carveout allowing its use for “preventing immediate physical harm,” and thinking about scenarios in which that might come into play only begins illuminating the types of decisions even the most compassionate public employees must process while working in these facilities.

Building bridges is a matter of dollars and engineering sense. Repairing broken lives takes time, money and much, much more.

• Scott T. Holland writes about state government issues for Shaw Media. Follow him on Twitter @sth749. He can be reached at sholland@shawmedia.com.