Lake County Gazette

State Rep. Kevin Schmidt has criticized the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) following a report that accuses the agency of “willfully and wrongly” leaving dozens of children locked away in juvenile jails.

A recently filed federal lawsuit accuses the government agency of allowing innocent children to be kept behind bars, sometimes for weeks at a time and without proper care, even after a judge had ordered at least of some of them to be released into the care of the their guardian; a Jan. 19 WLS news report said.

"I can't imagine how traumatizing being in jail would be for a kid," Schmidt told the Lake County Gazette in a recent interview. "What is happening here is unacceptable. These kids deserve better."

Teenager Janiah Caine is one of eight defendants named in the federal civil rights lawsuit after being forced to spend months wrongfully incarcerated in a juvenile jail over three separate occasions.

"You don't feel safe," Caine told WLS. "The staff don't make you feel safe either. They're not respectful to you. They treat you like nothing."

Statistics recently made public by the Office of the Cook County Public Guardian showed that as recently as in 2021 there were 84 instances of children left locked up for prolonged periods of time, WLS said. At least seven of those children remain in custody to this day.

"The status quo is not working," Schmidt told the Gazette. "We need some transparency, and we need more oversight of the Department. Ignoring the problems in the Department are not going to make them go away. We need to hold some legislative hearings and get to the bottom of what the problems are and work on solving them.

"There are no easy answers to the challenges facing DCFS and there does not seem to be any desire on the part of the majority party in the House and the Senate and within the Governor's office to offer anything close to a real solution. All they have to offer are excuses.

"It is not clear why there is nothing but silence on what is happening in DCFS. What I do know is kids are being harmed under his watch. Silence is not really an option. We need to protect these kids."