Lashawn Jenkins is a success story … kind of. The young Chicago woman spent months in jail when she shouldn't have. She was held there because the Department of Children and Family Services didn't have anywhere else to put her. It's something Illinois Public Radio member station WBEZ has been reporting on.
But Lashawn is in a good place now. And her success could shine some light on efforts to get kids out of jail and into permanent homes. Illinois Public Radio’s Patrick Smith has more.
Lashawn is 18, and she’s been a ward of the state since she was born. She bounced from foster home to foster home before being arrested in 2012 for assault and battery for a brawl at school.
The judge gave her probation, which means she should have gone home….But the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services couldn’t find a place for her.
So the agency housed her in the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center…
LASHAWN: "They can’t find a foster home because foster parents don’t want older kids, especially older kids that have been locked up before."
Lashawn got in trouble. It wasn’t good. But it was her first - and she says last - arrest, and a judge ruled that she should get a chance to move on and make up for it out in the world.
But instead she spent nine months unnecessarily locked up.
LASHAWN: "I would say like Christmas, and Thanksgiving and stuff like that because I wasn’t out with my family. So those were like my worst days on holidays."
Earlier this year WBEZ reported on the hundreds of Cook County kids who languish behind bars AFTER a judge orders their release.
And the judges whose courtrooms sit one floor below the juvenile jail took notice..
TOOMIN: "They were not happy..."
Judge Michael Toomin presides over the Cook County juvenile court.
TOOMIN: "Some of the judges came to the point where they were about to hold a DCFS … worker in contempt of court for not getting the child out of the detention center.
Faced with the judges’ simmering anger, DCFS came up with a plan.
A lot of it sounds like common sense. The first step is a meeting with the kid who needs a place to live and people who might be able to help.
It’s based on a program that helped Lashawn, although to be clear she was out long before these changes were adopted by the department.
But the group that helped her find a permanent home - Lutheran Child and Family Services - is now helping the state
LASHAWN: "LCFS asked if I have a place to go and I said my cousin so i came here."
Lashawn lives with her cousin Eddie Meeks in Grand Crossing on the South Side. And she says it’s the best place she’s ever lived, even though she’s West Side born and raised…
LASHAWN: "Ain’t nothing out here to do. Like you gotta go far, like the malls you gotta go far too, come on now."
MEEKS: "OK let me ask you this, where is the mall on the West Side."
LASHAWN: "Madison"
MEEKS: "That is not a mall it’s a ghetto strip"
Lashawn has lived in her cousin’s tidy second floor apartment for about a year, and she is thriving...
LASHAWN: "I graduated high school, never thought I would graduate high school and now I’m in college."
Kids like Lashawn are still are being housed in the jail, but they’re spending less time there now.
The average wait time is 30 days, down from 70 earlier this year.
But a lot of that drop is due to something less than ideal.
Kids are being housed in shelters.
BOYER: "I mean I think for the most part I would rather see a kid in an emergency shelter than in jail."
Bruce Boyer runs Loyola’s ChildLaw Clinic.
BOYER: "Structurally it’s the same problem that we have with kids that are stuck in emergency shelters and need to be out."
Boyer says the D-C-F-S shelters are NOT the kind of stable homes that kids like Lashawn need. Especially because kids who are both state wards AND have gotten in legal trouble are often the ones who need the most help.
BOYER: "I hope we’re making some headway, but it certainly doesn’t mean we can stop paying attention to the importance of trying to recruit foster parents and do a better job of generating resources for all the kids that get stuck in any form of institutional care for longer than they need to."
The Department of Children and Family Services says their goal is always to get kids out of temporary housing like the jail and shelters. Cook County judges like Michael Toomin are watching to see if the department makes good on its promises.