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Juveniles Spend Weekends Locked-Up

Flickr Creative Commons/Steven Depolo

A federal judge says it is quote “mind boggling” that Cook County forces juveniles to wait more than 48 hours locked up over the weekend before they get a hearing. The parents of four teenagers are suing the county for keeping their kids in jail for more than two days without seeing a judge. 

They say the practice violates the constitution. In the first hearing in the case today, federal judge Thomas Durkin noted that adults get bond hearings every day of the week, including weekends and holidays. He called it a “glaring inconsistency,” “counter-intuitive” and “a flaw in the system,” that there aren’t hearings for kids on those days too.