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Cook County, Illinois

Cook County, Illinois, founded the first juvenile court in the United States in 1899. Today, the juvenile court has become a model for dealing with various social and psychological problems besetting youths in the United States.

History: The First Juvenile Court

The first juvenile court was established in Illinois largely due to the collaborative efforts of the Chicago Women's Club, the Chicago Bar Association, and the Illinois State Conference of Charities. The club convinced the Chicago Bar Association to draft a juvenile court bill, which was subsequently passed by the Illinois House. The bill was the 1899 Illinois Juvenile Court Act, which suggested that the state should care for dependent and/or neglected children who had been abandoned or lacked proper parental care, support, or guardianship. The early juvenile court functioned as an administrative agency of the circuit or district courts, and it was mandated as such by legislative action. By 1945, almost all states had developed similar juvenile court systems.

The Illinois Juvenile Court Act contained a number of important features. For the first time it defined a delinquent as under the age of 16. It also mandated that children must be kept separate from adult institutions, while prohibiting altogether the detention of children under age 12 in jail or police custody. It established special, informal procedural rules in juvenile court by employing a social work approach rather than a law enforcement or prosecutorial one in which probation officers handled the intake phase. The act also introduced private hearings in limited courts of record, where notes might be taken by the judges to reflect judicial actions. It granted original jurisdiction and individualized justice (based on each child's needs) in all cases concerning people under the age of 16. In this manner, the law divested the adult courts of all jurisdiction over children and reflected the concept of parens patriae (the duty of the state to act as the children's parents) as a functional approach.

The juvenile court as conceived in Cook County emphasized rehabilitation instead of punishment. In contrast to earlier practices, it relied on probation officers in diagnosis and processing for adjudicatory hearings instead of criminal prosecutors. In effect, the courts hoped to redeem all salvageable children while leaving only those not amenable to correction to be waived to adult criminal court processing.

The Situation Today

Today, Cook County, Illinois, is still at the forefront in juvenile corrections. The historical Chicago Area Project, instituted in the early 1930s and based on social disorganization theory and the ecological approach that was developed by researchers at the University of Chicago, is still a model. As a demonstration program, the project was designed to discover a procedure for the treatment of delinquents and the prevention of delinquency in those Chicago neighborhoods that sent disproportionately large numbers of boys to the Cook County Juvenile Court. The project currently operates out of the Division of the Illinois Department of Corrections, and through research, has contributed immensely to the field of American criminology and corrections.

The Chicago Area Project has empowered many neighborhoods through involving community volunteers, community organizations, local churches, and other institutions in the process of program development and implementation. In cooperation with neighborhood residents, the project has affected social and environmental transformations by providing facilities, professional guidance, and child welfare programs.

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