For Some Youths, Minor Offenses Lead to Major Sentences in Adult Prison
Seventeen-year-old Jaylan Banks punched a guard at the Illinois Youth Center at Harrisburg as they struggled over a bottle of body wash. David Hayes, 18, spat in a guard’s face. And 18-year-old Lavell Staples was accused of shoving a guard as he tried to force his way out of his room.
A few years ago, these incidents would have cost the teenagers their privileges, earned them a stint in solitary confinement or added time to their juvenile sentences. But these young men are among almost a dozen from the Harrisburg facility who now face substantial sentences in adult prison instead, a penalty even state officials call troubling and at odds with a court-ordered push to make the juvenile justice system more rehabilitative.
Staples began serving a four-year term last month. Hayes was sentenced to six years. And Banks received eight years.
Workers at the Harrisburg facility have sought more criminal charges for staff assaults over the past two years than employees at the state’s four other juvenile facilities combined, according to records and interviews. That includes another facility with about the same number of young offenders as Harrisburg but nearly double the number of staff assaults last year.
Since 2016, the Saline County state’s attorney’s office has pursued more than 40 criminal cases against youths at Harrisburg. Thirteen of the cases were dismissed and some are pending, but nearly a dozen young men have been convicted of felony battery charges and received sentences that range from three to eight years in prison, according to court records.
https://www.propublica.org/article/illinois-youths-adult-prison
This is really fucked up...............I remember back in 1969 getting a ticket from cop in Riverside California for spitting on the sidewalk, I asked him why, and he spitting is for older adults, they don't know better and people that have long hair-----------and I just thought of this song;
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