Illinois state Rep. Chris Miller (R-Robinson) | State Representative Chris Miller/Facebook
Illinois state Rep. Chris Miller (R-Robinson) | State Representative Chris Miller/Facebook
State Rep. Chris Miller (R-Robinson) has condemned 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.
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.
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