More intervention by DCFS is no way to stop juvenile carjackings

ICOY Chief Executive Officer Andrea Durbin published an op-ed in the Sun-Times firmly opposing recent suggestions that DCFS be brought in to investigate parents when their children are involved in crimes. The letter begins:
 
Chicago’s recent string of carjackings has been met with an urge to blame the parents of the involved youth and call for more and earlier intervention by the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. Giving in to this urge, however, absolves us of the need to dig deeper into the social, emotional and historical factors that contribute to harmful behavior and address it in ways that don’t cause additional harm.
 
Assuming that these youths’ parents are not adequately or appropriately supervising their children makes an enormous causal leap that weaponizes poverty and carceral system involvement against marginalized families, particularly Black families. It also assumes that DCFS intervention would have prevented these youths’ harmful behavior in the first place, which research and data contradict.
 
Read the entire letter, written in collaboration with the Shriver Center on Poverty Law, on the Sun-Times site here.