Rauner Unveils His Plan for Juvenile Justice Reform

Gov. Bruce Rauner has unveiled his plan for juvenile justice reform.

The plan to improve the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice aims to reduce how many children are sent into state-run facilities, focus more on individualized case plans, and increase the ratio of staff to youth in the juvenile justice system.

Rauner says this will help solve what he sees as the biggest problem with juvenile offenders: recidivism.

"We're no longer a leader on this issue, other (than) leader in a bad way, in the sense of we're leading it too often in recidivism and the problem," Rauner said. "We now want to commit ourselves to innovative thinking and coming to best practices and new ideas to help our young people."

Those new ideas include new laws. One that has already been introduced in the General Assembly would exclude juveniles who have committed low-level crimes from being put into state custody.

The summary of Rauner's plan doesn't include any estimates on the costs of these reforms.