The High Cost of Ineffective Juvenile Justice Policy

Anyone who has been involved with governmental agencies can probably attest to their generally poor quality of service and high level of ineptitude. Bureaucracies by their nature are designed to remove decision making power from those best able to make the decisions. They attempt to automize decision making, and the results are often predictably absurd. Juvenile justice systems are usually no exception. A recent study of the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) found it to be ineffective and costly according to a December 13th story in the Chicago Tribune.