Suspects Held Without bail in Wake of Hadiya Pendleton Funeral, Michelle Obama Visit

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By Safiya Merchant and Eric Ferkenhoff

Three days after Michelle Obama flew to Chicago for the funeral of 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton, the slain honor student who performed at last month’s presidential inauguration, a judge ordered two men to be held without bail on first-degree murder charges amid the swirl of politics set off by her death. In laying out the charges, prosecutors detailed how Hadiya, a majorette with her King College Prep high school band, got caught up as the unintended target of a gang retaliatory shooting – allegedly by suspects Michael Ward, 18, and Kenneth Williams, 20. The men also face charges of attempted murder and various weapons offenses. During a Monday evening news conference to announce the arrests, police brass and some politicians seized on the weapons charges as evidence that Chicago, the state of Illinois and the nation need to toughen the very gun laws for which at least one of the suspects had previously served time. (Had sentences for weapons offenses here and elsewhere been more strict, this reasoning goes, Hadiya might not have been slain as the shooter would still be locked up.)

Whatever the case, there is little denying that Hadiya’s death is the subject of wide debate even as it hit so personally for those who knew her.

The Battle Lines Over Guns Often Drawn by Funding

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Story produced by the Chicago Bureau. President Barack Obama delivered his second inaugural address Monday, promising to focus on climate control and pursue greater equality for gay Americans. Those issues, however, are just the beginning of the challenges he must face as he starts his second term. Fixing a broken global economy still ranks first in the minds of many Americans, along with ending our conflicts abroad. On the domestic front there’s no getting around the debate over gun control, with both sides digging in for a fight in Congress – spurred on by a mounting body count that now includes a family in New Mexico, shot dead by a 15-year-old boy.

Looking Back and Casting Forward: An Emerging Shift for Juvenile Justice in America

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This story produced by the Chicago Bureau. The close of 2012 focused so narrowly on terrible events and startling numbers - the Newtown massacre, for example, or Chicago’s sharp rise in homicides - some major criminal justice developments were nearly squeezed out of the national conversation. Take the statements made just over a week ago by Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, who vowed to take on the tricky issue of the skewed racial picture in the county’s corrections and justice system, including within the juvenile justice system. Speaking to a group of reporters, the news – including a statement that she will “work with the actors in the public safety arena” to lessen the overall corrections population and push alternatives to locking up non-violent offenders – the story got little more than a day’s play on the airwaves and in other media. Always outspoken, the board president served many years as an alderman fighting for various social justice causes, including race and drug issues (she at one point challenged the validity of any national “war on drugs”).

Solitary for Youth: The Fight in Illinois

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CHICAGO -- Even as national organizations rallied this week to end solitary confinement for incarcerated juveniles across the country, the local branch of American Civil Liberties Union is working with prison officials and the federal court to focus on the issue here. The goal: settle a lawsuit on behalf of 2,217 incarcerated youth with the Illinois Department of Juvenile Corrections over the system’s inadequate services and often-hostile environment. A preliminary agreement calls for curbing the growing practice of solitary confinement in youth centers, which activists say constitutes “torture,” given its potential for causing long-lasting psychological harm. The proposed settlement, which is due for a fairness hearing in federal court in Chicago on December 6, would be the latest victory in a larger movement to end the punitive isolation of youth in custody. In June, Congress held its first hearing on the issue of solitary confinement within U.S. prisons, where roughly 80,000 inmates are in “restricted housing“ at any given time nationwide, according to a 2005 census of adult inmates by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Juvenile Offenders in Limbo under Outdated State Laws

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More than two years after U.S. Supreme Court decisions started throwing out mandatory death and life sentences for minors, judges in Washington, Illinois and dozens of other states still lack guidance on what to do with juveniles past and present convicted of murder and some other serious felonies. “Courts are uncomfortable in trying to figure out what ‘life’ means in terms of years,” said Kimberly Ambrose, senior law lecturer at the University of Washington School of Law. She represented Guadalupe Solis-Diaz at the state’s Court of Appeals, arguing against a 92-year sentence he’s serving for six counts of first-degree assault and other charges for his role in a drive-by shooting. The then 16-year-old Solis-Diaz fired into a crowd in Centralia, Wash., in 2007, though did not injure his target or anyone else. It’s not clear in Washington if those 92 years are equivalent to what the U.S. Supreme Court calls “life” sentences.

A Day Off Or A Day To Make A Point? Student and Teacher Voices At Chicago Strike

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As Chicago’s teacher strike heads into its fourth day, with more than 350,000 students out of school, parents scrambling to find alternatives and presidential election pressures weighing on both sides, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and union leaders are under great pressure to find a solution. Much movement in the talks was cited late Wednesday by both sides – with some hope of classes resuming Friday. But for Thursday, it was expected to be another missed school day filled with passion and protest as teachers and the administration press their cases to a public eager to see the strike end and the children back in their seats. Both sides claim to be acting in the students’ best interests, but sometimes the young voices of CPS students are left out of the public debate. We spoke with three students from Northside College Prep who joined their teachers at the CPS strike and express support for the CTU’s cause, saying this strike is “all about us (students) in the first place.”

 

 

Meanwhile, at Curie High School, a mix of teacher and student voices hoping to be heard on class size, the need for more counselors and respect for the 29,000 CTU workers who have walked out and are striking Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his schools team as a nation looks on – perhaps to see what direction school reform is headed.

Sites, Sounds from the Chicago Teachers’ Strike

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By Audrey Cheng and Jennifer Starrs

Emotions and rhertoric have been running high as CTU teachers and paraprofessionals formed picket lines, beginning early Monday and continuing Wednesday with no quick end in sight for the first schools strike since 1987. Teachers are pushing for a contract, better working conditions and more social workers in schools, amomg other issues – while administration officials are pressing for big curricular and testing changes, including a greater emphasis on programs like charter schools.  

Audrey Cheng and Jennifer Starrs are reporters for The Chicago Bureau. 

Widespread Worry in Chicago About Safety of Children as Strike Continues

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Following another Chicago summer during which many youth were slain in gang or drug disputes, there was concern on both sides of the Chicago teachers’ strike this week about the safety of the children whose school doors have been shut during negotiations over a new contract. There was little patience and much anger leading up to, and following, the breakdown of talks late Sunday, which picked up again with the new week but so far have failed to stem the first strike here since 1987. That’s a quarter century of relative labor peace in a city where walkouts and the delay of the school year were regular. While remembering those union battles might stretch the memory of many Chicagoans, there's little need to stretch the imagination about what might happen if minors are left unwatched or unsupervised as parents return to work. Consider: Through the first week of September, homicides in Chicago were up nearly 30 percent over last year to 366, and overall shooting incidents were up 10 percent.

Experts Say New Federal Rule Brings Hope for LGBTQ Youth in Custody

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Given the high rate of torment suffered by LGBT youth in custody, activists applauded last week’s finalizing of a landmark law that took nine years to get from adoption to implementation. Last Monday, the federal Department of Justice finalized a set of guidelines under the Prison Rape Elimination Act that could help stem the risks of the already at-risk LGBT population that is incarcerated, including minors. “We were already working on this issue while PREA was being passed, but this raises awareness,” said Sarah Schriber, senior policy analyst with the Chicago-based Health and Medicine Policy Research group and community convener for the Illinois Court Involved LGBTQ Youth Task Force. According to Schriber, few juvenile detention center personnel even knew what the existing anti-harassment rules were. “A much harder part is making those policies meaningful on the ground,” she said.