Illinois General Assembly Corrects Juvenile Court Act Error, But Further Review Needed

Benjamin L Schuster is a Associate in Holland & Knight's Chicago office.

Mark Edward Burkland is a Senior Counsel in Holland & Knight's Chicago office.

HIGHLIGHTS:

Public Act 100-0720 corrects provisions of the Illinois Juvenile Court Act (JCA) that denied minors and their parents access to a minor's law enforcement records. Other provisions and oversights of the JCA continue to expose municipalities and law enforcement agencies to risks of civil, and even criminal, liability. The Illinois Juvenile Court Act (JCA) (705 ILCS 405/1-1 et seq.)has long befuddled those entangled by it. Many municipalities and law enforcement agencies agree that it needs re-examination because the JCA's internally inconsistent terms result in many unintended consequences.

Issues with 2017 Amendment

The JCA was amended significantly in late 2017, as we reported earlier this year. (See Holland & Knight's alert, "New Procedures for Handling Juvenile Police Records for Illinois Municipalities," Jan. 3, 2018.) The amendment, Public Act 100-0285, includes tighter restrictions on public access to juvenile law enforcement records and provides additional privacy protections to juveniles who had interactions with law enforcement. The amendment created more questions, however, and imposed hefty burdens and costs on law enforcement agencies to comply with the new automatic expungement mandate.

Other imprecise provisions of the amendment inadvertently prohibited minors, a minors' parents and their attorneys from obtaining a minor's law enforcement records without a court order from the juvenile court. The amendment compounded the existing trouble with two long-standing sections of the JCA that are similar but not identical:

Section 1-7, 705 ILCS 405/1-7, generally provided that law enforcement records regarding minors were required to be kept separate from other records of arrests and could be shared only with certain government officials unless ordered otherwise by the juvenile court. Section 5-905, 705 ILCS 405/5-905, included similar prohibitions on the disclosure of those records, but provided an exception allowing the minor, the minor's parents or legal guardian as well as their attorneys to obtain the records, but only if the minor was charged with an offense. Despite the conflicts between the two sections, it had been widely assumed that law enforcement agencies were permitted to provide a minor's arrest reports to the minor, the minor's parents and their attorneys.

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