Preckwinkle: Jailing juveniles costs more than Harvard tuition

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Cook Co. Board President Toni Preckwinkle

Updated: October 20, 2011 8:42PM

As Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle prepares to unveil her $3 billion spending plan for 2012, she touched Thursday morning on the subject of the social and taxpayer costs of sending a kid to the local juvenile jail.

During a breakfast at the Union League Club in downtown Chicago, Preckwinkle said she’s trying to figure out a way to cut the underage jail population — averaging about 350 daily — enabling her to trim staffing and other costs at the Juvenile Temporary Detention Center on the city’s West Side.

But it’s not just about the cash, she says. Some 42 percent of the kids stay at the facility less than a week.

“This information points to the fact that these kids don’t need to be there,” Preckwinkle said. Her staff later explained that kids in there for short stays likely aren’t facing charges for violent crimes. Rather, it may be some kind of glitch including difficulty reaching a parent or family member.

Preckwinkle looks at it this way: In Cook County, the second largest county in the country by population there are 35 kids locked up at the facility for every 100,000 juveniles living here. But in Harris County Texas, the third most populous county with Houston as its anchor, there are 19 kids locked up for every 100,000 juveniles there.

By her estimate, it costs $600 a day to keep a child at Cook County’s juvenile jail, when you figure in food, their schooling at the jail and even the health facility. (Other estimates peg it at $350 per child per day.) Using Preckwinkle’s figure, that’s $224,000 a year, she says.

“Tuition, room and board at Harvard University is $52,000 [annually],” Preckwinkle told the crowd. “So we’re spending more money to keep juveniles in the juvenile detention center than it costs to send a kid to Harvard.”