Surge in Chicago violence highlights teens in trouble and efforts to save them
CHICAGO — The realistic painting in vivid colors by Adolfo Davis shows two sides of the same street, one bathed in sunlight with a college and an art center and the word “choices” written along the curb. On the other, a prison, a Chicago police surveillance camera, crime scene tape, a memorial and protest signs reading “Stop the violence” and “Enough.”
Smack dab in the middle of the painting — “Choices,” which hangs in one of the reporting centers for court-involved youths in Cook County — is a young person straddling both a place of promise and one of despair.
This high-stakes intersection that Chicago’s youths find themselves in has been brought into sharp relief in recent months in a series of troubling crimes: a 16-year-old already serving a probation sentence for three carjackings accused of fatally shooting 8-year-old Melissa Ortega; another 16-year-old on electronic monitoring for two gun cases charged with killing a 15-year-old by shooting him first in the head, then nine times as he lay on the sidewalk; and an 11-year-old cited in six different carjacking incidents, including some that involved armed robbery.
About 900 youths are currently under the jurisdiction of the Cook County juvenile probation office, sentenced to either probation or supervision or awaiting trial. A portion of them are on electronic monitoring. Just 78 are housed in juvenile detention.
Children have not been spared in the recent surge in gun violence, with an increase in shootings, both fatal and nonfatal, for youths 17 and younger over the past two years. Still, the number of young people being monitored by the probation office has been declining in recent years, along with arrests in the city of Chicago.
The recent surge in gun violence, including carjackings, has led to increased calls for a more punitive
