Laws and policies governing the treatment of court and arrest records of youth “threaten public safety, produce substantial unnecessary costs, and impede young people’s ability to transition to productive adulthood,” according to a comprehensive study released on April 28th by the Illinois Juvenile Justice Commission. Although state law long has emphasized the principle that a youth’s mistakes should not brand that child for life, Illinois youth have been harmed by the erosion of confidentiality protections and the extreme difficulty and expense of erasing a record through the expungement process, according to the report, “Burdened for Life: The Myth of Juvenile Record Confidentiality and Expungement in Illinois.”

“While many believe juvenile records are kept confidential, they are not,” the report states. “The erosion of record confidentiality protections over the past 40 years calls into question whether the word confidential can be used in good faith anymore. Through broad lawful record sharing and the widespread incidence of unlawful sharing, the potential for accessing and sharing juvenile information has never been greater.” In Illinois, tens of thousands of juveniles are arrested each year, and the largest majority of those arrests by far are for non-violent offenses. Over the last decade, only three of every 1,000 arrests – less than one-third of one percent of juvenile arrests – were expunged in Illinois, the study determined. The report recommends enhancement of the confidentiality of juvenile records and increased access to juvenile expungement consistent with recommendations of the American Bar Association.