End Youth Solitary Confinement Act
By Lily Baeza Date: 9/25/2026
On June 30th, 2023, the Illinois General Assembly passed the 'End Youth Solitary Confinement Act,' which prohibits the use of solitary confinement for punitive purposes for juveniles held in correctional facilities. While the act passed both the Illinois House and Senate in 2023, the law did not go into effect until January 1st, 2024.
Why Solitary Confinement Doesn't Work
The Illinois Juvenile Justice Commission (IJJC) reinforces that there is scientific research backing that young adults continue to develop significantly into their 20s. As we know, children entering the juvenile justice system are likely to have been exposed to difficult childhood experiences that are not addressed when entering.
The American Psychological Association found that solitary confinement can cause irreparable damage to one's psyche. Craig Haney, found that "Many inmates experience panic attacks, depression and paranoia, and some suffer hallucinations." Because of this, in February 2024, the APA published 'Opposing Involuntary Individual Isolation of Youth in Juvenile Justice Settings.'
In May 2018, Jonah Newman, a journalist for the Chicago Reporter, found that "Over the past two-and-a-half years, kids at the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center (JTDC) have been confined to their cells more than 55,000 times. Taken together, the time they’ve spent in solitary adds up to nearly 25 years." As shown in the chart below, as the population of those incarcerated drops, the number placed in solitary confinement rises.
Graphic courtesy of the Chicago Reporter
What Counts as Confinement, and When Is It Allowed to Be Used?
Civil Rights Attorney Andy Hale states that, "Confinement counts once a young person is held apart from others for fifteen minutes or more." The End Youth Solitary Confinement Act defines the use of solitary confinement as illegal when it is used for, "discipline, punishment, or retaliation." Additionally, Hale clarifies that the protections of this law can extend to those under 18 and 21 years of age:
Any person under the age of 21 is protected under this law if they are being held in a Department of Juvenile Justice facility
Any person under the age of 18 is protected under this law if they are being detained in a county facility
It is also important to note that this law does not ban the use of solitary confinement for juveniles outright. Solitary confinement can only be used as a temporary solution for a juvenile who poses an 'immediate and serious risk of self-harm or harm to others.'
Additional Key Aspects of the Law
Before turning to solitary confinement, staff members must attempt to use less restrictive options (e.g., de-escalation techniques)
If a juvenile has been put into solitary confinement due to safety reasons, they are required to be released within a certain time frame. The Bill defines this as the following:
immediately once they have been deemed in control and no longer pose a threat to their own or others' safety
no more than 24 hours after being placed in room confinement if a covered juvenile does not sufficiently gain control and still poses a threat:
3 hours after being placed in room confinement (poses threat to others)
30 minutes after being placed in room confinement (poses threat to themselves)
If the individual still poses a threat after 24 hours, they must be moved to a facility that can treat the individual's needs
Juvenile facilities are now mandated to report every instance of solitary confinement used to the Department of Juvenile Justice monthly
When a covered juvenile is on an administrative hold, the facility may not restrict access to the same programs and services the covered juvenile received in general population
Has this Law Been Successful?
Since this law is still relatively new, there is no data available on whether this law has been proven successful in reducing the use of solitary confinement for juveniles. The law has recently sparked conversation of if the use of solitary confinement for juveniles is necessary at all. Avalon Betts-Gaston, project manager of the Illinois Alliance for Reentry and Justice, believes that we should be using alternative options for juveniles given that their brains are still developing and move away from the use of solitary confinement in the first place. Terri Dee of Illinois News Connection reported that a judge closed a Franklin County center last month due to excessive use of solitary confinement. Both of these examples highlight that the law, while hypothetically beneficial, has not actually proven to be so.
But the biggest story that came out related to this law was the Mary Davis Juvenile Detention Home (MDJDH). ACLU of Illinois legal director, Kevin Fee, found that, "MDJDH staff routinely used solitary confinement as punishment, even for minor rule violations like talking back or refusing directions." Kevin also claims that "children as young as 11 were held in concrete cells without access to education, mental health treatment, or meaningful human interaction." So while it is a major win for Illinois to identify a facility in violation of the law, it can only lead one to wonder how many other facilities may be in violation of this law as well but have simply not been found out yet.
Overall, this law is for the betterment of juvenile treatment while being held in correctional facilities. I do believe more work can be done to ensure this law is regularly enforced, starting with getting correctional facilities more resources to be able to provide alternatives to solitary confinement.
Sources:
https://www.ilga.gov/documents/legislation/103/HB/PDF/10300HB3140.pdf
https://www.chicagoreporter.com/solitary-confinement-of-juveniles-on-the-rise-in-cook-county/
https://ahalelaw.com/2026/09/08/when-is-solitary-confinement-illegal/
https://www.ncsl.org/news/details/juvenile-justice-update-october-2023
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