Chicago Police Stop Giving Juvenile Arrest Records to Houing Authorities

At the behest of legal advocates, the Chicago Police Department has ceased turning over juvenile arrest records to the Chicago Housing Authority. In a June 21, 2002, letter the police department assured the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago that the department had taken steps now to “continually ensure that no information identifying a juvenile arrestee be shared with the Chicago Housing Authority.” 

This decision may lighten the effect locally of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2002 opinion in HUD v. Rucker, which unanimously upholds a controversial “one-strike” policy that allows tenants to be evicted if they, their occupants, or guests are arrested on or off the premises with drugs or guns even if the tenant had no way of knowing that the criminal activity was occurring or could not have prevented it.

Shortly after the Rucker decision came down, legal advocates determined that the Chicago Police Department’s general practice was to include juvenile arrest records—those of children under 17 whose cases remain in juvenile court—in the exchange of criminal arrest records that it supplies to the Chicago Housing Authority to carry out the one-strike policy. This transfer of information violated Illinois laws requiring law enforcement to keep juvenile records confidential and to disclose them only to specifically enumerated parties.

The effect of this practice was that families of children who were as young as 10 and had cases in juvenile court—a closed proceeding not open to the public—were evicted or ordered to bar these children from their homes. Advocates should be encouraged to enforce the confidentiality rights of minors living in public or subsidized housing throughout the state.