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Illinois Criminal Justice
Information Authority researchers completed the comprehensive
profile updates on each county, detailing trends in various police,
court, correctional and social service activities, and outputs. The
agency disseminates the profiles to a wide variety of justice
policy-makers, practitioners and social service organizations across
Illinois to assist them in their policy discussions, problem
assessments and planning.
"These extensive reports provide a
wealth of useful information specific to each county," said Lori G.
Levin, executive director of the Illinois Criminal Justice
Information Authority. "This effort is just one of many made by the
authority to provide lawmakers and policy-makers with an overall
scope of criminal justice trends in Illinois."
In addition to giving policy-makers
with an overview of activities across the law enforcement, court and
corrections components of each county justice system, the profiles
provide perspective by including trends experienced in counties with
similar population sizes.
Highlights taken from the reports:
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Although methamphetamine is often
characterized as a problem facing rural jurisdictions, Cook
County had the largest quantity of methamphetamine seized when
compared with the grams of methamphetamine seized by other
Illinois counties in 2003. In addition, 42 percent of all reported
violent index offenses -- murder, sexual assault, robbery and
aggravated assault -- in Cook County in 2003 were robberies. This
rate was higher than any other county. Winnebago County was
next highest at 32 percent.
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Although it was the 24th smallest
county in Illinois in terms of population, the violent index
arrest rate in Moultrie County increased more between 1994
and 2003 than in any other county in Illinois. The violent index
arrest rate in Moultrie County increased more than six times, from
30 arrests per 100,000 residents in 1994 to 193 arrests per
100,000 residents in 2003.
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Edwards County ,
the eighth smallest county in Illinois in terms of population, had
the greatest increase in the rate of adult new court commitments
to the Illinois Department of Corrections between state fiscal
years 1994 and 2004. The rate of adult commitments increased from
18 commitments per 100,000 residents to 264 commitments per
100,000 residents during that time.
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In Monroe County, a higher
percentage of felony offenders were on probation than in any other
county in Illinois. In 2003, 91 percent of all Monroe County
probationers were felony offenders, compared with the mean of 51
percent for all counties with a probation caseload.
- In 2003, Stephenson County
had the highest rate of juveniles on probation among all counties
in Illinois, at 3,956 juveniles per 100,000 residents.
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addition, outside of Cook County:
had the largest number of grams of cannabis (157,137 grams) and
total drugs (179,746 grams) seized in 2003.
DuPage County
had the largest number of grams of cocaine (15,990 grams) seized
in 2003.
Champaign County
had the largest number of grams of crack cocaine (1,279 grams)
seized in 2003.
Bond County
had the largest number of grams of heroin (465 grams) seized in
2003.
Madison County
had the largest number of grams of methamphetamine (3,263 grams)
seized in 2003.
The Illinois Criminal Justice
Information Authority has received federal Anti-Drug Abuse Act
funding since 1989 to document the extent and nature of drug and
violent crime in Illinois and the criminal justice system's response
to these offenses. The agency has since amassed a large amount of
data measuring the extent and nature of drug and violent crime in
Illinois and the impact these crimes have had on the criminal
justice system. The county profiles of the criminal justice system
were developed to put this information into the hands of state
policy-makers in a useful summary format.
Data used in these reports was
compiled from the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts,
Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, Illinois
Department of Corrections, Illinois State Police, and U.S.
Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census.
To
download a county profile, go to
www.icjia.state.il.us.
[News release from the
Illinois Criminal Justice
Information Authority]
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