D. is a high school freshman who admits he helped steal two cars.

Instead of being locked up in a juvenile detention facility, however, the teenager is spending the evening at a youth-services center, engaged in a spirited discussion on the recent US Supreme Court decision on police searches.

This is Chicago's approach to juvenile delinquency: an experiment that emphasizes alternatives to detention for pretrial youths not considered dangerous. Some juvenile-justice advocates cite it as the premier example of a major city bucking the trend of locking kids up.

For D. and other teens here tonight, it's a welcome alternative to the county's detention center, where 10 years earlier they probably would have ended up. Instead, they spend five hours each evening at Youth Outreach Services, one of seven evening reporting centers in Chicago.

D. says the program has served as somewhat of a wake-up call. "Someone came in from the Cook County Jail, and it made me think," he says. "I know I ain't want to go to jail."

D. (the center prohibits using the boys' first or last names) says he no longer talks to his old friends and hopes that when he's done with his time in the reporting center, getting a job, maybe at a White Castle, will keep him off the streets.

Juvenile detention - a pretrial lockup - has often been used to ensure that kids make it to their court dates and don't commit other crimes in the meantime.

But some feel the practice is too widespread. According to a report released this month by the Coalition for Juvenile Justice (CJJ), the number of juveniles held in secure detention centers increased 72 percent nationwide from 1994 to 2000 - despite the fact that the juvenile crime rate has reached its lowest level in 20 years. The majority are 15 or younger and haven't been charged with violent crimes.

It's an issue that's far less prominent than, say, whether to give juveniles the death penalty, or try them as adults. But critics say the trend has serious ramifications - that detention can turn small-time offenders into worse criminals, or aggravate mental illness or substance abuse. They'd like to see more cities follow Cook County, which has cut its population in detention nearly in half since 1994, and gets 90 percent of its juveniles to court on time, crime-free.

"In places like Cook, you can see that when young people are not locked up there are so many more positive outcomes," says Nancy Gannon, director of the CJJ. "They're with a positive peer group, they don't feel stigmatized, they're at home, and at school, and with role models."

IT WASN'T always like this in Cook County. Ten years ago, its 498-bed detention center was "bursting at the seams," says Renate Reichs, chief of the juvenile court's detention alternatives division. At one point, it housed 848 kids. "We realized we'd either have to build more, or do something different." They worried that building another detention center would be like adding lanes to a highway: More kids would come to fill the beds.

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