Marion County Circuit Clerk Tiffany Schicker has released details on the number of court filings in 2025.
The number of felony cases remained virtually unchanged in 2025 with 507 cases. State’s Attorney Tim Hudspeth looks for more of the same in the coming year.
“We still have a large number of drug cases, a large number of thefts, aggravated batteries and things like that,” Hudspeth said. “I don’t anticipate that that’s going to change. We have a small rural community. It’s not unique to Marion County. State’s attorneys from other counties said they deal with the same problems, same crimes, and same type of revolving door repeat offender issues that we deal with here. I don’t see any big change in that going forward, as evidenced by the last several years. Cases remained relatively close, just over 500.”
There was a big increase in juvenile delinquency cases, jumping from 68 to 132. Hudspeth is hopeful those numbers will come down as 30 of those cases can be attributed to five to seven residents of One Hope United in Centralia.
“I think the powers that be at the facility and maybe even within DCFS are more aware now than they had been previously that there were some kids brought to the facility that just needed a higher level of care. I’m hopeful that they’re addressing that. I know that some of those kids have been placed elsewhere. When that happened, things did seem to get a little bit better. Hopefully that does continue, and we only get kids placed here in Marion County that are appropriate for the type of setting that we have.”
There was also a big jump in juvenile cases involving abuse, neglect and dependency due to caregivers’ actions or inactions. There were 106 cases in 2024 and 138 last year.
DUI cases were up from 68 in 2024 and 100 last year. Major traffic cases fell from 585 to 561. Other traffic citations totaled 2,541, up slightly from 2024.
More orders of protection were issued. 326 were entered in 2025 compared to 302 last year.
On the civil side, 43 lawsuits filed seeking more than $50,000. That’s up from 36 in 2024. Lawsuits seeking under $50,000 totaled 101, up from 65 in 2024. There were 517 small claims cases filed compared to 443 in 2024.
Juvenile delinquency cases jumped from 68 to 132. Hudspeth says 30 of those cases were tied to 6 to 8 juveniles at One Hope United. He hopes the agency and DCFS have reached an understanding not to send its most troublesome kids to One Hope. Misdemeanor cases fell to 568 cases, while DUI cases jumped from 68 to 100 in 2025.
