New Report on the Foxx Administration
Exercising Full Powers: Recommendations to Kim Foxx on Addressing Systemic Racism in the Cook County Criminal Justice System
In 2016, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx was elected in a landslide victory that was widely seen as a referendum on Cook County’s criminal justice system. Voters rejected the “tough on crime” stance of Anita Alvarez as well as her cover-up of the police murder of Laquan McDonald. Voters chose, instead, a candidate who ran on a platform of holding police accountable and reversing some of the policies that led to massive increases in the number of African American and Latinx people incarcerated in Cook County.
Changing practices in such a large criminal justice system is a big order. The People’s Lobby and Reclaim Chicago have been working with Chicago Appleseed to report regularly on State’s Attorney Foxx’s progress to reduce incarceration.
We recently released the January 2019 report on the first nine months of 2018 data released by the State’s Attorney’s Office. It includes key recommendations for how State’s Attorney Foxx can strengthen her decarceration efforts and be a leader in rolling back the failed policies of over-policing and mass incarceration.
To view or download this report, please click HERE.
Pro Bono Opportunities
Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice is a nonpartisan and independent research and advocacy organization dedicated to making the courts fairer, more efficient and effective – improving lives by improving courts. We promote social justice by identifying problems affecting vulnerable populations within our court systems, proposing effective solutions, and advocating for their implementation. Chicago Appleseed is part of the Appleseed Network, an international network of 18 social justice organizations.
The Chicago Council of Lawyers is a public interest bar association which has served for 50 years as a place for attorneys who want to give back to their communities through projects that promote social justice. The Council is a well-respected, non-partisan entity with the ear of important stakeholders in Cook County and Illinois at large, and has done a tremendous amount to ameliorate hidden injustices that don’t always make headlines or present themselves in everyday law practice.
Chicago Appleseed and the Chicago Council of Lawyers collaborate around systemic reform projects in the areas of criminal justice, family law, access to justice, and immigration court reform. We seek to identify injustice related to our courts and then work to stop it.
We operate with paid staff and a corps of pro bono professionals who conduct national, best practices research, as well as local, on the ground research, and who work with us to develop solutions and implementation strategies.
We invite you to use your expertise to help us help stop systemic injustice in our courts.
For information and to volunteer, please contact Malcolm Rich atcaffj@chicagoappleseed.org.
For a listing of pro bono opportunities, please click HERE.
For a listing of our program committees and their current projects, please click HERE.
Proposed Law Would Guarantee Prompt Access to a Phone – and a Lawyer – for Arrestees
By Sarah Staudt, Senior Policy Analyst at Chicago Appleseed and Staff Liaison to the Criminal Justice Advisory Committee of Chicago Appleseed and the Chicago Council of Lawyers.
One of the most timeworn media depictions of the criminal justice system is a character in a lock-up cell yelling “I want my phone call!” to a police officer. In Chicago, however, almost many arrestees wait up to 72 hours until police will give them access a phone to call a lawyer or let their family know where they are. Now, advocates are proposing statewide reform to force Police Departments to give arrestees timely access to a phone. On Monday, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and Cook County Public Defender Amy Campanelli announced that they were proposing statewide legislation to require the police to give every arrested person access to a phone and the right to make up to three phone calls within one hour of their arrest. An officer’s failure to provide a phone call could be charged as felony official misconduct.
The bill, sponsored by State Representatives Theresa Mah and Justin Slaughter, is the exact reform needed to make sure that arrestees have a meaningful ability to exercise their 6th amendment right to meet with a lawyer at the stationhouse.
Chicago, of course, has a long and sometimes violent history of denying the rights of arrestees surrounding interrogation, particularly vulnerable, young arrestees of color. Jon Burge tortured false confessions out of hundreds of suspects in the 1970s and 1980s, and Cook County leads the nation in exonerations based on findings that police coerced suspects into falsely confessing. These false confessions are always secured without a lawyer present, and usually after long periods of isolation that make suspects more susceptible to police coercion. This shameful history led to the formation of First Defense Legal Aid (FDLA), the first non-profit in the country devoted to providing free, accessible stationhouse attorneys. In 2017, the Chicago Public Defender’s office joined FDLA’s fight to ensure that every arrestee has access to a lawyer. Now, the PD’s office has a 24/7 Police Station Representation Unit that provides a lawyer to any arrestee who calls them in Cook County. FDLA and the PD’s office also ensured that the Chicago Police posted the Public Defender’s phone number in every police lockup. Yet, even with FDLA and the PD’s combined efforts, only 1.4% of arrestees successfully called either organization asking for a lawyer between April and October of this year.
The reason for this is simple: the Chicago Police Department has been using a loophole in Illinois law to avoid giving arrestees a phone call until it is too late to do any good. Under current law, police only have to give a phone call as soon as is “reasonable”. But the statute doesn’t define “reasonable.” The Chicago Police Department has interpreted it to mean within 72 hours – 3 whole days – in lockup. They also often do not provide a phone call until after an interrogation has taken place. There is no practical or administrative reason why police officers cannot allow phone calls earlier after arrest; indeed, Rhode Island, Nevada and California all have laws requiring access to a phone within three hours of arrest.
This proposed Illinois legislation would go a long way towards allowing every arrestee who wants one access to a lawyer as well as giving them the basic human kindness of allowing them to tell their family and friends where they are. We hope that the State’s Attorney of Cook County and other officials support this legislation and see it as a vital step towards erasing Chicago’s reputation as the false confession capital of the country.