Latest News – Page 6 – Chicago Council of Lawyers

Findings: Access to Diversion Programs for Low-Level, “Non-Violent” Felonies has Improved since Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx Took Office

The Chicago Council of Lawyers and our collaboration partners, Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts, have again joined The People’s Lobby and Reclaim Chicago to release the eighth report in our series on prosecutorial accountability in Cook County. The report, “Decarcerating Cook County: Use of...

Legislation Alert!

The Chicago Council of Lawyers is urging its members to submit Witness slips in opposition to HB 0861, which removes the court's discretion to award maintenance without consideration of "marital misconduct". HB 861 specifically prohibits an award of support if the spouse paying support (obligor) is...

VICTORY: Governor Pritzker Abolishes Money Bail by Signing HB 3653 – The SAFE-T Act – into Law

On Monday, February 22, 2021, Governor Pritzker signed HB 3653 SFA2: the SAFE-T (Safety, Accountability, Fairness and Equity – Today) Act. The bill was sponsored in the 101st General Assembly by Senator Robert Peters, Senator Elgie Sims, and Representative Justin Slaughter as part of the Illinois...

Letter to Governor Pritzker: Support for HB 3653

On January 13, 2021, the Illinois General Assembly passed a historic criminal justice reform package (presented by the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus). Among the many provisions in the 764 page bill is the Pretrial Fairness Act (PFA) – a comprehensive proposal that ends mon...

Waiting for Justice: An examination of the Cook County Criminal Court backlog in the age of COVID-19

The content in this article was originally submitted as testimony to the Cook County Board of Commissioners’ Criminal Justice Committee meeting on January 27, 2020, about peoples’ lengths of stay in Cook County Jail and on electronic monitoring, and the effect COVID-19 has had on the growing jail po...

VICTORY: Illinois Just Passed the Pretrial Fairness Act and Ended Money Bail

After years of advocacy by the Coalition to End Money Bond – including Chicago Appleseed and the Chicago Council of Lawyers – and thousands of other organizers across the state, the Illinois Legislature just became the first in the nation to abolish money bail by passing HB 3653 SFA2. Once Governor...

Illinois Supreme Court Amendment to Rule 23 – A Necessary Change

On November 20, the Illinois Supreme Court amended Illinois Supreme Court Rule 23. Rule 23 originally allowed reviewing courts in Illinois to issue decisions as unpublished orders if the ruling does not establish law (is not precedential). The amendment to Rule 23 will now allow these unpublished or...

We analyzed 536,000 CPD arrest records spanning a period from 2014 to 2020. Here’s what we found.

INCOMMUNICADO DETENTION Arrested and deprived of communication without being charged with a crime — incommunicado detention in Chicago. In film and on TV, stories about police and criminals have long made for captivating story lines and entertaining ways to stream episodes until 4 am. In a typ...

“Bail Reform” Worked in Cook County; Now, Pass the Pretrial Fairness Act and End Money Bond for Everyone in Illinois

A new report from nationally renowned criminal justice experts at Loyola University Chicago, Don Stemen and David Olson, shows that Cook County’s efforts to reduce the use of money bail and release more people pretrial did not cause any rise in crime. The report, “Dollars and Sens...

As the Pandemic Rages, the Cook County Jail Population Grows

As we embark on the ‘third-wave’ of the pandemic in the United States, we have tragically learned many things. First and importantly, we have learned that the best and only truly effective way to prevent the spread of this airborne virus is by physically distancing ourselves from others. We have als...