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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...

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...

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...

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...

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 Rule 23 originally allowed reviewing courts in Illinois to issue decisions as unpublished orders if the ruling does not establish law (is not precedential). The amendment to Rule 23 will now allow these unpublished or...

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...

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 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...