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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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Waiting for Justice: An examination of the Cook County Criminal Court backlog in the age of COVID-19
People – both those accused and the victims of crime – are waiting increasingly long periods of time for justice, as COVID-19 has slowed court processing to a crawl.
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 [...]
Illinois Supreme Court Amendment to Rule 23 – A Necessary Change
The amendment to Rule 23 will now allow these unpublished orders, issued on or after January 1, 2021, to be cited for persuasive purposes. The Chicago Council of Lawyers have supported and advocated on behalf of this rule change and applaud the Supreme Court’s decision.
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 [...]
“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 [...]
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 [...]
Chicago Council of Lawyers Opposes the Confirmation of Thomas Kirsch
The Chicago Council of Lawyers, Chicago’s public interest bar association, opposes the confirmation of Thomas Kirsch, the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Indiana, to a seat on the Federal Court of Appeals [...]