{"id":3676,"date":"2020-12-10T19:33:59","date_gmt":"2020-12-10T19:33:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chicagocouncil.org\/?p=3676"},"modified":"2020-12-10T19:43:39","modified_gmt":"2020-12-10T19:43:39","slug":"cpd-arrest-holding-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chicagocouncil.org\/staging\/1601\/cpd-arrest-holding-times\/","title":{"rendered":"We analyzed 536,000 CPD arrest records spanning a period from 2014 to 2020. Here\u2019s what we found."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

INCOMMUNICADO DETENTION<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Arrested and deprived of communication without being charged with a crime\u200a\u2014\u200aincommunicado detention in Chicago.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 typical police drama, a crime is committed, the police make arrests, charges are filed, and the rest plays out in court\u200a\u2014\u200aall conveniently within the confines of our short attention spans. However, in reality, after police make an arrest, people sometimes wait hours before getting booked and days before getting charged. The drama seems exciting but reality is a different experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How long can police hold someone without charges, legally speaking? How long are people held, in real life? Like any complex question, there are different ways to look at the question, legally, morally, and practically\u200a\u2014\u200athis story starts from a legal perspective and explores the data behind arrests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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NO LIMIT HOLDING<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

There is a common perception that a hard-line legal limit to how long police can detain someone without charges exists; however, there is no limit,<\/strong> according to Illinois Legal Aid Online<\/a>. For emphasis\u200a\u2014\u200aaccording to Illinois state law<\/a>, there is no defined<\/em> legal limit to how long police can hold a person without charges. Instead, the \u2018limit\u2019 is a patchwork of Federal law and common police practices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the\u00a0Chicago Tribune<\/em>, the topic of\u00a0incommunicado detention\u00a0<\/em>has been an issue since at least 2003. In a\u00a0Tribune<\/em>\u00a0article, \u201cCity Police Review Time in Custody<\/a>,\u201d the tangible legal limit is in the form of a\u00a01991 U.S. Supreme Court ruling<\/a>\u00a0that places a limit of no more than 48 hours with the exception for an \u201cextraordinary circumstance.\u201d Although the 1991 U.S.C. case is the most recent, it actually updates a previous U.S.C. ruling in the\u00a0Gerstein<\/a>\u00a0case regarding \u201cextended restraint of liberty following arrest<\/a>.\u201d When combined, the result is a \u2018soft\u2019 Constitutional limit on total length of detention at 48 hours. However, at the state-level \u2013 nearly 20 years later in 2020 \u2013 the issue still remains at-large.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In this article, Chicago Appleseed and the Chicago Council of Lawyers share the initial phase of a living analysis on arrests and court proceedings in Chicago. The organization\u2019s recently-obtained access to detailed arrest data in the Chicago Data Portal provides us with the ability to look into when people were arrested and how long they spent in custody, in order to examine patterns of the Chicago Police.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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GETTING STARTED<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

This project started on October 14, 2020, and the charts cover the analysis through November and December 2020. At the time of this writing\u200a\u2014\u200aafter cleaning, organizing, and exploring the data\u200a\u2014\u200awe initially have more questions than answers to share, and more questions than when we started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The following sections provide charts and brief analysis of the numbers with a primary focus on average holding times from arrest to release. For instance, for how long is the average person handcuffed before booking at a police station? How long before they are charged with a crime? In relation to incommunicado detention, how long are the longest holding periods?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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AVERAGE ARREST HOLDING TIMES<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

If police are allowed to hold people for over 48 hours in only extreme cases, how long are people actually being held for, on average? Unfortunately, the truth is unclear and the answer depends on how you slice the data. We started by considering two \u2018phases\u2019 of detention in this analysis: (1) the period from initial arrest to booking, or lockup, in the police station, and (2) the period from initial arrest to release from lockup. Based on a dataset of approximately 536,000 records, we encountered a few interesting points:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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