Kareem Butler -Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts |

About Kareem Butler

Kareem Butler (he/him) is a Pretrial Justice Fellow with Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts, where his work primarily focuses on the statewide implementation of the Pretrial Fairness Act, passed in 2021, with the Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice (INPJ). View all posts by Kareem Butler →

Criminalizing Despair: The Intersections of Pretrial Incarceration and Housing Insecurity

Housing; enter it as a quick google search and your newsfeed will be populated by articles describing affordable housing shortages, mortgage rate hikes, and local real estate developments. Take a cursory look at some of these stories, and it’s clear that safe and affordable housing represents a fund...

Regulating Remote Courts: Issues with Due Process, Technology, and How the Pretrial Fairness Act Helps

Since the Pretrial Fairness Act’s passage by the Illinois General Assembly in 2021, much of the media attention and public discourse has been limited to a few key provisions of the law that portend transformative changes to Illinois’ pretrial systems. Unsurprisingly, the law’s elimination of money b...

Here’s what you should know before voting for Chicago’s Police District Councils.

During the upcoming February 28 municipal elections, Chicagoans will have a chance to directly elect civilian leaders to the newly created Police District Councils (PDCs). The councils, like the citywide Community Commission on Public Safety and Accountability (CCPSA), are the product of the Empo...

We’ve Joined 400+ Organizations in Urging the Illinois Supreme Court to Affirm the Constitutionality of the Pretrial Fairness Act

Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts and the Chicago Council of Lawyers have joined the 37 members of the Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice and 389 other national, state, and local organizations in submitting an amicus brief to the Illinois Supreme Court in the case of Rowe vs. Raoul, which...

Illinois Pretrial Practices Data Oversight Board Provides Few Solutions

On July 1, 2022, the Pretrial Practices Data Oversight Board (“Board”) released a preliminary report in an effort to satisfy statutory requirements laid out in the Pretrial Fairness Act sections of Public Act 101-0652, known as the SAFE-T Act. Per the new law, the Board, convened last July by the Ad...