Sarah Staudt -Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts

About Sarah Staudt

Since 2018, Sarah Staudt (she/her) has led our criminal legal system reform efforts and now oversees the entire legislative and policy portfolio as our Director of Policy. Sarah primarily focuses on pretrial issues, leading our involvement in the Coalition to End Money Bond, and was instrumental in advocating for the groundbreaking Pretrial Fairness Act, which passed in 2021. Additionally, Sarah leads our program work focused on electronic detention, abolishing overly punitive sentencing systems, and promoting court system efficiency, fairness, and accountability. View all posts by Sarah Staudt →

Dynamics of Drug Possession Charges in Illinois, from Investigatory Stops to Sentences

B A C K G R O U N D Illinois is one of 18 states that makes possession of drugs (except cannabis) a felony in all cases. This means that possession, even of very small amounts of drugs, can lead to serious criminal legal system involvement. Felony arrests lead to pretrial jail time, often bec...

“Organized Retail Theft” Bill is an Extreme Approach to an Imaginary Problem

This week, the Illinois Retail Merchants’ Association succeeded in convincing the Illinois General Assembly to introduce legislation targeted at reducing “organized retail theft.” Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts and the Chicago Council of Lawyers vehemently opposed the bill, HB 1091, which...

Slowly Returning to Normal: A Look at the Cook County Court Case Backlog in Autumn 2021

As we have reported before, the Cook County Felony Courts saw a massive slowdown in case resolutions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Because in-person courts were closed for the majority of 2020 and some of 2021, trials became extremely rare. At the same time, other kinds of case dispositions, like gu...

REPORT: 10 Facts about Pretrial Electronic Monitoring in Cook County

Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts and the Chicago Council of Lawyers have released a report, 10 Facts about Pretrial Electronic Monitoring in Cook County, which catalogs data-based facts about the Cook County Sheriff’s Electronic Monitoring (EM) Program to help the public understand the...

Checking on the Cook County Criminal Court’s Case Backlog

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts has been tracking the status of Illinois Courts’ shutdown. With COVID-19 causing the courts to shut down and the Illinois Supreme Court to pause speedy trial rights, case processing slowed to a crawl. In April...

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