Court Transparency Archives - Page 3 of 8 - Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts

Why We Court-Watch

Why do we court-watch? https://www.chicagoappleseed.org/2022/08/22/northwestern-report-highlights-issues-with-court-culture/ Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts conducts court-watching in a variety of civil and criminal courtrooms in Cook County. Our volunteers observe courtrooms as a m...

NEW REPORT: $tate of Injustice – Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice Statewide Bond Court-Watching

The Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice (INPJ) has released its report, $tate of Injustice: A Community Review of Bond Courts in Illinois, a statewide court-watching project aimed to document the human cost of the current money bond system in Illinois and demonstrate the necessity of the Pretrial...

Lawsuit: Chicago Police Department Relies on Faulty ‘Evidence’ from ShotSpotter to Make Arrests

On July 21, 2022, attorneys from Northwestern University’s MacArthur Justice Center filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Michael Williams, Daniel Ortiz, and Lucy Parsons Labs against the City of Chicago, Chicago Police Department (CPD) Superintendent David Brown, and several CPD officers. The lawsui...

Northwestern Report Highlights the Need for Culture Change in Cook County’s Court System

The criminal legal system is divided into two main groups: insiders and outsiders. Court “insiders” include judges, clerks, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and other court staff; essentially, the individuals who are familiar with the legal system and are not at court for personal affairs. Court “out...

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...

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