Criminal Courts Archives - Page 4 of 40 - Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts

Support for the FAIR Act to Improve Illinois’ Public Defense Crisis

Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts has proudly given our support to HB3363, also known as the Funded Advocacy & Independent Representation (FAIR) Act, which successfully passed out of the Illinois House last week. The FAIR Act would create an Office of State Public Defender in Illinois...

“Waiving the Waiver”: Low-income Defendants Forced to Choose Between Plea Deals and Court Debt

Written by Grace Coolidge, Northwestern University, Class of 2025. In 2018, Governor Rauner signed the Criminal and Traffic Assessment Act (CTAA) into Illinois law, aiming to simplify and standardize court fees and assessments across the state. The CTAA was also intended to protect low-income...

Statement on State’s Attorney Burke’s New Policy Regarding Pretrial Electronic Monitoring

Written by Austin Segal, Research Manager & Jill Dupont Memorial Fellow, and Naomi Johnson, Co-Executive Director. We strongly oppose State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke’s new policy that requires prosecutors to object on the record in all cases where their petition to detain an accused...

Ignoring Community Voices: Firearm Possession Charges Excluded from Restorative Justice Community Courts

Written by Maya Simkin, Appleseed Network Fellow, Austin Segal, Research Manager & Jill Dupont Memorial Fellow, and Naomi Johnson, Co-Executive Director. It's recently been announced that the Cook County State’s Attorney will no longer divert gun possession cases to the Restorative Justic...

VICTORY: Sheriff’s Electronic Monitoring Program Will be Phased Out!

This morning - Thursday, November 21, 2024 - the Cook County Board of Commissioners voted to pass a budget amendment that significantly reduced funding for the Cook County Sheriff’s pretrial electronic monitoring (EM) program. This puts the county on track to consolidate the two EM programs into one...

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