Sheriff Tom Dart is pushing a concerning bill through the Illinois legislature that would give unprecedented power to jail officials to lengthen an individual’s prison sentence due to discipline violations.

By Sarah Staudt, Senior Policy Analyst and Staff Attorney SB 416 allows jail officials to use their internal disciplinary boards to remove up to a year of pre-trial sentence credit for inmates who are found to have violated jail rules by committing “public indecency” or “assault or battery of a c...

License to Work

Chicago Appleseed is a coalition member of License2Work Illinois, a group working to eliminate inequities in the judicial process by eliminating drivers licenses suspensions as a punishment for debt owed the city, such as court debt, administrative fees and unpaid fines. The License2Work coalition c...

Family Law Committee Update

The Family Law Committee of the Chicago Council of Lawyers and Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice have been participating in a project to improve the process of enforcing spousal maintenance (formerly known as alimony) orders in Illinois. The Illinois State Disbursement Unit (“SDU”) collects and dis...