Latest News - Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts

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...

NEW REPORT | One Size Doesn’t Fit All: A Review of Post-Plea Problem-Solving Courts in Cook County

Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts and the Chicago Council of Lawyers are excited to release our new report, One Size Doesn’t Fit All: A Review of Post-Plea Problem-Solving Courts in Cook County. In it, we offer a holistic picture of the scope of specialty (or "problem-solving") courts, which...

NEW REPORT | I Don’t Know Why I’m Here: Observations from Cook County’s Civil Asset Forfeiture Courtrooms

Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts and the Chicago Council of Lawyers are excited to announce the release of our newest court-watching report, I Don't Know Why I'm Here: Observations from Cook County's Civil Asset Forfeiture Courtrooms. From March to August of 2022, our volunteer court-wat...

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...

Analysis of Eleven Jurisdictions Confirms: Bail Reform Does Not Cause Increased Crime Rates

As the Illinois Supreme Court hears oral arguments on the constitutionality of the Pretrial Fairness Act, it is vital to remember that abolition of money bail - and the decreased jail populations that will follow it - is a safe, just, and effective public policy. A new research report from the Gugge...