COVID-19 Archives - Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts

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...

Two Years In: Weighing the Costs and Benefits of Remote Court Proceedings

The need to preserve court access during the pandemic moved hearings online. Remote court hearings are expected to continue – even as the courts return to in-person proceedings. While the transition has raised some concerns related to due process and accessibility, there appear to be some benefits t...

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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