Criminal Justice Advisory Committee Monthly Meeting

The Criminal Justice Advisory Committee (CJAC) meets on the third Thursday of every month from 12 - 1:30 PM (CST) to discuss strategies to bring about meaningful, permanent change to our criminal justice system. Click here for more.  NOTE: The CJAC meeting information changes monthly. To receive...

Summer 2019: Violence was down and Homicides were at their lowest in five years

Now that October has come and the summer is decidedly over, policy makers and journalists alike are engaging in a yearly, grim calculus: How bad was the gun violence in Chicago this summer? Did it get worse? Is it getting better? And most importantly, why? This summer, however, has been unusually p...

Bond Reform Measure Signed

“The county should not be using bond being posted by non-convicted individuals as a revenue source. It’s a tax on poor black and brown people primarily,” said Cook County Commissioner John Fritchey, quoted in a WBEZ story on a new law concerning processing fees in the criminal court. The measure cap...

Ensuring the Public Defense of Indigent Defendants in Cook County

The Criminal Justice Advisory Committee, a joint group of the Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice and the Chicago Council of Lawyers, has released a report on whether criminal defendants in Chicago’s felony preliminary hearing courtrooms receive the public defense required by the Sixth Amendment to t...
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