Community Courts and the Fight Against Quality-of-Life Crimes

by Brian Gilbert, Summer Intern with Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice On June 27th of this year, as the Chicago Sun-Times reported here, five-term Alderman Michael Zalewski proposed a bill to raise the fines for adult graffiti taggers from $750 to $2,000, and to mandate a minimum of three days in...

Featured Resource: Cost-Benefit Knowledge Bank for Criminal Justice

A project of the esteemed Vera Institute for Justice, the Cost-Benefit Knowledge Bank for Criminal Justice creates and consolidates resources for conducting economic analysis criminal justice initiatives. Technology advances are making data collection easier and cheaper, enabling evidence-based pol...

Diversion Works.

That's the undisputed message in the most comprehensive study of diversionary drug courts ever completed. The Urban Institute, the Center for Court Innovation, and RTI International, conducted the multi-volume study, “The Multi-Site Adult Drug Court Evaluation." Researchers evaluated 23 drug courts...

Cook County President Preckwinkle Declares “War on Drugs” a Failure

At a noontime rally in the Chicago loop last Friday, Cook County President Preckwinkle condemned the increasingly unpopular “war on drugs.”  She was the lone elected official openly criticizing the enforcement strategy, which dates back to Nixon’s presidency. Preckwinkle emphasized the excessive an...
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