drug policy Archives - Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts

REPORT: Reducing Barriers to Recovery — Shifting Low-Level Drug Possession from Felonies to Misdemeanors in Illinois

Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts, the ACLU of Illinois, the Cook County Department of Public Health, and the Illinois Justice Project have released our joint report, Reducing Barriers to Recovery – Shifting Low-Level Drug Possession From Felonies to Misdemeanors in Illinois. Our report provi...

Dynamics of Drug Possession Charges in Illinois, from Investigatory Stops to Sentences

B A C K G R O U N D Illinois is one of 18 states that makes possession of drugs (except cannabis) a felony in all cases. This means that possession, even of very small amounts of drugs, can lead to serious criminal legal system involvement. Felony arrests lead to pretrial jail time, often bec...

Field Testing in Drug Arrests

Earlier this month, both The New York Times and The Marshall Project ran excellent stories on how a roadside field tests for drugs can return false positives that send innocent people to jail or even cause them to plead guilty when they did not possess drugs. The articles highlighted alarming uses o...

Links of Interest: July 30-August 4, 2012

Judicial Performance and Elections As we get closer to the fall election, questions about voter identification laws become ever more urgent. Democracy Now has an interview with Rep. John Lewis, 13-term Democratic congressman from Georgia. ProPublica offers Everything You Ever Wanted to Know abou...

Smart Criminal Justice Policies Gain Momentum in Chicago, Cook County

This piece originally appeared at the Huffington Post. County and City officials have taken bold yet prudent steps toward sensible, cost-effective public safety policies. The County has expanded use of electronic monitoring and the City is now considering issuing a fine in lieu of arrest for mariju...