gun possession Archives - Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts

One Year Later, Still “Punishing Fear”: How the Criminalization of Gun Possession Has Changed in a Year

One year ago, Chicago Appleseed published a report about the rampant criminalization of gun possession in Cook County, titled Punishing Fear: The Devastating Impacts of the War on Gun Possession in Chicago. One week later, Eileen O’Neill Burke was elected as Cook County State’s Attorney, and her adm...

ICYMI: Recap of “Who’s Your Jailer?” Event—December 10, 2025

On Wednesday evening, Naomi and I participated in a community teach-in, "Who's Your Jailer?," hosted by the Cook County Coalition for Prosecutor Accountability (C3PA), where we discussed Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke’s policies and their consequences. The panel also featured publ...

The Arbitrary Divide: Understanding Simple vs. Aggravated Unlawful Possession of a Weapon

Written by Emily Drevdahl, Loyola School of Law, and Julian D. Cohen, Brown University. Over the past several years, gun possession charges have surged to become one of the most common offenses in Illinois, prompting some scholars to argue that the War on Drugs has evolved into a “War on Guns...

State’s Attorney’s Felony Review Bypass Program Hinders Due Process and Gives Police Power To File Felony Gun Possession Charges

In January, Cook County State’s Attorney O’Neill Burke began piloting a new program in the Chicago Police Department’s (CPD) 7th District (Englewood), changing the rules for how gun possession felony charges are filed. The program has now been expanded to the CPD’s 5th District (Calumet), which is i...

NEW REPORT – Punishing Fear: Facts about the “War on Guns” in Chicago

Today we published a new report, Punishing Fear: Facts about the “War on Guns” in Chicago, which analyzes the policies, processes, and sociocultural realities that have led to the hypercriminalization of gun possession—the “War on Guns,” which parallels the historic War on Drugs and has similarly de...

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