Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts is a community-driven advocacy organization using research to interrupt cycles of poverty, mass incarceration, and racial injustices persistent in the legal system.
We’re fighting to reduce the harms of the criminal and civil legal system by conducting mixed-methods action research, supporting grassroots advocacy with empirical evidence, and helping people and communities meaningfully engage with the system and access their rights.
We're bridging the gap between the courts, lawmakers, lawyers, and the public to create long-lasting institutional change.
Our work considers legal system issues through a systemic lens, focusing our work on issues of court transparency, economic accessibility, community autonomy, and decarceration and diversion.
COURT TRANSPARENCY
Our court transparency projects focus on improving access to information about the court system so that the public can effectively engage with and hold the legal system accountable.
ECONOMIC ACCESSIBILITY
Our economic accessibility projects focus on interrupting the cycle of poverty that the courts create and perpetuate by extracting wealth from communities and criminalizing poverty.
DECARCERATION
Our decarceration and diversion projects focus on shrinking the reach and impact of the criminal legal system and proposing alternatives to criminalization and incarceration.
COMMUNITY AUTONOMY
