Independent Analysis of State’s Attorney Charging Trends Released Today

Criminal Justice, Prosecutorial Reform, Publications, Resources , ,

Contact: Kristi Sanford, 773-456-4024, kristi@thepeopleslobbyusa.org or

Sharlyn Grace, 773-946-8535, sharlyngrace@chicagoappleseed.org

Data from Cook County State’s Attorney Reveals Increased Transparency,

Room for Improvement on Pledge to Reduce Incarceration Rates

For immediate release

Chicago, Cook County, IL — In her campaign for Cook County State’s Attorney, Kimberly Foxx promised a new era of transparency and a “data-driven strategy” to decrease incarceration rates and to begin correcting the longstanding racism and punitiveness of our local criminal justice system. “A Step In The Right Direction: An Analysis of Felony Prosecution Data in Cook County,” a new report by advocates for criminal justice reform, uses data to assess Foxx’s progress towards her campaign commitments. The report is authored by The People’s Lobby, Reclaim Chicago and the Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice.

Candidate Foxx speaking in front of Reclaim Chicago’s Get Out The Vote launch in March of 2016. Photo by Kristi Sanford.

The report commends Foxx for keeping her commitment to transparency by releasing eight years of raw data–including data from 2017, her first full year in office–on the felony charges brought by the State’s Attorney’s Office and their outcomes, including information about the sentences received. The report also commends Foxx for being the first and only prosecutor in the nation to hire a Chief Data Officer to track and analyze data with the goal of improving office performance.

Foxx’s release of felony case-level data is especially important because experts posit that one cause of dramatically increased incarceration rates over the last several decades is the increase in felony charges filed by prosecutors. The Cook County data shows that Foxx’s use of the felony review process has decreased the percentage of felony charges filed by the office by 11.4% compared to her predecessor, Anita Alvarez. Foxx continues a key practice of Alvarez’s office, however, by giving police the power to make the initial charging decisions related to drug cases without prior approval by the State’s Attorney’s Office. Because felony drug charges filed by police composed 42% of the total felony cases filed in 2017, felony drug charges significantly diluted the overall decrease in felony charges filed by the State’s Attorney’s Office.

Therefore, we recommend that Foxx make further progress on reducing incarceration rates by reinstating felony review for drug charges and using her prosecutorial discretion to decline to charge some drug possession and sales cases.

Recommendations

  1. Reinstate felony review for drug charges and use prosecutorial discretion to avoid charging lower-level drug crimes.
  2. Continue and expand the practice of more rigorous felony review started in State’s Attorney Foxx’s first year in order to decrease the number of felonies charged.
  3. Decide on a department-wide goal of reducing felony charges filed by prosecutors over the next two years.
  4. Decide on a department-wide goal of reducing the number of people sentenced to incarceration.