• Committee:  Access to Justice
• Collaboration Partner(s):  BMO Harris; Chapman & Cutler LLC

In 2014, Cook County had a projected budget deficit of $152-million, which resulted in the reduction of the number of court reporters provided in Cook County courtrooms. This presented an access to justice issue, because without a court reporter at the trial court level—and no means to hire a private court reporter—many pro se litigants had no record of proceedings. Without an acceptable record, pro se litigants were unable to verify their understanding of prior hearings and had no means of drawing the court’s attention to what happened at earlier court dates. Most importantly, without an official record, pro se litigants could be precluded from making an appeal because the appellate court could not review the trial court’s actions.

In July of 2016, Chicago Appleseed and the Chicago Council of Lawyers sent a proposal to the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts (AOIC) outlining the necessity for recording devices in high-volume courtrooms as a supplement to existing live court reporting services in order to preserve respondents’ Constitutional rights to an appeal. Although initial conversations with the AOIC and the Office of the Chief Judge of Cook County were encouraging and appeared to demonstrate agreement that the equipment was badly needed, there had still been no action made toward implementation by late 2017. In October of 2017, Chicago Appleseed and the Council with its partners sent a letter to Chief Judge Evans asking whether progress had been made and offering to assist. Finally, the AOIC began working with the Chicago Bar Foundation’s Technology Committee to determine an appropriate course of action to implement the recording technology. Although there was significant delay, five non-jury eviction courtrooms have now – as of July 1, 2019 – been equipped with recording technology.

The installation of audio court recording devices in Cook County courtroom that lack court reporters both mitigates the primary issue of judicial impropriety and also provides pro se litigants with a better chance of successfully petitioning for appeal. The success of this initiative cannot be understated; that said, more recording devices are needed in order to ensure that all people – regardless of socioeconomic status, ability to retain an attorney, or the courtroom they appear in – are awarded equal access to justice.

Together with other Appleseed centers around the country, Chicago Appleseed and the Chicago Council of Lawyers have extended the 2016 project to determine what kind of feasible, low-cost initiatives can be implemented throughout other court systems. These relatively low maintenance and low-cost court recording devices simultaneously provide previously disadvantaged parties with access to justice and increase the overall efficiency of the court system. Implementing these technologies will supplement, not supplant, existing court reporter resources, preserve appellate rights of self-represented litigants, and improve oversight of high-volume courtrooms.

• Committee:  Criminal Justice
• Collaboration Partners: Morgan Lewis

Electronic Home Detention/Electronic Monitoring (EM) programs have arisen over the past two decades as an alternative to in-jail detention for people awaiting trial. In Illinois, statutes that enable counties to create electronic monitoring programs are very broad and put very little in the way of legal limits or requirements on how these programs function or which defendants they are used for. Although – as far as we know – nearly every state uses Electronic Monitoring at some point in the criminal justice process, we have very little information about how different states structure and fund these programs, and whether any state has seen litigation around EM. There has been almost no research done about the efficacy of electronic detention programs, how they affect participants’ well-being and case outcomes, or how different states treat their programs.

Chicago Appleseed and the Chicago Council of Lawyers are working to create a comprehensive report on the use of Electronic Monitoring and Home Detention (ankle monitors) for pretrial detainees in Illinois and around the country. When we looked into the Illinois post-sentence program this year, we found that it kept no data on racial breakdowns of participants, on how long on average participants spent on the monitor, or any data on whether the program successfully reduced reincarceration. We also found that there were no statutory limits on who EM could be used for, for what purposes, and for how long.

• Committee:  Criminal Justice
• Collaboration Partners: Kirkland & Ellis

In December 2007, Chicago Appleseed and the Chicago Council of Lawyers released a report on the felony trial courtrooms in Cook County. The report draws on 104 intensive interviews with lawyers, judges, and experts in criminal justice; 160 hours of observation of 550 proceedings in 25 different courtrooms; another 45 interviews with persons having extensive knowledge of the criminal justice system; responses from a survey of state’s attorneys and public defenders; and information supplied by the offices of the Presiding Judge, State’s Attorney, and Public Defender. We also interviewed defendants, victims, other court participants, and lawyers and experts from other jurisdictions. At the time the report was issued, there was one mental health court call, bond court was by video, and there were no diversion programs in the Cook County justice system.

The report resulted in the switch from video bond hearings to in-person hearings. It discussed the need for diversion programs and we subsequently worked with the Circuit Court to create a successful diversion program, the Access to Community Treatment Courtroom 201 (which has now kept nearly 200 people from being sent to prison and changed lives by providing community-based treatment services as an alternative). We are now moving beyond the 2007 report to take a broader look at the criminal justice system with interviewing, qualitative and quantitative data, policy prescriptions, and policy advocacy plans.

• Committee:  Immigration Court Reform
• Collaboration Partners: Legal Aid Chicago; Latham & Watkins; Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law’s Collaboration for Justice (CFJ) Student Chapter

In 2007, an Appleseed Network Immigration Collaborative was formed with the goal to identify injustices in the immigration courts, to develop recommendations, and to advocate for systemic improvements. The team trained a total of 95 pro bono lawyers in five locations that corresponded to immigration courts nationwide. The pro bono team researched the courts in these areas by interviewing immigration judges, practitioners, and representatives of community organizations and court watching in multiple locations.

The resulting report, Assembly Line Injustice (2009), found that U.S. immigration courts fell short in providing fair, effective adjudication and often lacked basic tenets of due process. The report’s recommendations were cited by major policy and direct service organizations including Chicago Appleseed & Chicago Council of Lawyers Collaboration for Justice the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) and the American Bar Association (ABA). Our follow-up report, Reimagining the Immigration Court Assembly Line (2012), noted some significant improvements to the immigration court system since 2009 (such as promoting prioritization of cases and the modernization of recording systems), but found that, in most areas, substantial improvements were still lacking.

In 2013, Chicago Appleseed and national Appleseed worked with U.S. Senator Chris Coons to see the approval of an amendment to S.744, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill passed by the U.S. Senate, mandating that immigrants should not have to file Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests in immigration court to receive their own records. This collaboration led to a national 2014 symposium on immigration court reform; ongoing research; development of a pretrial checklist for immigration judges providing for pretrial conferences and improving access to adequate legal representation for immigrants in Chicago; and both a practice guide – Getting Off the Assembly Line: Overcoming Immigration Court Obstacles in Individual Cases (2016) – and training video for immigration lawyers, with the hope to increase the quality and quantity of immigration-focused legal representation.

The Immigration Court Reform Committee of Chicago Appleseed and Chicago Council of Lawyers now works to apply the lessons learned from our work around bond reform in the criminal law context – including the application of an ability to pay standard when using money bond.3 Similarly, the project will compare the use of electronic monitoring (EM) in immigration-related matters with its use in criminal law matters. We have beta-tested our approach by conducting over 220 immigration court observations. Now – with our pro bono and university partners – we have designed an immigration bond hearing observation, interview, and advocacy project.