Latest News - Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts

Introducing the Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts

The Chicago Council of Lawyers founded the Fund for Justice in 1970 as part of their mission to help lawyers demand fairness and effectiveness in the justice system. In 1997, Fund for Justice began its collaboration with the Appleseed Network and Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice was...

Letter to IDPH: Give People Incarcerated in Illinois Priority Access to the COVID-19 Vaccine

On December 21, 2020, Chicago Appleseed, the Chicago Council of Lawyers, the Coalition to End Money Bond, and over 60 other community-based organizations throughout Illinois sent a letter to Dr. Ngozi Ezike, Director of the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH), requesting that people incarcer...

We analyzed 536,000 CPD arrest records spanning a period from 2014 to 2020. Here’s what we found.

INCOMMUNICADO DETENTION Arrested and deprived of communication without being charged with a crime — incommunicado detention in Chicago. In film and on TV, stories about police and criminals have long made for captivating story lines and entertaining ways to stream episodes until 4 am. In a ty...

“Bail Reform” Worked in Cook County; Now, Pass the Pretrial Fairness Act and End Money Bond for Everyone in Illinois

A new report from nationally renowned criminal justice experts at Loyola University Chicago, Don Stemen and David Olson, shows that Cook County’s efforts to reduce the use of money bail and release more people pretrial did not cause any rise in crime. The report, “Dollars and Sense in Cook...

Time to Reconvene the Supreme Court Task Force on Court Costs, Fines, and Fees

In 2016, the Illinois Supreme Court’s Statutory Court Fee Task Force released a report finding that the state’s “byzantine system” of court costs, fines, and fees varied wildly by county and disproportionately impacted low-income Illinois residents. These findings pushed forward legislation – the Cr...