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Your child was arrested in Chicago. What happens next?
It’s the news no parent wants to hear: Your child has just been arrested. It can feel scary, confusing, or overwhelming. Perhaps you don’t know where your child is or what they were arrested for. You might be wondering what happens next and what role police, prosecutors, probation officers, and judges play in the process.
We want to hear about your experiences with these Cook County judges
Every six years, Cook County circuit judges ask voters for another term on the bench in what’s known as a retention vote. (Illinois Appellate Court judges run for retention every 10 years.) This November, more than 75 Cook County judges are up for retention. Injustice Watch researches each Cook...
Handcuffed detainee dies at Cook County Jail after being beaten by guards, records show
A man died at the Cook County Jail last Friday following a confrontation with correctional officers in which he was beaten, body-slammed, and injected with sedatives, records show. Cory Ulmer, 41, was described in an internal report by the sergeant in charge during the incident as “combative” and disobeying his...
5 takeaways from our investigation into youth justice in Chicago
A new Injustice Watch investigation into Chicago’s attempts over two decades to offer social services to kids who are arrested and divert them from the courts revealed an inept, grindingly slow response that falls far short of addressing the problem. Here are some of our key findings:. Only 35...
For kids arrested in Chicago, the city has little to offer
Over the last two decades, Chicago’s political leaders have spent tens of millions on attempts to treat children arrested by police more like children and less like a public safety menace. It is part of a national trend away from the harsher punishments of handcuffs, jail cells, and life-altering...
Cook County Jail’s deadliest year in decades reveals repeated lapses and failed oversight
Content warning: This story contains descriptions of people dying by suicide, homicide, and drug overdose. The day before he died, Daniel Colon appeared in bond court via Zoom from a holding cell at 26th and California. The hearing was only a formality — his fate had already been decided — but as the judge was about to send him off, Colon spoke out of turn.
Cook County plans to replace juvenile detention center with smaller ‘centers of care’
Cook County officials plan to drastically reduce the size of the Juvenile Temporary Detention Center, the nation’s largest juvenile jail, long criticized for its inhumane treatment and ineffective care of vulnerable kids, and replace it with community-based treatment centers. The plans, which have the backing of Cook County Board...
Life in legal limbo: navigating Chicago’s immigration court alone
This story was reported and originally published by Borderless Magazine. Sign up for its newsletter to learn the latest about Chicago’s immigrant communities. With a pile of documents spread out in front of her, Auscena Rodriguez begins to explain why death awaits her in Honduras. And because she doesn’t...
Former Chicago Citi VP sentenced to 30 months for swindling $1.5 million from older clients
A former Citibank wealth advisor who swindled nearly $1.5 million from elderly clients was sentenced to serve 2 ½ years in prison Wednesday after telling a federal judge she “fell short” in her duty to protect her clients. Helen Grace Caldwell, 59, who until 2021 was a...
Democratic Party’s slate sweeps countywide judicial races
With scant competition and extraordinarily low turnout, the Cook County Democratic Party’s chosen candidates dominated the judicial races in Tuesday’s primary election. The party’s picks all seemed destined for victory Wednesday — most of them by substantial margins — after yet another historically uncompetitive primary in which all of the party’s slated candidates were already serving as judges. While more than 100,000 potential mail-in ballots were outstanding as of Tuesday night, the results in countywide races were clear shortly after the polls closed. In most of deep blue Cook County, winning the Democratic Primary virtually assures victory in the general election in November.
Name-change law used to target women running for judge
Ever since she got married in 2012, Ashonta C. Rice has used her given name with her friends, her law clients, and even on many public documents. But last month, Cook County elections officials — and the Illinois First District Appellate Court — ended her candidacy for judge by removing the 45-year-old lawyer’s name from the primary ballot under a law enacted to prevent candidates from duping voters with name changes.
A perennial candidate pins her hopes on her sixth run for judge
On a cold February day, Deidre Baumann walks down a quiet residential block in the Austin neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side with a stack of campaign postcards in one hand and her leather purse filled with buttons in the other. She greets each passerby with a friendly but nervous...
In a hyper-local judicial race, questions about what counts as community representation
On the last Saturday in February, Griselda Vega Samuel set out with two volunteers to introduce herself to voters in the McKinley Park neighborhood on the Southwest Side of Chicago. She walked down the icy sidewalks of Western Avenue, past the 72-acre park that gives the neighborhood its name, then crossed under the large railroad bridge and emerged by a row of modest worker cottages, where she began knocking on doors.
Where to find a print copy of our March 2024 Cook County judicial election guide
We printed 120,000 copies of our judicial election guide and are partnering with other newsrooms, community organizations, local businesses, and civic do-gooders to distribute them across Cook County. Our guide is included as an insert in:. The Feb. 28 editions of the Wednesday Journal, the Riverside-Brookfield Landmark, the Forest Park...
A notorious Chicago cop wants to become a Cook County judge
When he announced his candidacy for Cook County judge, Chicago Police Lt. John D. Poulos touted the opportunity to “continue my public service, which spans 23 years.”. It’s a career mired in controversy and allegations of dishonesty from the start, an Injustice Watch investigation shows. An analysis of...
High-ranking Cook County prosecutor jumps into race for judge
Among the candidates for Cook County Circuit Court judge — mostly obscure outside courthouses and bar associations — Risa Lanier stands out. As second-in-command to Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, Lanier has been central to the operations of an office known for its progressive approach to justice and its fumbling of heater cases that exploded into scandals.
judges
Judicial candidates might be among the most obscure names on your ballot, but these elections come with high stakes. Judges are powerful officials whose choices on the bench touch many aspects of life, from traffic tickets to divorces, lawsuits, evictions, and criminal cases. They have the power to take someone’s freedom, enforce or overturn state laws, and correct or perpetuate injustices. Yet there are few places to get information about the people running for judge. That's why Injustice Watch created this guide to judicial candidates running in Cook County’s primary elections on March 19, 2024.
Questions of race and ethnicity in Illinois Supreme Court race highlight diversity of the Latinx experience
Five years ago, Latinx politicians were a united front calling for diversity in the judiciary and lambasting then-Illinois Supreme Court Justice Anne Burke for appointing a white judge to a majority-Latinx Cook County subcircuit. In 2020, some of those politicians put their support behind Appellate Judge Jesse Reyes, who was...
911 calls on South, West Sides ignored while ‘rapid response’ cops make traffic stops instead
This story was reported and produced by Block Club Chicago. You can subscribe to Block Club’s neighborhood reporting by clicking here. When Lashonda Tart desperately needed the police on a summer evening in 2019, they never showed up. A gunman had fired a hail of bullets that shattered the...
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Injustice Watch is a non-partisan, not-for-profit, multimedia journalism organization that conducts in-depth research exposing institutional failures that obstruct justice and equality.
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