Cook County

A college student was convicted of murder for a death he did not cause. Reforms to the controversial law that landed him in prison have not led to his freedom.

Eighteen people died at the jail last year, and half of the deaths featured examples of inadequate supervision and medical care, an Injustice Watch investigation found. Sheriff Tom Dart blames detainees overdosing on drug-laced paper and says he’s addressed the problem, but experts say there’s a renewed need for oversight.

My husband Nick died from COVID-19 in March 2020 while imprisoned pretrial. Joe Biden has said he’d help others like him before it’s too late. But so far, the president has yet to make good on his promises.

A growing body of evidence suggests that it’s possible to reduce or even eliminate the use of money bail without increasing crime.

A coalition of organizations is hoping Michael Toomin, who is also unwilling to implement diversion programs, loses his retention election.

Julie Gunnigle, who is running in Maricopa County, says she supports alternatives to incarceration. But a decade ago in Illinois, she prosecuted a woman for recording phone calls and helped put her in jail for 18 months. 

Prisoners say the jail, which has seen more than 800 confirmed cases, is a ‘death trap’ plagued by sanitary issues and a lack of testing. Their testimonies stand at stark odds with the sheriff’s office, which says it is keeping ‘staff and detainees as safe as possible.’

According to a complaint, police in Oak Lawn, a suburb of Chicago, subjected Tylus Allen Jr. to invasive searches, all of which turned up nothing.

The mayors of New York, Chicago, and San Francisco wrap themselves in the language of progressivism, but when it comes to the criminal legal system they’re Trumpian.

Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx is partnering with a technology nonprofit to expunge tens of thousands of minor marijuana convictions. Other jurisdictions could follow.

In Cook County, Illinois, 99 percent of defendants deemed ‘high risk’ for pretrial violence don’t reoffend.

A new report shows that a progressive approach, like the one advanced by Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, can help decrease jail populations—and crime.

Prosecutors are supremely powerful and have played an outsize role in mass incarceration. What can be done?

With Chicago activist Celia Colón

Cook County has a new contract for juvenile ankle monitors that critics say are an invasion of privacy.

There are more than 2,700 people on electronic monitoring in Cook County, Illinois, alone.

Josie and Clint talk to Cook County’s head prosecutor.

No Cook County judge has lost a retention election in 28 years.

Judges are still setting bail at unaffordable levels, and more people are being held without bond.

On April 11, President Trump signed the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), legislation that would make it possible to hold the operators of websites criminally and civilly liable if third parties were found to have posted advertisements for prostitution. Days before the legislation was enacted, however, federal authorities seized Backpage.com, essentially locking sex […]