About Us
The Chicago Justice Project, (CJP), is a not-for-profit organization that is dedicated to increasing public access to justice related information. Our guiding principle is that access to information is the foundation for any meaningful reform to the criminal justice system. Law enforcement agencies should be responsible to a community in their combined efforts to maintain a safe and secure environment. Community members cannot be equal partners in crime prevention? when their access to information is restricted.
The CJP aims to increase the public's digital access to records from the various criminal justice agencies in Chicago and Cook County. With increased access, community members and criminal justice reformers would be empowered to help improve the performance of the city's criminal justice agencies. Moreover, direct access to such information would enhance the public debate over the nature of criminal justice reform in Chicago and Cook County.
Only Information can overcome the mistrust and mistreatment that frequently accompanies the actions of criminal justice agencies in many minority communities in Chicago. At present, the city and county's criminal justice agencies restrict access to most of the data they generate. Justice would be better served if the free flow of information were the norm rather than the exception.
We believe increased transparency in the criminal justice system will reduce the amount of abuse that occurs within the system. Removing abusive or corrupt officers from the system should be the goal of both the criminal justice agencies and the community. Restrictions on the information flow strangle off any attempt by community members to track the actions of abusive or corrupt officers; thus, communities throughout Chicago are reliant on the accountability systems within the agencies to perform their jobs well. Recent developments have once again proven that the accountability systems within the system are not living up to their responsibilities. Increasing transparency will also support the work of the many hard working individuals within the system whose work can naturally withstand increased scrutiny. We aim to support both the work of community members and the well-intentioned agents of these criminal justice agencies.
CJP will focus our efforts in two specific areas.
Online Database | Use of the Freedom of Information Act | Our Audiences
The construction of an online database will offer free and unfettered access to criminal justice related information. This is the primary goal of CJP. In the short term, CJP will collect and digitize Cook County and Federal civil court records that involve cases of police abuse and corruption in Chicago. These records will be made available on the internet through a text searchable database that will provide links to downloadable versions of all available documents.
In the long-term, CJP seeks to expand the database with a significant amount of data from the local criminal justice agencies. Each criminal justice agency in Chicago and Cook County creates large volumes of data in regards to the individuals they encounter through their daily work. The CJP seeks to incorporate these large volumes of data into the database. The demographic data alone would allow our audiences the ability to determine the existence of and level of racial bias within the operations of each of the criminal justice agencies.
Use of the Freedom of Information Act
CJP will use the Illinois Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to seek the release of data from the criminal justice agencies in Chicago and Cook County. CJP will seek to increase the scope of what these criminal justice agencies determine is releasable through the Illinois Freedom of Information Act. To date, very little data has been released through the FOIA by the criminal justice agencies in Chicago and Cook County. In fact, the amount of information released under the FOIA has become increasingly restricted. We seek to reverse this trend and greatly expand the extent of public access to data generated by these agencies. CJP will use the full extent of the FOIA to open access, and when necessary the CJP will seek to litigate for open access to records.
We foresee eight major audiences that will be served by our efforts.
1. Citizens
Citizens that interact with the criminal justice agencies and who are seeking additional information about the agents they have come into contact will be able to use the database to access up-to-date information.
2. Community Groups
We envision community groups using the database to verify patterns of behavior that are consistent with the reports the community group is receiving from its members. With access to this database a community group would be empowered to verify to criminal justice authorities, the media, and policy makers the reported police behavior in that community.
3. Policy Makers
Policy makers lack the resources and time to spend tracking the litigation that results from the actions of agents of the criminal justice system. Our database would provide policy makers a free and easily accessible resource that would allow efficient data mining of the litigation records of the criminal justice system. With quick use of the database, the policy maker could instantly create a detailed report of the officers who generate the most litigation and settlements paid out.
4. Politicians
Elected officials often hear about litigation involving agents of the criminal justice agencies through the media. With our database, politicians would be able to sign-up for a monthly updates on new litigation or the status of ongoing litigation. This would allow the politicians access to data they never had access to otherwise. It would remove any third party involvement in the dissemination of the status of the litigation, allowing politicians to make decisions based on the facts being presented in the courtroom and not through the media.
5. Accountability Departments within the criminal justice agencies
The accountability departments within the criminal justice agencies in Chicago/Cook County do not track the litigation involving their agents. Until recent reforms were put into place they were not legally allowed to include court records or transcripts of any kind in their investigations. Even with the recent reforms, the accountability departments lack the resources to track down the needed material; thus, despite the law change, there has been no significant change in the operations of these agencies. Our database would make this testimony available for their efforts.
The statements that officers give internal departments about the circumstances involving an incident can vary significantly from the testimony offered once they are under oath. Easy access to this testimony would allow accountability departments to follow subsequent testimony involving their agents and verify that the statement given to them adequately reflects the circumstances of the incident.
6. Media
When an incident occurs involving a community member and a police officer, the media lacks the ability to quickly verify the litigation history of the officer. This history of litigation found in the CJP database would provide context to a single complaint a journalist may encounter. Journalists may resist reporting a single complaint against an officer or criminal justice agency; however, CJP's system offers computer aids that can enable reporters to investigate credible claims quickly and reliably.
7. Lawyers
Attorneys engaged in litigation, who represent the interests of community members, will be able to use our database to efficiently track an agent's history of complaints and litigation. Also, they will no longer need to track down transcripts of prior testimony because the transcripts will be available for immediate access through our database.
8. Academic Researchers
Academic researchers are constantly in need of new data sources to study the criminal justice system. Our database would provide an up-to-date easily assessable data warehouse that would liberate the researcher from having to spend time and resources hunting down the data from the various different agencies. Our database would allow academic researchers free access to otherwise very expensive and hard to find documents.