CJP Staff
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Tracy Siska, President Email: tsiska@chicagojustice.org Biography |
Joey Lipari, Vice President Email: jlipari@chicagojustice.org Biography |
Tracy Siska received his Bachelor of Arts in Communications from the Loyola University of Chicago in 1995. He is currently a MA/Ph.D student at the University of Illinois at Chicago studying criminal justice.
He has been researching issues involved in the criminal justice system in Chicago and Cook County for ten years. At the Better Government Association of Chicago, he worked closely with some of the best investigative reporters in the city and built relationships with reporters from both local television stations and local newspapers and producers from national newscasts like Prime Time Live.
He has visited various communities throughout the city and Illinois researching the actions of various criminal justice agencies. In a three-year research project investigating the actions of the criminal justice agencies in Decatur, IL he uncovered many misdeeds by local officials.
He began producing radio at WLUW during his undergraduate studies. About three years ago, he decided to create “Crime and Punishment” the public affairs radio show that covers the criminal justice system in Illinois. His guests have included the late Paul Simon, Lake County State’s Attorney Mike Weller, Cook County Public Defender Rita Fry, and Shaunta McGee, a legal and medical advocate from Rape Victim Advocates, among others.
Following the creation of the radio show, he recognized other ways technology could contribute to coverage of policing issues. The Chicago Justice Project aims to provoke a dialogue on important issues facing the criminal justice system in Chicago and Illinois. After a decade of research experiences, he has learned that there was not a single organization driving the media and the police into honest discussions about the criminal justice system. The CJP seeks to resolve that.
Joseph Lipari is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Illinois—Chicago. His dissertation, Policing the Color Line, examines the relationship between African Americans and the police in Chicago from World War II through the 1980s. Lipari teaches African American history at the University of Illinois and Harold Washington College. He has also taught a world history course on Slavery and the Atlantic World System at the University of Illinois. He received his B.A. in Anthropology from Louisiana State University in 2000 and his M.A. from the University of Illinois in 2004.
He has three encyclopedia articles published in Encyclopedia of U.S. Labor and Working-Class History, edited by Eric Arnesen and published by Routledge press in 2007. He has also served as a researcher and expert witness for a Chicago law firm handling cases of police abuse dating back to the 1950s. A native of south Louisiana, Lipari hopes to return to the New Orleans area to teach and publish on the relationship between African Americans and the police in New Orleans.