A new study advised the county that it should take on a series of reforms before expanding the neighborhood courts, raising concerns about structural problems in the courts that it said diminish th…
Last June, a Cook County defendant ate a bagel with cream cheese in a Lawndale community center that doubles as a nontraditional courtroom.“Playing basketball,” the defendant replied to laughs around the room, amending that he has also participated in programming through community services organizations in the hopes of completing the court program that would allow his charges to be dismissed.
The chief judge’s office in a statement said it is “open to collaboration with our criminal justice and community partners on additional alternatives to the traditional court process to the extent the law allows.” The office highlighted an internal study that showed the programs reduced recidivism and said they are open to working with the report’s researchers “in the future on a more rigorous evaluation.
In order to fully conform with the tenets of restorative justice, the report found, the courts should be subject to community oversight rather than primarily under the supervision of judges and prosecutors.
“I think that when implementing restorative justice in the criminal legal system, there are going to be inherent conflicts that arise and in order to mitigate conflicts, it is critical that it is community led, not just community based or located in the community,” said Johnson, director of research and program management at the Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts. “I am absolutely interested in a model that has less involvement from the court system.
For this study, the researchers recorded data from observing court sessions from January through March 2023 and interviewed stakeholders across the system. “This court is a lot different than regular court,” Judge Beatriz Santiago told participants during a court call last May in Avondale. “Here is where the RJCCs are remarkable: Their flexibility and recognition of participants, who are largely young Black and brown men, as human beings unlike many criminal proceedings at other Cook County criminal courts,” the report said.While noting where the system had a positive impact on defendants, the study highlighted weaknesses in the programs that it recommended the county address before taking on a wide expansion.
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