News & Commentary

As reports circulate this weekend suggesting that Governor JB Pritzker will sign a major police and criminal justice reform measure into law on Monday, it is important to note that the bill advanced by the Illinois Black Caucus in the lame duck session of the General Assembly early this year enjoys wide public support. The high level of support is meaningful, given that many media outlets continue to refer to the bill’s provisions as “controversial” or worse, echoing the claims of a small number of police unions, law enforcement officials and politicians resistant to any reform.  But voters see this change as much needed and long overdue. 

The below statement can be attributed to Nusrat Choudhury, Legal Director, ACLU of Illinois:

The City of Chicago’s far-reaching surveillance camera system continues to expand and remains largely opaque 10 years after the release of a report first expressing alarm about cameras in the City. In February 2011, the ACLU of Illinois first issued Chicago’s Video Surveillance Cameras: A Pervasive and Unregulated Threat to Our Privacy. At the time of the report, the City’s surveillance camera system linked together around 10,000 private and public cameras. Today, the number of cameras in the system exceeds, by some estimates, more than 30,000.  

The below statement can be attributed to Ghirlandi Guidetti, Staff Attorney with the ACLU of Illinois: “Today’s Auditor General’s report reveals a sad but unsurprising truth: DCFS is not meeting the needs of LGBTQ youth in care as required by its own policy. We regularly hear from youth about the lack of basic respect for their identity as well as the challenges they face accessing affirming medical care. 

A woman diagnosed with opioid use disorder (OUD) is at risk of painful and life-threatening consequences if she is denied medically necessary, physician-prescribed methadone during an upcoming incarceration at DuPage County Jail. The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Illinois, Legal Action Center, and the Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center today filed a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit against the DuPage County Sheriff on behalf of Christine Finnigan to ensure she’s provided with her prescribed medication for addiction treatment (also known as MAT) while she is serving time on a February 2016 DUI.

Earlier this evening, the Chicago Police Department filed a report with the federal court overseeing a consent decree aimed at improving systemic problems in CPD, problems that were detailed in a January 2017 Department of Justice comprehensive review of the Department. 

A federal court in Southern Illinois today denied the Illinois Department of Corrections’ request to dismiss a class-action lawsuit, Monroe v. Jeffreys, filed by five transgender women detained in Illinois prisons to reform the abysmal medical treatment that they and more than one hundred other transgender prisoners receive from the Department in its facilities throughout the state. In 2019, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Nancy Rosenstengel ordered the Illinois Department of Corrections to overhaul its practices and policies for providing treatment to prisoners with gender dysphoria. Despite the Court’s order, the State has not yet implemented the great bulk of the changes the Court ordered.  In response to the decision, John Knight, Director of the LGBTQ & HIV Project at the ACLU of Illinois, issued the following statement: “The Illinois Department of Corrections was given a clear path forward by the Court more than a year ago – a path that would provide the basic medical care that transgender people who have gender dysphoria desperately need. After months of dragging their feet and ignoring the clear needs of our clients in their custody, the State instead sought to get out of the lawsuit, arguing that they were still planning and working toward providing the life-saving care that our clients urgently require. That is wholly inadequate for our clients, who continue to endure significant harm from existing Department policies. We are pleased the Court soundly rejected the State’s effort to escape its constitutional duty to promptly reform its health care system and hope to have a chance soon to prove our case at trial.”

Two men currently detained at the Chicago Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) are asking a federal court to force the Federal Bureau of Prisons to take immediate steps to stem the spread of the coronavirus in the facility. Ricky Price and Kevin Conway are among the more than 500 persons detained at the MCC, a facility designed for only 400 detainees. It is clear that this overcrowding, which has caused double-bunking in small cells and the housing of up to 100 persons in dormitory-like facilities, has facilitated the spread of COVID-19.

Today, we celebrate President Biden’s executive order lifting the ban on transgender service members in the military. The President’s action reverses the cruel and arbitrary ban imposed by the previous administration nearly four years ago.