Chicago Justice Podcast

On today’s episode we feature a discussion about the real cost of the Chicago Police Department and how the City of Chicago uses corrupt budget practices to hide some of the cost from taxpayers and the media. These practices are not new to the city but Mayor Lightfoot’s administration has done nothing to correct them. Thus, like other corrupt mayors before her she hides the true cost f...

On today’s pod we focus on the problem of the absence of news and how humans fill that hole with their beliefs rather than facts. We dive deep in to these issues with Professor Sandy Goldberg from Northwestern University’s Department of Philosophy. Goldberg recently authored an opinion editorial in the Chicago Tribune focused on the dangers posed when people fill the whole left by a la...

On today’s pod we sit down with former Inspector General for the City of Chicago, Joe Ferguson. We discuss a wide range of topics from the city’s failure to release investigative reports generated by his former office to city council corruption to why there is not a single Inspector General Office with oversight over all of the city departments. Ferguson left office last year after a 1...

On today’s pod we take a look at recent reporting by the Better Government Association that focuses on the city’s Anti-violence efforts and the inability of leadership to detail specific steps they have taken to reduce gun violence. This inability to detail their anti-violence efforts hasn’t stopped leadership from claiming those mysterious efforts have had an immediate impact on...

As crime & violence increased in many cities in America as the pandemic took hold in 2020 the media coalesced around a narrative that the increase was driven mostly by an increase in youth offending. This narrative about youth offending seemed to fit the circumstances as the pandemic got worse schools shut down and there was a a belief that there would be a huge increase in unsupervised youth...

Today we feature a discussion with newly appointed Chicago Inspector General Deborah Witzburg. Witzburg previously held a variety of positions within the office including most recently being the Deputy Inspector General for Public Safety. It is in this role she was able to drive the activities of the office and have the office start actually making an impact on the administration of justice within...

Today we focus on the work of the Final 5 Campaign as they push to force the closure of Illinois’ juvenile youth centers. According to the Campaign’s website 10 years ago the centers across the state used to house as many as 1,200 youths in their 10 facilities. The reductions in the number of youths incarcerated is due mostly to changes in Illinois law have put a stop to housing those...

A recent investigation by Pro Publica and the Chicago Tribune revealed that many schools within Illinois are ticketing students for rather common misbehavior in schools. Much of the ticketing either skirts state law or outright breaks it as schools are not allowed to ticket students and in 2019 the state outlawed completely the practice of ticketing students for truancy. The change in state law di...

The Chicago Park District sex scandal should have been an opportunity for leadership in Chicago to rise to the occasion to protect victims from being re-victimized and from others from not being victimized at all. Instead, Chicago got exactly what most Chicagoans would expect. Political leadership at the Park District and at city hall chose instead to go in to coverup mode or outright deny their p...

On the show today we feature a discussion with 22nd Ward Alderperson Michael Rodriguez on the topic of criminal justice in Chicago. Our wide ranging discussion cover topics from examining Mayor Lightfoot’s record on police reform, the Mayor’s inability to bring the George Floyd protestors to the table, and the recent move by city officials to extend the curfew for minors. The Mayor des...

The long lasting FOIA battle for historical records related to police accountability within the Chicago Police Department made its way to the Illinois Supreme Court. The arguments in front of the Illinois Supreme Court stem from the Chicago Police Department failing to respond within the 5 days required by law to a request for records under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act. By law this fail...

On today’s how we discuss three examples of media coverage of crime and violence in Chicago that perfectly demonstrate just how bad the coverage of these issues is in Chicago. There is little doubt that the tried and true methods of covering crime and violence in Chicago on a daily basis serves nobody’s interest but the outlets and journalists’ themselves. The internet has served...

On today’s episode we sit down with 49th Ward Alderperson Maria Hadden for a wide ranging conversation about justice issues in Chicago. Hadden coming in to office at the same time as Mayor Lightfoot understands the impact the pandemic had on public officials and how the pandemic transformed their first terms in office. We start the episode by asking Hadden to give Mayor Lightfoot a grade on...

There is at times some good journalism that makes way through the it bleeds it leads dribble that comes out everyday all day in the Chicago media. In today’s show we talk about 2 fine examples of good journalism from WBEZ and the Chicago Tribune. These two examples are not the investigative journalism that we would usually feature but they come from the unlikely source of more traditional be...

On today’s show we feature a interview with Dr. Joseph Richardson who is the Joel and Kim Feller Professor and MPower Professor of African-American Studies and Anthropology at the University of Maryland and the Executive Producer of the Life After the Gunshot. We discuss this incredible platform that Dr. Richardson created to launch a discussion about what life is like after the gunshot. Thi...

In today’s episode, we cover a few examples of both journalistic and political malpractice in Chicago. There is little doubt that the Chicago media routinely generates proof of malpractice when covering the Chicago Police Department. Not to be undone, politicians throughout Illinois make sure to keep up their malpractice numbers on an almost daily basis. This unfortunately forces residents of the...

On this episode we discuss recent developments in the ongoing misconduct saga of Chicago Police Officer James Hunt. You will remember him from a viral video where he tells a group of black males that he “kills mother fuckers”. The video of Hunt saying this and then getting out of his patrol car to continue harassing the men went viral as the video was being uploaded live to the interne...

In this episode we feature an interview with Prof. Todd Clear from the School of Criminal justice at Rutgers University. Clear is one of the top voices in criminology as his resume includes stints as a Distinguished Professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, president of The American Society of Criminology, The Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, and The Association of Doctoral Programs...

On today’s show we feature a discussion with Katherine Large who authored CJP’s new report on the transparency of Chicago Police Department and police accountability system data. Large is a 3rd year student at the University of Chicago and former CJP intern. The report she authored is titled “Transparency and Accountability of the CPD: 1980-2021” which takes an in-depth loo...

Our guest today is Albert Fox Chan who is the founder and Executive Director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP). The organization fights to end discriminatory surveillance by the New York Police Department and police departments across the country. According to Chan STOP was set up as an abolition focused organization because they don’t believe domestic police department...

Alderperson Raymond Lopez, 15th ward, is a frequent critic of Mayor Lightfoot’s policies and certainly her appointment of David Brown to the position of Superintendent of the Chicago Police Department. Alderperson Lopez is regularly on Twitter unleashing board side attacks against almost every policy that Superintendent Brown has announced since arriving. Unfortunately for everyone Alderpers...

Chicago Alderperson Scott Waguespack, 32nd Ward , joins the pod today to discuss the absolute abhorrent sexual harassment, sexual assault, and rape scandal at the Chicago Park District. A scandal driven the the public consciousness by the stellar reporting by WBEZ’s Dan Mihalopoulos. What is clear from Mihalopoulos’ reporting is that the Park District leadership throughout the ranks is...

On today’s show we discuss the gunshot detection system ShotSpotter with Alejandro Ruizesesparza from the Cancel ShotSpotter Coalition and Jonathan Manes, an attorney in the MacArthur Justice Center’s Illinois Office. Our discussion focuses on why activists and communities are rising up to confront the Chicago Police Department on their use of ShotSpotter. The scary truth about ShotSpotter i...

The first episode of season 2 of the Chicago Justice Podcast drops on Wednesday Jan 5th. The first episode will feature Jonathan Manes and Alejandro Ruizesesparza from the LucyPparsons Lab. We will be discussing a gun shot identification system called ShotSpotter, now it works or doesn’t work, and the Chicago Police Department secretly extending the contract with ShotSpotter months ahead of...

Today on the Chicago Justice Podcast we sit down for a conversation with Cook County Public Defender Sharone Mitchell, Jr. to discuss the state of the administration of justice in Chicago and Cook County. Mitchell Jr.’s office employees over 650 staff and handles around 100,000 criminal cases, including both misdemeanor and felony, per year. Mitchell Jr. unsurprisingly is a strong supporter...