Authors: Steve Bogira
11
Object of the courthouse staffers’ wrath:
“Cermak’s folly still there after 40 years,”
Chicago’s American
, April 1, 1969.
12
Air-conditioning:
“County approves courts renovations,”
Chicago Tribune
, Aug. 21, 1973.
13
Young lawyers:
“Concentrate courts in Loop, head of bar urges,”
Chicago Tribune
, Sept. 3, 1963.
14
Campaigned repeatedly:
“Ask criminal court shift to Loop area,”
Chicago Tribune
, June 5, 1959; “Crime courts in Loop a hope—for future,” ibid., Sept. 13, 1963; “Don’t lose the chance to consolidate courts,”
Chicago Daily News
, March 13, 1961.
15
“Certain elements”: Chicago Tribune
, Sept. 13, 1963.
16
“Well-heeled tenants”:
“Remote court location worsens crime problem,”
Chicago Daily News
, Feb. 22, 1960.
17
At the cornerstone ceremony:
Chicago Crime Commission,
Criminal Justice
(September–October 1927), p. 4.
18
Overbooked:
“County jail: a study of frustration from the start,”
Chicago Tribune
, Dec. 18, 1967.
19
“Crime flourishes”: Challenge of Crime in a Free Society
, President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, 1967, p. 279.
20
“Individual instances”; “not designed”:
Ibid. p. 6.
21
“To eliminate slums”:
Ibid., p. 15.
22
“Better candidates”: Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders
, 1968, p. 130.
23
“Unprecedented levels”:
Ibid., p. 2.
24
“Incontestable”: Courts
, National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals (1973), p. 1.
25
“If New York”; no new prisons:
Ibid., p. 352.
26
“Lock up”:
“Remarks by Governor James R. Thompson on the Attorney General’s Task Force on Violent Crime,”
Northwestern School of Law Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology
(fall 1982), p. 867. (Thompson made his remarks in October 1981.)
27
Six hundred state and fifty federal prisons:
“Justice Expenditure and Employment in the United States, 1999,” Bureau of Justice Statistics, February 2002, p. 7.
28
Huge expenditures:
State government spending on corrections rose from $6 billion in 1982 to $34 billion by 1999; federal corrections spending rose from $541 million to $4 billion in the same period. Ibid., p. 3.
29
Has quadrupled:
In 1980 there were 502,000 inmates; “Prisoners in 1994,” Bureau of Justice Statistics, August 1995. In 2003 there were 2,086,000 inmates; “Prisoners in 2003,” Bureau of Justice Statistics, November 2004.
30
It’s not clear:
“Despite three decades of study and a nationwide quasi experiment of unprecedented scale, it is still uncertain how large an effect prisons have on the crime rate.” William Spelman, “What Recent Studies Do (and Don’t) Tell Us About Imprisonment and Crime,”
University of Chicago Crime and Justice
(2000), p. 419.
31
Waxed and waned:
The violent crime rate peaked in 1981, declined through 1986, rose again until 1993, and has since dropped dramatically. “Criminal Victimization, 2003,” National Crime Victimization Study, Bureau of Justice Statistics, September 2004.
32
Incarceration rate has risen every year:
“Prisoners in 2002,” Bureau of Justice Statistics, July 2003; “Prisoners in 1994,” Bureau of Justice Statistics, August 1995.
33
Persistence of poverty:
Ted Robert Gurr,
Violence in America
, vol. 1. (Sage Publications, 1989), p. 15.
34
The proportion of young males in the population:
James Alan Fox, “Demographics and U.S. Homicide,” in
The Crime Drop in America
(Cambridge University Press, 2000).
35
The prevalence of guns:
Franklin E. Zimring and Gordon Hawkins,
Crime Is Not the Problem: Lethal Violence in America
(Oxford University Press, 1997).
36
The emergence of certain drugs:
Bruce Johnson, Andrew Golub, and Eloise Dunlap, “The Rise and Decline of Hard Drugs, Drug Markets, and Violence in Inner-City New York,” in
The Crime Drop in America
.
37
“The biggest growth industry”:
“Courts undoing 49-year-old ‘joke,’ ”
Chicago Sun-Times
, April 3, 1978.
38
More than doubled; doubled again; leveled off:
Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County.
39
For decades:
Details on the jail’s growth and the cost of housing inmates are from Cook County Department of Corrections and from “Crowding at the Cook County Jail,” Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority, October 1989.
40
Tractor Works:
“Tractor Works: 50-Year History, 1910–1960,” undated article from the archives of Navistar International Corporation.
41
But in 1969:
International Harvester Company press release, May 15, 1969.
42
Illinois spent $100 million; more than a billion; furnishes two-thirds; Eighty percent:
Illinois Department of Corrections data.
43
Whose population is 26 percent:
In the year 2000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
THREE · BAGGAGE
1
Robbery of a toll collection driver:
“Indict two cops in coin heist,”
Chicago Tribune
, Dec. 24, 1977; August Locallo interview.
2
“Predisposed toward criminals”:
“Rivals Phelan, Pincham trade bitter attacks,”
Chicago Sun-Times
, March 14, 1990.
3
“It is essential”:
“Judges also have a duty to dissent,”
Chicago Tribune
, March 28, 1990.
4
Coasted:
Locallo—69,403; Republican Jeffrey Gunchick—41,143.
Chicago Tribune
, Nov. 5, 1992.
5
Appeared before a Democratic Party subcommittee:
“County Dems launch judicial slating process,”
Chicago Daily Law Bulletin
, Nov. 24, 1997; “Dems List Judicial Slate,”
Chicago Lawyer
, Jan. 1998.
6
Comiskey Park:
Since renamed U.S. Cellular Field.
7
“Bunch of thugs”:
“Teens deny hate attack,”
Chicago Sun-Times
, March 25, 1997.
8
“To join together”:
“Mayor’s message to city on race: ‘There is no place in Chicago for hatred,’ ”
Chicago Sun-Times
, March 27, 1997.
9
Raised $100,000:
“Breakfast may be wakeup call,”
Chicago Tribune
, April 22, 1997.
10
“We African-Americans”:
William Hampton,
Chicago Defender
, April 28, 1997.
11
“No justice”:
“Hopes rise for teen a week after beating; victim stirs from his coma as 150 March in Bridgeport,”
Chicago Tribune
, March 29, 1997.
12
“Race chasm”:
“Beating a blunt reminder of Chicago race chasm,”
Los Angeles Times
, March 26, 1997.
13
“Ugly side”:
“Chicago neighborhood reveals an ugly side,”
New York Times
, March 27, 1997.
14
“A savage crime”:
“Chicago’s Last Hope,”
Time
, April 7, 1997.
15
“Savage”:
Clinton’s weekly radio address, March 29, 1997.
16
Extended his best wishes:
“President calls Lenard’s family in hospital,”
Chicago Sun-Times
, March 31, 1997.
17
Jesus’s crucifixion:
“Beating topic of Clinton talk, Jackson rally,”
Chicago Sun-Times
, March 30, 1997.
18
Lenard was sent home; “Many kids”:
“Clark in spotlight of old, new neighbors,”
Chicago Tribune
, May 2, 1997.
19
“Hang”:
“Three suspects in Clark beating indicted; protesters at court in alleged hate crime,”
Chicago Tribune
, April 24, 1997.
20
“We ask”:
“Three Bridgeport youths indicted,”
Chicago Sun-Times
, April 24, 1997.
21
Whites committed:
Twenty-three blacks and 15 whites were killed; 342 blacks and 178 whites were reported injured. Almost all of the fighting was interracial, but 154 blacks and 75 whites were arrested, and 81 blacks and 47 whites were indicted. Chicago Commission on Race Relations,
The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot
. (University of Chicago Press, 1922), p. 35.
22
Decades of beatings:
Arnold R. Hirsch,
Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940–1960
(Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 40–99.
23
Beatings and shootings of blacks by white cops:
Ibid. p. 50; Dempsey J. Travis,
An Autobiography of Black Politics
(Urban Research Press, 1987), pp. 285–89.
24
“Considerable restraint”:
“Hanrahan backs police,”
Chicago Tribune
, Dec. 9, 1969.
25
A federal grand jury: Report of the January 1970 Grand Jury
, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois, pp. 104–6.
26
County prosecutors dropped the charges:
Ibid., p. 111.
27
None of the police officers:
Twelve policemen, along with Hanrahan and one of his assistants, were charged with conspiracy in the Panther raid, but they were all acquitted. “Hanrahan, 13 others freed in raid case,”
Chicago Tribune
, October 26, 1972.
28
A profusion:
John Conroy,
Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People: The Dynamics of Torture
(Knopf, 2000).
29
“Systematic”:
“Special Project Conclusion Report,” Office of Professional Standards, Chicago Police Department, Sept. 28, 1990. In 1999, Senior U.S. District Judge Milton Shadur declared it “common knowledge” that officers at the station had “regularly engaged in the physical abuse and torture of prisoners to extract confessions.”
U.S. v. Maxwell
, 37 F. Supp. 1078, at 1094.
30
Judges commented:
In a murder case, “If there were a colored man in the [jury] box he would soon be put out,” Judge Hugo Pam said. Judge Charles Thomson said that if one was to ask a prosecutor why he dismissed a “colored” man from a jury, “I don’t think he would give you any reason.” Chicago Commission on Race Relations,
The Negro in Chicago
, p. 352.
31
“Where a white man”:
Ibid., p. 353.
32
Reversed two: People v. Kirkendoll
, 415 Ill. 404 (1953);
People v. Crump
, 5 Ill. 2d 251 (1955).
33
First used: Campbell v. the People
, 16 Ill. 16 (1854).
34
Thanks mainly:
But it apparently wasn’t only prosecutors who were keeping blacks off juries in earlier years. Responding to a survey in the late 1950s, the public defender’s office here reported an arrangement a “number of years” before by prosecutors and defense lawyers “to excuse all negroes by agreement.”
Jack Greenberg,
Race Relations and American Law
(Columbia University Press, 1959), pp. 406–7.
35
“Case after case”:
Appellate Justice William White, special concurring opinion in
People v. Bonilla
, 117 Ill. App. 3d 1041 (1983).
36
Decision in 1986: Batson v. Kentucky
, 476 U.S. 79.