Stories by Blair Paddock

Host Brandis Friedman and audience members put questions to a Chicago Police Department official, leaders of local anti-violence nonprofits and community-police organizations to try and assess the current state of community and police relationships. 

The switch to digitized mail for incarcerated people has had little impact on the drug exposures the policy sought to stop, according to new data from the Illinois Department of Corrections.

Under two different Illinois laws, people charged with sex offenses are subject to indefinite detention. Some people who’ve only been charged with a crime — never convicted or sentenced — can spend the rest of their lives at a correctional center.

At Heartland, immigrant children who crossed the U.S. border have received residential and medical care, education and legal services before being connected with permanent homes.

Over the past five years, 59 petitions have been filed with the Illinois Department of Corrections from those incarcerated in Illinois state prisons requesting transfers all over the world. Only two people have been approved, and two more are pending.

A pair of Illinois bills seeks to clarify language around sentencing credits, aiming to ensure that after program completion, judges can issue sentence credit, whether it was completed in a state prison or a county jail.

The Trump administration must temporarily unfreeze about $2 billion in federal funds for Chicago Transit Authority projects, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.

On Friday, the CTA filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Federal Transit Administration seeking an immediate restoration of the funds for the two projects.

Incumbent Toni Preckwinkle has spent the past 16 years as board president. Running against her was Chicago Ald. Brendan Reilly, who has represented the city’s 42nd Ward since 2007.

Four Republican candidates ran for a chance to unseat Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker in the Nov. 3 general election.

More than 100 people gathered in Sheridan’s gymnasium, about 70 miles southwest of Chicago. Students of the Northwestern Prison Education Program, which offers undergraduate degrees to men incarcerated at Sheridan, their families and professors had the opportunity to speak with Mayor Brandon Johnson.

“Just because we are going through something with our criminal past does not have anything to do with our reproductive rights,” said Amy Hicks, who was previously incarcerated at Logan Correctional Center and is now suing the Illinois Department of Corrections.

Due to federal funding cuts, the nonprofit Heartland Human Care Services is closing three Chicago shelters that have been used to house unaccompanied minors coming to the U.S.

The county’s Restorative Justice Community Courts reroute young people with nonviolent charges from criminal courts to an alternative program. Upon completion, the charge is dismissed.

A new project is underway with the goal of holding accountable federal immigration agents accused of misconduct. Former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is behind the initiative called the ICE Accountability Project, which allows community members to submit their own documentation of incidents.

A week after Renee Good was fatally shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis, her family hired the Chicago-based law firm that also represented George Floyd’s family to conduct a civil investigation.

Since 2013, the prison abolition collective has processed mail from largely LGBTQ people incarcerated in Illinois. How those materials are delivered has recently changed. 

Four Illinois sheriff’s offices defied the state’s sanctuary laws and transferred individuals into Department of Homeland Security custody in 2024, according to a new report.

In March 2024, Gov. JB Pritzker announced the closure and rebuild of both Stateville and Logan correctional centers, allocating $900 million for the projects. The decision came after a state-commissioned report found that the two prisons accumulated more than $402 million in deferred maintenance costs.

For over 50 years, the Chicago-based organization has worked nationally on anti-poverty advocacy by litigating, shaping policy and training networks of lawyers, community leaders and advocates.

U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman on Wednesday granted a temporary restraining order requiring ICE and the Department of Homeland Security to provide clean bedding mats, toiletries and at least three full meals per day to detainees at the Broadview detention center.

In an October interview with a downstate radio station, state Sen. Terri Bryant said she gave a list of undocumented individuals currently being held in Illinois state prisons to Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem.

To ascertain if county jails are complying with the state’s TRUST Act, WTTW News sent Freedom of Information Act requests to each of the 90 county jails in Illinois to obtain copies of intergovernmental agreements with the U.S. Marshals Service.

The Department of Homeland Security is looking to purchase more buildings in Chicago to operate out of, Secretary Kristi Noem said Thursday.

Beginning immediately, non-privileged mail will be opened and inspected for contraband, scanned in color, then be uploaded to an individual’s tablet, the department announced Monday. Nearly all incarcerated people now have tablets, according to the department.

“Gender roles have converged in the workplace,” author Corinne Low said. “They haven’t converged in the home.”