Last June, a Cook County defendant ate a bagel with cream cheese in a Lawndale community center that doubles as a nontraditional courtroom.
“What have you been doing?” the judge asked.
“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 experimental court is one of three restorative justice courts in Cook County which divert defendants from the traditional justice system in the hopes of reducing crime and creating a more equitable system. Now, a new study is advising the county to take on a series of reforms before expanding such neighborhood courts, raising concerns about structural problems that it said diminish the overall impact of the program.
The report by the Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts and the Chicago Council of Lawyers is the first external study of Cook County’s restorative justice courts, which have generated excitement for their potential but have thus far largely been unstudied outside of the court system’s own evaluations.
The appraisal indicates that the county has work ahead to create a system that fully reaches its goal of better outcomes for defendants, victims and the community than they would find in the traditional criminal justice system.
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.”
“I think they right now are serving an important role in reducing the harm of the legal system on people … these courts aren’t perfect but they have a huge, incredible impact on preventing felony convictions for these first time low-level offenses for young folks,” said Naomi Johnson, one of the report’s researchers and authors. “But there does need to be considerable reform undertaken in order to be better aligned with restorative justice, if the court wants to call itself restorative justice community court.”
The courts — located in neighborhood settings away from the bustling Leighton Criminal Court Building on the Southwest Side — seek to focus not on punishment but on trying to help the defendant atone for the harm they have done to people or the community. Upon successful completion of the program, participants have their charges dismissed and arrest expunged.
The Tribune spent time observing the courts last summer, noting a more casual atmosphere where judges built relationships with defendants and checked on progress, though the level of engagement from the participants varied.
In the six years since the county opened the first community court in North Lawndale in 2017 under the watchful eyes of stakeholders, it has added two more, in Englewood and Avondale, accepting young adult participants accused of low-level, nonviolent crimes.
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.
Among other concerns raised by the report:
- Onerous requirements that at times made it difficult for participants to fulfill other work and life obligations
- Inconsistent training for court administrators and officials
- Significant discretion by prosecutors to determine who can participate in the program, even among defendants who meet eligibility criteria
- Program participants who are mostly charged with offenses typically considered victimless, despite a core principle of restorative justice being making amends to a victim
- A lack of community participation, in part due to opaqueness about the programs, with little information available about court calls
The report laid out a series of long- and short-term recommendations the courts should undertake before expanding the program, though the county has already announced one new location in south suburban Sauk Village.
“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.”
External review
The organizations launched the study to observe ways in which Cook County’s courts “align with and/or depart from” general restorative justice principles.
The report’s release comes months after the chief judge’s office released an internal study that showed participants of the restorative justice courts were charged with a new offense less often that their peers charged with similar offenses in the regular court system.
About 13% of participants who had been released from the program for at least a year were charged with a new offense, compared with about 65% in a peer control group of defendants with similar characteristics and charges.
While promising, the courts would likely need further studies to draw broad and enduring conclusions. The report from Appleseed and Chicago Council of Lawyers notes that there is limited research nationally on outcomes of restorative justice practices in courts, and frames its own study as exploratory rather than a fully comprehensive evaluation. Still, it called the recidivism results from the internal study one of the “major benefits” of the program.
For this study, the researchers recorded data from observing court sessions from January through March 2023 and interviewed stakeholders across the system.
The report notes that they struggled to interview many participants, a shortcoming of the undertaking, overall.
“Our research aimed to understand how community members and stakeholders feel about how these courts operate and where they may be able to improve,” the report said.
‘Different than a regular court’
The courts seek to provide a gentler version of justice, one that forces defendants to acknowledge the harm their actions have caused, while also providing social services and dismissing the case if the program is completed. Officials hope the courts reduce recidivism and tackle entrenched systemic problems that contribute to the city’s gun violence.
Participants attend peace circles, a confidential forum where they talk about the crime, the impact on the victim or community and how to repair the harm. They discuss progress toward establishing housing, education or jobs during court calls, and sometimes display art projects or letters to family members or people hurt by their actions.
“This court is a lot different than regular court,” Judge Beatriz Santiago told participants during a court call last May in Avondale.
Individual hearings were sometimes productive, with the defendant relaying progress in finding a job or housing, or enrolling in drug treatment or educational opportunities. Other times, judges and court staff prodded participants for not answering their phones or missing appointments.
The court calls sometimes started late, or were moved or canceled without notice to the public, though the court delays are found across the court system and not unique to the restorative justice courts.
The Appleseed report noted that the courts stand out for its more humane treatment of defendants, in contrast to hearings in the traditional courts.
“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.
Reforms needed
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.
A critical flaw in the system, the report found, is the lack of involvement from the community, noting that court calls, though open to the public, are not publicized and difficult to find information about online.
Traditional restorative justice principles provide that defendants engage with the victims, but many of the cases diverted to the courts are gun possession cases with no identifiable victim. The report recommended that in the long term, the courts should expand eligibility to people who are accused of offenses considered violent.
“Interestingly, at no point in its history has the RJCC worked primarily, or even substantially, with cases involving a personal victim,” the report said.
The report recommends that the court implement a system of community oversight, which would offer checks and balances on the involvement of judges and prosecutors.
“We posit that absolute community oversight of the RJCCs is necessary for the court to be both a restorative justice court and a community court,” the report said. “Without community oversight, these are simply neighborhood-based courts that implement some restorative practices.”
The report also criticized the courts for an at times long and arduous process, at odds with the program’s mission of setting defendants on a better path when long and inflexible court calls interfered with their ability to work.
The court calls were often subject to delays when administrative work that preceded the call ran over time. The calls themselves, also ran long.
“Participants, who often work full time or have family obligations, struggle to attend RJCC court calls and the time taken out of their day can have a negative impact on their employment or other responsibilities,” the report said.
The report also recommended that court staff receive “ongoing, rigorous, community-led restorative justice training,” finding while studying the program that some actions and behaviors in court were inconsistent with the principles of restorative justice.
