The System at Work

JUSTICE SYSTEM MAP: FELONY CASES

Criminal Investigations
Beginning with arrest and ending in bond court, criminal investigations happen within a short time span of a couple days.

Criminal investigation events are like the faucet feeding the courts and jail. The most effective way to reduce the use of jail is to filter and restrict the inflow of cases from these stages.

Tracking these events from year to year is crucial to understanding and strategically managing the scope and character of criminal justice responses to crime in Cook County.

Explore each of these events in more detail to gain a better understand of what happens to these cases and the composition of crimes with which people are charged.

Court Adjudication
Cases which are not filtered out during the criminal investigation process lead to the court adjudication process. Beginning with arraignment in court, the time it takes to adjudicate a case to a determination of guilt varies widely.

Because 90% of people in jail are waiting for their cases to be resolved, the most effective way to reduce the use of jail during the adjudication process is to reduce the time it takes to resolve cases.

The time it takes to resolve cases also determines the extent to which courts can keep up with the influx of new cases each year. Courts must resolve at least as many cases as new arraignments it faces each year, or the backlog of cases carried forward to the next year will increase.

Explore each of these events in more detail to gain a better understanding of what happens to these cases, their charge composition, and how long they take to go through the court adjudication process.

Jail Populations
Most people are admitted to or released from jail during the criminal investigation process, some more than once. How long they stay in jail is determined by the time it takes to adjudicate their cases in court.

The higher the ratio of yearly admissions to average daily jail population, the more the jail is being used to cycle many people through for short periods of time; while the lower the ratio is, the more the jail is being used to confine people facing more serious charges.

Tracking these events from year to year is crucial to understanding the role of incarceration in the Cook County criminal justice system.

Explore each of these events in more detail to gain a better understanding of the characteristics of people in jail and how long they are spending locked up.

With minor exceptions, criminal investigation and court adjudication events data for 2016 are calculated from the Cook County State’s Attorney case-level data obtained through FOIA by the Chicago Data Cooperative. Jail population events data come are calculated or come directly from the Cook County Sheriff’s Office.

FELONY ARRESTS

Most felony arrests are reviewed by the State’s Attorney’s Office, while a lesser number—comprised mostly of Class 4 narcotics cases—proceed as criminal complaints from the police. Cases which undergo felony review by the State’s Attorney’s Office are either approved and move on in the adjudication process, or are dropped.

Frequent Arrestee data used to create the ‘More Info’ popup came from the Chicago Police Department Portal for arrests in 2014 and are therefore not in precise synch with the rest of the data for 2016.

CRIMINAL COMPLAINTS

Most criminal complaints undergo preliminary hearings. Most of these result in a filing of information and continue on in the adjudication process. A lesser number—mostly Class 4 narcotics cases—are dropped with no filing of information. Some criminal complaints are superseded by indictment by the State’s Attorney’s Office. These cases proceed through a grand jury process. A small number of cases are diverted from further adjudication to alternative deferred prosecution programs.

These figures are calculated from the Cook County State’s Attorney case-level data obtained through FOIA by the Chicago Data Cooperative. They encompass cases with an arrest date in 2016 and at least one charge. Charge classes are assigned by the most severe class of charge on a case. Cases classified as having a filing of information have either a preliminary hearing resulting in a finding of no probable cause or plea of guilty or had no preliminary hearing result and subsequent events. Cases with no filing of information have either a preliminary hearing with a result of no probable cause, nolle, or transfer to misdemeanor court or a preliminary hearing with no recorded result and no subsequent events. Cases classified as superceded by indictment include only cases with no indicated filing of information.

FELONY FILINGS

Most filings of information proceed to arraignment (through bond court if appropriate). A lesser number are superseded by indictment by the State’s Attorney (who also initiate a small number of indictments at this stage) and continue through a grand jury process. Together with cases which were superseded by indictment at the criminal complaints stage, all indictments (voted as true bills by the grand jury) proceed to arraignment.

These figures are calculated from the Cook County State’s Attorney case-level data obtained through FOIA by the Chicago Data Cooperative. They encompass cases with a preliminary hearing date in 2016 and at least one charge. Charge classes are assigned by the most severe class of charge on a case. Cases classified as having a filing of information have either a preliminary hearing resulting in a finding of no probable cause or plea of guilty or had no preliminary hearing result and subsequent events. Indictments are recorded in the State’s Attorney’s data as case events. Cases initiated by SAO have an indictment but no recorded arrest. Criminal complaints superceded by indictment are cases with an arrest, a charge, an indictment, and no filing of information.

BOND COURT ORDERS

Before arraignment, pre-trial cases—where the defendants are being held in detention as they await adjudication of their cases—appear in Bond Court for possible terms of pre-trial release. Pre-trial defendants undergo a Public Safety Assessment to inform the Court’s custody decisions. Just under half of defendants are granted release on their own recognizance (I-Bonds). Fewer are granted release by posting of bail (D-Bonds). Fewer still are assigned to electronic monitoring supervision by the Sheriff’s Office. A small number are not recommended for pre-trial release.

Bond court data come from the newly available, Circuit Court of Cook County Model Bond Court Dashboard, but were not available for 2016. These figures come from 2017 (Q1) and 2018 (Q1, Q2, Q3), and are not in precisely synch with other 2016 data.

ARRAIGNMENTS

The adjudication process begins with arraignments. Most cases are successfully arraigned, while some require more time and are continued. A small number of defendants plead guilty at arraignment. Most cases are arraigned within between 35 and 45 days from inception of their criminal case.

These figures are calculated from the Cook County State’s Attorney case-level data obtained through FOIA by the Chicago Data Cooperative. They encompass cases with an arraignment date in 2016. Charge classes are assigned by the most severe class of charge on a case. Guilty pleas within two days of arraignment are considered as going straight to sentencing. Warrants issued and continuances appear as an event result on arraignments. All other arraignment event results, including no result, are included in the “Arraignments” figure on this page. Days to arraignment are the median days from received date.

DETERMINATIONS OF GUILT

The vast majority of cases which reach a determination of guilt are due to a guilty plea, while about 10%, are convicted through trial. Each year, courts face both newly arraigned cases and cases arraigned but not resolved in prior years. Approximately half of all cases faced by the Court are from prior years. The courts must resolve as many cases as newly arraigned ones or the inherited backlog will increase. The amount of time it takes to resolve cases varies widely, driven by how determinations of guilt are reached (guilty pleas, trial outcomes, etc.) and by the severity of the charges.

These figures are calculated from the Cook County State’s Attorney case-level data obtained through FOIA by the Chicago Data Cooperative. They encompass cases with a determination of guilt in 2016, save for the “open cases from prior years” and “open cases to next year” categories, which represent all open arraigned cases on January 1, 2016 and January 1, 2017, respectively. Charge classes are assigned by the most severe class of charge on a case. A case’s determination of guilt is counted as a plea if it has a plea event, a trial conviction if it has a trial conviction and no plea event, a trial acquittal if it has a trial acquittal and no plea or trial conviction, and a nolle if it has a nolle and none of the others. Dates correspond to the latest date of the cases’s derived event type. Court processing time is the median value from received date to determination of guilt.

Data used to create the ‘Court Observations’ visualization were collected by observers of court proceedings at the Leighton Courthouse. Fifteen (15) primarily second and third year Northwestern University law students were trained to complete structured data collection instruments . Each student observed approximately 35 hours of courtroom proceedings, totaling 525 hours. They observed 1,166 court proceedings from August 2016 through December 2016. Courtrooms were selected randomly at different times of the day.

Data used to create the ‘Court Continuance’ visualizations came from Cook County Circuit Court for 2010, and are therefore not in synch with the rest of the 2016 data.

SENTENCES

For defendants whose cases result in guilty plea or conviction, prison is by far the most common sentence (including a small number sentenced to jail) with adult probation terms the next most common. A small percentage of cases receive non-incarceration sentences (other than probation).

These figures are calculated from the Cook County State’s Attorney case-level data obtained through FOIA by the Chicago Data Cooperative. They encompass case participants with a sentence in 2016. Charge classes are assigned by the most severe class of charge on a case. Court processing time is the median value from arraignment to sentencing.

JAIL ADMISSIONS AND RELEASES

The most common charges of those booked into jail are misdemeanor and petty crime felonies, with low level Class 3 and 4 felonies following closely. Many people are technically ‘booked’ into the jail and released or placed on community supervision without actually being confined. Releases from jail provide the most accurate account of the type of cases as well as the number of people who are confined in jail and how much time they spend there. The relationship between the mean and median length of stay reveals the extent to which many defendants people are spending staying for short periods of time or fewer are confined for longer periods.

Cook County Sheriff’s Office, 2016.

AVERAGE DAILY JAIL POPULATION

The population of people under the jurisdiction of the Sheriff’s Office is comprised of people confined in the jail and those being supervised in the community, mainly under electronic monitoring supervision. A profile of the confined population reveals that it is primarily pre-trial defendants, male, Black, under 35, and assessed to be of ‘medium’ risk. Another way to understand the way in which confinement is being used is to measure how many individual admissions to confinement it takes each year to occupy a jail bed for an entire year. When that ratio is high, it means that the jail is churning lots of lower level cases in and out of jail; but when it is low, it means that the jail is housing fewer, more serious cases.