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Current Issue

Fast-Track Deportations

Thousands are being deported without a chance to appear before an immigration judge.

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Buildings Gone Bad

May, 2002 Despite changes in state law designed to hold landlords accountable, many continue to find ways to keep their identities hidden beneath layers of paperwork.

Table of Contents

Absentee Landlords: Paperwork Masks Repeat Offenders

Sarah KarpDespite changes in state law designed to hold landlords accountable, many continue to find ways to keep their identities hidden beneath layers of paperwork.
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Rising Rates

An increasing share of former state prison inmates paroled to Cook County served their time for drug offenses. Notes: Figures are for fiscal years running from July 1 to June 30. Source: Illinois Department of Corrections; analyzed by The Chicago Reporter.> Read More

Top Five

The Cook County ZIP code areas with the most ex-drug offenders released there between 1995 and 2001 were all on Chicago's West and Southwest sides. Tops was the 60624 area, where an average of nearly one of every 11 residents served time for a drug offense. Source: Illinois Department of Corrections, U.S. Census; analyzed by The Chicago Reporter.> Read More
Inside Stories

West Side Residents Battle Drug War Realities

For most, the stories of drug trafficking are documented in 30- and 60-second stories on the evening news. But for others, like Allie Pack, the drama unfolds 24 hours a day in front of her Humboldt Park home.> Read More

Troubled Properties

Since 1997, 10 owners have been named as defendants in at least 20 different cases involving buildings with code violations in Cook County. Most of these buildings are located on Chicago's South and West sides. > Read More

Some Landlords Called into the Court--again and again

Tax scavenger Tony Bryant tops a list of the owners and management companies with chronic building court violations, according to The Chicago Reporter's analysis of Cook County Circuit Court records.> Read More
New Voices

'The People are the Church'

In 1996, 18-year-old Mario Ramos, a popular member of St. Nicholas Catholic Church in Evanston, shot and killed another teen-ager under orders from a street gang. The incident galvanized the church's Latino community, which makes up about 15 percent of the 1,300-member congregation. St. Nicholas...> Read More
Keeping Current

A Cherokee Alphabet, a Muslim Slave and a New National Culture

 In 1828, President John Quincy Adams wrote in his diary about meeting with a group of Cherokee Indians to negotiate a treaty. He was impressed with an elder member of the tribe named Sequoyah, who had created an alphabet for the Cherokees' spoken language. Adams wrote that Sequoyah had rendered...> Read More