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March, 2009
The Chicago Reporter obtained 2007 traffic stop data collected by the Illinois Department of Transportation, which compiles information gathered from law
enforcement agencies throughout the state, as required by the Illinois Racial Profiling Law passed in 2003. The data contain records such as race and ethnicity of each driver
involved in traffic stops and the reason for the stop.
The...
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March, 2009
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March, 2009
Data: Click here to download an Excel document containing a list of 44 communities with high traffic stop disparities for Latinos.
In the summer, Osman Maldonado drove less than a mile from his house to a gas station near a busy intersection in northwest suburban Crystal Lake for cigarettes. He spotted a McHenry County Sheriff's deputy parked in the lot of an adjacent boutique. The deputy...
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September, 2008
A visit to the Allegheny County jail in Pittsburgh used to be riddled with stress for inmates' loved ones and their children.
The sounds of frustrated guards and harried parents yelling at children rebounded off the walls in the lobby of the 16-floor hoosegow. The area resembled a 1940s Greyhound bus station; rows of steel chairs faced vending machines that provided a constant temptation...
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September, 2008
Maxine Johnson's first day in prison in 2005 remains seared in her memory. She remembers the shackles on her legs binding her to another prisoner and the guards barking commands at inmates during the intake process.
But mostly she remembers her fear of the unexpected as she began her three-year stint and her visceral anxiety about the four grandchildren for whom she was the legal guardian....
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September, 2008
Zero seconds.
That's how much time Cynthia had to prepare before her father came home after more than four years in prison.
Planning would have made things better, she thought later, after the year during which her mother and father fought constantly, during which her father drank and Christiana Schmitz
heavily and ended up committing another crime that got him locked up again....
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March, 2008
The white van pushes out of a frozen South Side parking lot in the dark on a winter Saturday morning. Ed Paschal's handful of passengers, mostly strangers to each other, are headed to a pair of downstate towns they might never have known existed if it weren't for their loved ones. The riders–"three women and two teens–"will spend the next five hours talking or watching a movie, but mostly dozing...
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March, 2008
A convicted arsonist, burglar and two murderers each take turns in the classroom. For the next several minutes, each will leave his uniform, the walls and the barbed wire of the Central Illinois prison where they are serving time. For a few brief moments, they will return to the places they are known as father, dad, daddy or uncle. It's bedtime, at home, with their kids at their side.
At...
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March, 2008
It's the day after Christmas and Fred Long knows what to expect. The doorbell rings and his father walks in. "You know it's my birthday, man, you got me something," his father says. "I'm like, –˜Come on man! You got to be kidding me dude!'" Long replies.
The Vietnam veteran has two traditions with his son on his birthday. The 61-year-old first tells Long that he's turning 39–"again. Then he...
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