Our Impact
Injustice Watch strives to do journalism that positively impacts our community.
Our work often leads to real and measurable change. We track the impact of our work in many forms, including legislation and policies to address problems we’ve identified through our reporting, corrective actions after our work exposes wrongdoing, community engagement around a topic we’ve covered, and positive outcomes in the lives of people we’ve featured in our reporting.
Below you’ll find recent examples of our impact.
RECENT IMPACT
Judicial election guides increase voter participation and engagement
Our reporting on judicial elections and nonpartisan judicial voter guides have contributed to a significant increase in voter participation in judicial races.
Before Injustice Watch began reporting extensively on judicial elections, Cook County voters generally knew very little about judges on their ballots, and more than one-third of voters skipped the judicial races altogether. Injustice Watch identified this information gap and set out to inform and engage the Cook County electorate about the importance of judicial elections and the impact judges have on our lives. Each election year, we investigate and report on judicial candidates, produce comprehensive, nonpartisan judicial election guides for the primary and general elections, and run a large-scale community engagement campaign known as #CheckYourJudges.
Our digital guides are used by hundreds of thousands of Cook County voters each election. We also print copies of our guide, which we distribute throughout the county.
Our work has helped shift the narrative around judges and judicial elections; more people are paying attention to judges than ever before. In 2018, Cook County voters chose to not retain a judge for the first time in nearly 30 years. In 2020, for the second judicial election in a row, a Cook County judge we reported on lost their bid for retention. Participation in judicial retention elections has increased every election year since we started publishing our election guide, with nearly 80% of voters making a choice in at least one retention race in 2022, up from 66% just four election cycles earlier.
U visa investigations spark state investigation and policy changes
Our December 2022 investigation into the Chicago Police Department’s denial of U visa certifications sparked an investigation by the Illinois attorney general and policy changes within CPD.
Our investigation found CPD had denied roughly half of all U visa applications — which can provide a path to citizenship for undocumented crime victims — often in ways that appeared to violate state and federal law. We later published a follow-up investigation into the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, which for years had illegally blocked survivors of child abuse from seeking legal status through the U visa.
In February 2023, citing our story, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul announced an investigation into CPD’s handling of U visa applications. In May 2023, CPD updated its internal policies related to U visa applications, addressing the most pressing issues outlined in our reporting. The Chicago inspector general also cited our reporting in filing a formal complaint against the two sergeants responsible for most of the denials — who had been previously investigated by the department for serious misconduct — though the department’s internal investigation went nowhere. After our report on the state DCFS was published, the attorney general issued a statement that said his office was “in the process of looking into the matter,” and DCFS started accepting U visa applications.
New legislation following SCRAM investigation
Our reporting on the use of electronic alcohol-monitoring bracelets motivated advocates to push for legislation limiting their use.
Beginning in December 2021, we published a series of investigations into Cook County’s use of Secure Continuous Remote Alcohol Monitors, or SCRAM, bracelets. We found one judge had ordered people to wear the devices more often than any other judge in Cook County, sometimes even in cases that did not involve alcohol abuse, and that people on probation were charged as much as $24 per day for the monitor by a private company whose contract with the county had lapsed.
In July 2023, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker signed a bill into law that prohibits judges from requiring drug tests or monitoring devices for legal substances, such as alcohol or cannabis, in cases unrelated to alcohol or substance abuse. One of the advocates who pushed for the bill said they were “motivated by, among other things, the work that Injustice Watch did around the SCRAM bracelets and the way people were being charged money for being on those bracelets.”
Judge retires, loses out on pension bump, after our reporting on potential ethics violations
Cook County Associate Judge Gregory Vazquez retired after we reported on his potentially inappropriate relationship with the owner of a suburban massage parlor that had been raided for sex work.
In May 2023, we broke news that Vazquez appeared on two videos with the owner of the massage parlor: once during a raid by Cook County sheriff’s deputies and once when the owner was at the Brookfield Village Hall to pay a municipal fine for illegal sex work. A day after our reporter confronted the judge with questions about these videos and whether he leveraged his judicial position on behalf of the massage parlor, he filed paperwork to retire. A few weeks later, in a rare move, his fellow judges denied his bid for retention, which cost him a cost-of-living raise that would have increased his pension by about $7,700 per year.
71-year-old man with dementia released from prison
Months after our investigation into the Joe Coleman Medical Release Act, one of the people featured in our story was released from prison.
In August 2023, we partnered with WBEZ to publish an investigation into the implementation of the Joe Coleman Medical Release Act, a law passed in 2021 to allow terminally ill and medically incapacitated prisoners to be released from Illinois prisons. Our investigation found the Illinois Prisoner Review Board had denied nearly two-thirds of all eligible medical parole applicants. Featured in our story was Phillip Merritt, 71, who was diagnosed with dementia years ago and has lost the ability to speak and care for himself. Following our story, and months after initially denying him release, the board granted Merritt medical parole in November 2023. Merritt’s brother Michael picked him up from Western Illinois Correctional Center, and he spent Thanksgiving with his family for the first time in more than 14 years.
Finally released after more than 30 denials by parole board
Years after we first wrote about Ronnie Carrasquillo’s many failed attempts at parole, the Illinois Appellate Court overturned his sentence and he was released from prison in October 2023.
We first wrote about Carrasquillo in our 2017 series “The Long Wait,” which detailed the opaque and inconsistent parole process in Illinois. As a teenager, Carrasquillo was sentenced to 200 to 600 years for the 1976 shooting death of a plainclothes police officer. He had been denied parole more than 30 times. In August 2023, an appellate court ruled his original sentence was “excessive,” and his repeated parole attempts were unfairly denied. In October 2023, a Cook County judge resentenced Carrasquillo to time served, and he walked out of prison a free man for the first time in more than 46 years. He gave his first exclusive interview following his release to Injustice Watch.
Conviction based on blind eyewitness vacated
Four years after our reporting on the case of Darien Harris, a judge vacated his conviction, and he was released from prison.
In 2019, our reporting raised questions about Harris’ murder conviction and 70-year prison sentence, which was based largely on the testimony of an eyewitness who Harris’ attorneys later discovered was legally blind. In December 2023, a Cook County judge vacated Harris’ conviction. And two weeks later, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office dropped the charges against him, and he walked free from prison for the first time in more than 12 years.
Town halls following ‘Exploited Elders’
After our multipart series on the failures of the state’s Adult Protective Services division to protect older adults from financial exploitation, the state’s largest contractor hosted a series of town halls to discuss possible reforms.
Our August 2023 “Exploited Elders” series found that the state was leaving victims of elder financial abuse more isolated and vulnerable. Many victims ended up wards of the state, the meager estates managed by the office of the Cook County Public Guardian. After our story published, the state’s largest adult protective services contractor hosted a series of town halls enlisting national experts to explore solutions in light of our reporting, the state issued a nearly $1 million contract to the National Adult Protective Services Association to undertake a year-long evaluation of Illinois’ service gaps and potential improvements, and legislators said they were considering legislation to fix the broken safety net.
Reporting brings increased focus on juvenile detention
Our reporting on the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center has been cited in county board hearings, increased transparency about the facility, and helped advocates push for changes inside the state’s largest juvenile jail.
For years, we’ve been one of the few newsrooms reporting consistently on conditions inside the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center. In 2021, we were the first to report that the Illinois State Board of Education had identified failures in special education services at the high school inside the detention center and ordered Chicago Public Schools to fix the problems. After we obtained a copy of a highly critical report by a committee of experts about the excessive use of room confinement at the JTDC, Cook County Circuit Court Chief Judge Timothy Evans, whose office oversees the juvenile jail, publicly released the report after holding onto it for months and announced a new committee to implement its recommendations. Our review in 2023 of state audits of all 16 juvenile jails across Illinois found just four were meeting state standards as of their most recent inspection, and many had similar problems as Cook County’s. Our reporting has led to increased transparency about the detention center from Evans, who now says he is working with other stakeholders to “work towards replacing the JTDC’s current, large physical structure with smaller, community-based facilities with specialized programs.”
Discipline, congressional hearings follow In Plain View project
Our award-winning project, In Plain View, exposed racist and violent social media posts made by law enforcement officials across the country.
The impact of this project was significant: More than 230 officers throughout the country were fired or issued some form of discipline. City councils hosted hearings on social media’s influence on and reflection of prejudice and hate speech among law enforcement; police departments initiated internal investigations; and the series galvanized a national conversation about racism and policing, including a congressional investigation.
Reporting on associate judges leads to increased diversity
Our reporting on associate judge elections, where elected circuit judges pick new colleagues behind closed doors, has helped shed light on the lack of diversity on the bench.
For years, Injustice Watch has been one of the only news organizations to report on the opaque associate judge elections. In 2018, we reported that only one of the 17 candidates selected as associate judges was Black. In 2019, one-third of the new associate judges were people of color, but no Latinx judges were selected. Following our reporting, Cook County Circuit Court Chief Judge Timothy Evans announced the most diverse group of associate judges yet. In 2021, 12 of the 22 new associate judges were people of
Discipline for corrections officers who mocked trans prisoners
Our reporting on Illinois correctional officers mocking transgender prisoners on social media led to discipline against some of the officers.
In 2019, we reported on two private Facebook groups in which at least 25 Illinois Department of Corrections staffers mocked, demeaned, or disclosed personal and medical information about transgender people in state custody. Following our reporting, the department created a new social media policy for staffers, and nine employees named in our story were disciplined.