From [HERE] Often referred to as the most segregated city in the U.S. by media outlets like WBEZ Chicago and 14East, Chicago, Illinois, is riddled with redlining and racial profiling. A May 2024 report by a team of United Nations experts outlined a history of racist police brutality in the Chicago area, while a New York University School of Medicine study found that Chicagoans in the predominantly white neighborhood of Streeterville live an average of 30 years longer than the residents of the largely Black neighborhood of Englewood. The Chicago Sun-Times and journalist Linda Villarosa have attributed this disparity to segregation, disinvestment, and exploitative government-sanctioned policies.

The Prison Policy Initiative (PPI) notes that "With an incarceration rate of 433 per 100,000 residents [as of July 2024], Illinois locks up a higher percentage of its people than almost any democratic country on earth." Most of the state's prisoners are Chicago residents. Meanwhile, Black Illinois residents "are incarcerated at a rate 7.5 times higher than white people." Although, Illinois is only 14.6% Black, Blacks make up the majority of all those locked up at 53%. According to PPI, 77% of people in Illinois jails have not been convicted of a crime, meaning they're legally innocent. Additionally, people on probation in Illinois are saddled with onerous rules and conditions they must follow every day or risk incarceration.“ [MORE]

“Racist” republicans aren’t responsible.

Illinois is a Democratic stronghold and one of the "Big Three" Democratic strongholds alongside California and New York. Politics and economic life in Illinois is dominated by elite liberals. That is, elite whites, particularly those in the Chicago metro area, control and own all major resources (such as banks, local mainstream media, major real estate, ports, utilities, large corporations and businesses, all major industry, major non-profits, unions, hospitals, etc) and own most major real estate and anything else of substantial material value. If elite white liberals really wanted to do something about decarceration and the unjust and vastly disproportionate numbers of Black people incarcerated during the past 30 years, wouldn’t they have done so by now? In fact, in every metro area where large Black populations live amongst elite white liberals, Black people are incarcerated in grossly disproportionately numbers. In such places Blacks are also stopped, searched, injured and killed by police in grossly disproportionately numbers. Yet, Blacks rarely question this phenomena and enthusiastically support elite white liberals as their great allies - supporting them and their causes automatically without critical examination in every election.

The Civic Federation reported a nearly $2 billion budget for the Chicago Police Department (CPD) for the 2024 fiscal year. It further noted that the CPD budget "has grown steadily over the years to keep up with increases in personnel costs. CPD appropriations within the Corporate Fund have increased by nearly 40 percent since 2018."