Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is refusing to provide details on how she is addressing problems with the way the city maintains criminal registries. People convicted of certain violent crimes, gun crimes and sex crimes must periodically notify police of their home address and other details. But a WBEZ investigation found they were routinely turned away by the city because of police staffing shortages.
The failure leaves people convicted of some crimes subject to arrest for failure to register, despite their efforts to follow the law. Advocates for survivors of sexual assault have expressed concern that the overburdened office is indicative of a department that isn’t prioritizing their safety concerns.
Following WBEZ’s investigation, Lightfoot said she had been unaware of the problems but would be taking it up with Police Superintendent David Brown to ensure “we’re doing what we need to do to make sure that they have the ability to register.” Chicago Police said they were “in the process of increasing efficiencies at the Criminal Registration Unit,” but gave no information on how they would do that.
Now, a month after the investigation, the mayor and police department still refuse to provide any clarity.
Craig Futterman, director of the Civil Rights and Police Accountability Project, said politicians make a lot of promises, but they need to be transparent about the details of their plans. “We all have a right to know CPD policies and procedures,” Futterman said. “It’s about knowing if our government works and if it works for us.”
According to data obtained by WBEZ, over 5,000 people have been arrested for failure to register since 2017. A disproportionate number of those arrests, 98 percent, are people of color.
“Any mechanism that is catching people with these paperwork violations and putting them in prison for a felony is something that our mayoral candidates should be looking at,” said Laurie Jo Reynolds, an associate professor at the University of Illinois Chicago and the coordinator of the Chicago 400 Alliance.
Several of Lightfoot’s challengers in the mayoral race promised to fix mismanagement of the registries by adding staff.
“This is a threat to public safety, immoral and encourages recidivism,” said Brandon Johnson, a Cook County Commissioner and one of eight candidates running to replace Lightfoot. “We can and should hire unarmed civilians to work the registries, leaving our short-staffed police force to focus on our communities.”
But rather than just increasing staffing, some advocates are pushing for more systemic changes, including changes to state laws that would shrink the registries. They point to research that shows registries are not effective at stopping sexualized violence.
“People on registries and the CPD are struggling to follow these laws. What needs to be considered, and was not considered when these laws were passed, is that even when the system is working, it is not going toward community safety. Paperwork is not police work,” said Reynolds.
Shannon Heffernan covers criminal justice for WBEZ. Follow her@shannon_h
