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Every person awaiting trial has a constitutional right to a defense attorney. Yet in counties across Illinois, public defenders struggle with excessive caseloads that negatively impact their clients. The chronic underfunding of public defense has created a civil rights crisis in our courts.Illinois has not significantly changed its public defense structure since 1949. We are one of only seven states that doesn’t have any statewide oversight of public defense. In every county in Illinois, the prosecutor’s office gets more funding than the public defender. This most affects rural and Black and Brown defendants who are most likely to be represented by the public defender.
On November 7th , join Rockford Urban Ministries, TASC (Treatment Alternatives for Safe Communities) and Eliminate Racism 815 for a listening session on the state of public defense in Illinois. Community members will have a chance to share their experiences with public defense and discuss opportunities to improve the quality of representation across Illinois. We will be joined by policy experts and State Representative Dave Vella, sponsor of the FAIR Act, which would create a statewide office of public defense in Illinois.
Register here: https://forms.gle/6JJwGj5HsTjCPfp56
Click here to learn more about the FAIR Act, which would create a statewide office of public defense in Illinois: https://ilpublicdefenderstats.org/fairact/
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
The RPL Nordlof Center, 118 N Main St,Rockford,IL,United States
Tickets
