JUDICIAL ACCOUNTABILITY INITIATIVE
COURTWATCHING
By the numbers
2025 Days of Courtwatching
1,133
2025 Observations recorded
5,183
2026 Days of Courtwatching
481
2026 Observations Recorded
5,419
THE JUDICIAL ACCOUNTABILITY INITIATIVE
The Judicial Accountability Initiative
We launched the Judicial Accountability Initiative (JAI) in 2022 to galvanize systematically marginalized communities to confront judicial harm and demand structural redress through transformative policy change. Our aim is to politicize communities —particularly those most impacted — so they can advocate for reparative policies that acknowledge, halt, and begin to repair the judiciary’s outsized role in perpetuating systemic harm. This harm persists only because judges continue to wield unchecked power behind the veil of courtroom obscurity.
In 2023, we expanded JAI by launching a community-rooted Courtwatching effort. By 2025, this evolved into a professional Courtwatching program led by directly impacted individuals. Through their consistent presence, these Courtwatchers are piercing the silence, exposing patterns of misconduct, asserting collective oversight, and activating community co-governance both with the government and withing the community between its members.
95%
of all Cook County criminal cases proceed within courtrooms ILARJ’s professional Courtwatchers observe.
This work is part of a bigger vision: embedding participatory governance into every layer of justice reform. By training system-impacted individuals to lead Courtwatching efforts, we transform passive observation into active intervention—redefining accountability as a collective, abolitionist practice.
We will provide analysis to the public using the data we’ve collected in the coming months.
ILARJ’s Policy Recommendations
Preliminary Hearings
Update the rules regarding preliminary hearings for information and/or convening grand juries to require the charging office/agency to include in their motion/petition evidence to:
1) establish that the person being charged is not a member of a legally protected class or
2) if the person being charged is a member of a legally protected class, provide evidence that people in the same legally protected class have not been disproportionately charged with the same charge(s) in relation to the percentage that legally protected class comprises of the general population for the jurisdiction of the charging office/agency.
Grand Juries
Update rules to change the grand jury process to make it align with its original purpose as a check on prosecutions by assigning the grand jury its own counsel who is a subject-matter expert that issues discovery requests, cross-examines witnesses, and counsels the grand jury on how to comply with its duty to serve as a check on the prosecutor’s office.
Court Omissions and Misrepresentations
Update rules to prohibit the charging office/agency from making material omissions or material misrepresentations through any of its witnesses during any portion of the proceeding.
Coerced False Testimony
Update rules to prohibit the charging office/agency from coercing a witness to provide false or misleading testimony during any portion of the proceeding.
Indictment Dismissal: Omission/False Testimony
Update rules to allow an indicted person the ability to have an indictment dismissed that was procured with a material omission, material misrepresentation, and/or coerced false or misleading testimony.
Public Reporting of Courtroom Data
Implement a new policy that requires public reporting of the demographics of the parties of the cases along with case rulings/outcomes on a courtroom, division, sub-circuit (if applicable), circuit and district level.
Judicial Correction Action Plans
Implement a new policy whereby judges whose courtroom data reveal disparate treatment, disparate outcomes, disproportionate treatment, disproportionate outcomes, implicit bias, and/or explicit bias, etc. are provided a mandatory corrective action plan that’s made publicly available.
Community Task Force/Working Group
Create a task force/working group made up of community members, including at least one person with an arrest and/or conviction record, lawyers, and judges to review the public reporting data and update court policy and/or rules to address problems revealed by the data.
Legislation and Case Law Tracking System
Implement a legislation and case law tracking system that ensures that judges are notified of and trained on upcoming changes in the law and/or new laws prior to when they become effective. Additionally, this system should also notify and train judges within 90 calendar days from the case ruling or effective date of laws, whichever is applicable, that immediately go into effect.
Timely Compliance with New Laws
Implement a new policy that requires all judges to comply with all changes and/or new laws not later than 90 calendar days from the date the law becomes effective.
Abolish the Doctrine of Finality of Judgement
Update the rules to prohibit the application of the Doctrine of Finality of Judgment to criminal cases.