Nearly two weeks after Eileen O'Neill Burke became Cook County, Ill., state attorney, Chicago is wondering how much of her predecessor's reforms she'll retain. Democrat O'Neill Burke handily beat Republican Bob Fioretti in November, taking over from Kimberly Foxx. After eight years in office, Foxx opted not to run again.
Foxx had a reputation as a progressive or reform prosecutor, while O'Neill Burke is known as more law-and-order focused. Some experts say O'Neill Burke has many of the same priorities as her predecessor. In her campaign, O'Neill Burke supported the SAFE-T Act and a pretrial fairness act, which eliminated cash bail in Illinois. Ed Yohnka of the Illinois chapter of the American Civilian Liberties Union said people are too quick to frame these issues as binary when it's so early in O'Neill Burke's term. "I think there has been way too much of sort of trying to cast the progressive versus tough on crime kind of narrative," Yohnka said. An O'Neill Burke representative said she is promoting policy changes that prioritize public safety and victims of violent crime, but did not offer specifics about those policy changes.
Foxx's term was mired in high profile cases and public scrutiny, but she did claim significant criminal justice reforms. Foxx' office overturned nearly 250 wrongful convictions, created programs to offer alternatives for jail terms for non-violent offenses and expunged all 15,000 marijuana case convictions since the drug was legalized. She faced criticism and had a tense relationship with the police union. Stephanie Kollman of the Children Family Justice Center at Northwestern University's Bluhm Legal Clinic, said much of the pushback stemmed her efforts to reform an office rife with problems. "When Foxx came into office, the state of the Cook County state attorneys office ... (had a] systemic gridlock and institutional racism that was really embedded in that office," Kollman said.
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