Kim Foxx, Cook County State's Attorney
Kim Foxx, Cook County State's Attorney
Q: Can you talk about your path to your current position?
KF: Sure. I've been the elected prosecutor here since December 1st of 2016. Prior to that, I served as Chief of Staff to the President of the County Board. In that role, I was responsible for making sure that the President's agenda was served throughout the county. And we handle everything from the public health system, the Cook County hospital health system and the criminal justice system which includes my office, the public defender's office, the jail, the sheriff, the clerk. I worked on criminal justice issues and reform for the President as her Chief of Staff for the two years that I was there. Prior to that, and I was there two and a half years, I was a Deputy Chief of Staff for six months and then Chief of Staff. Prior to that, I worked here as an Assistant State's Attorney for 12 years, the last five of those years as a Supervisor in our Juvenile Justice Bureau. And getting to that point, I did everything from child protection, kids who were abused and/or neglected, I did felony review where we looked at charging decisions, sex crimes, where I worked in our unit dealing with people in positions of trust or authority, so priests, coaches, teachers. And then everything in-between. I was here 12 years. Before that, I served three years as an Assistant Public Guardian. In that role I represented children directly. I was an attorney for children who were in our foster care system with allegations of abuse and neglect. And then before that for nine months, I did workers compensation insurance defense, but realized that I was better suited for public service. So that's been the path to here. I decided to run for State’s Attorney because the issues that I saw around our justice system, whether it related to over-incarceration at the county jail, issues related to bond reform, I thought that the prosecutor's office was the perfect place to be able to make real meaningful change.
Q: Thank you. Is it significant that your work is located in Chicago?
KF: I was born and raised here, actually not far from your school. I used to go to the movie theaters right across the street there. For someone who was born and raised here, and I grew up in public housing here, I went to Chicago Public Schools here, to be able to be in this position in my hometown and dealing with issues that affect communities like the one that I grew up in is deeply personal to me. I think it is, it gives me a drive, a determination that is unique to wanting to make sure that you don't let the people of your hometown down.
Q: In the Chicago Reader you said you wanted to end what you call the “tough on crime boogeyman approach” to criminal justice. What does this mean?
KF: I think historically people look at the criminal justice system as good versus evil, that you know people like me who sit in law enforcement we wear the white hats and we're out to go get people who are evil doers, who are bad people. And what you realize when you do this work is that there is only a small fraction of people who are out there who are aimed to do the most damage possible. It's a small fraction. The majority of the people who are in our criminal justice system are there because they are dealing with a myriad of issues, whether it's drug addiction or mental health or poverty, that these aren't folks who keep you up at night, these aren't the people that you got to triple bolt the door for. These are people who have been failed by a number of systems and we don't know what to do with them. And so, our response though in criminal justice has been let's keep the boogeyman out, let's protect ourselves from these dangerous people, when in fact more likely than not, people in our criminal justice system are not a danger. There are people who are, but that is small. But our policy has been geared towards everybody for a small fraction of folks who do the most harm.
Q: Along those lines, what does criminal justice reform look like to you?
KF: For me, criminal justice reform looks like a real humanitarian approach to looking at our systems. And it means that you can't do it in isolation. You can't look at jails as the answers to failed school systems or failed public policy around housing or mental health. Reform means that we have to work as a collective to say our response is appropriate for the need. Are we really dealing with prevention? Are we really making sure that we're keeping our communities safer by making sure that the people who live in them are healthy? And we don't talk about healthy communities and criminal justice. We talk about bad people. And healthy communities mean that people who aren't addicted to drugs aren't suffering without treatment for mental health issues, aren't living in abject poverty tend not to engage in those behaviors that the criminal justice system responds to. A real reform to me means stop talking about sentences and stiffer penalties and start talking about how you build healthier, thriving communities.
Q: What are some ways you have changed criminal justice reform in Chicago?
KF: I think first and foremost starting a conversation like this, having conversations as a prosecutor, talking about these issues in this way is very different. And I can tell you that you get a lot of push back, because the narrative of the bad criminal is what dominates. If you watch enough TV, if you watch enough Law & Order, there is an image of what criminality looks like. And so, I think one of the things for me starts with having a real honest conversation about who's in our jails. And then second, really pushing tough conversations around race and class in this city, and what is the impact of that. And then being deliberate. I need to see the data. I need to see, are we engaging in any practices and policies that are making a situation worse? We just did a data release of who we've charged in 2017 and what the sentences were. Were there any disparities in the way that we treated black defendants versus white defendants versus Latinos, women versus men? And then we start peeling back and start asking questions. Is it because of where you're arrested? Is it because of the offense? Because the answers aren't simple. You can't just see a disparity and be like a-ha, it's just race driven. But you can't even get to the ask the question if you don't know what the landscape looks like. Transparency with our data has been huge. And then we've done things like we stopped prosecuting people who were charged with driving on a suspended driver's license because of their failure to pay tickets. If you don't have money to pay tickets, running you through the justice system
Q: Doesn't make sense.
KF: Doesn't make any sense. We raised the threshold for retail theft. Retail theft which is stealing from retail establishments was the number one charged crime in Cook County in 2016, which with all you hear about Chicago and Cook County you would think it would be guns but, it was retail theft. And what people don't know is in Chicago or Cook County, Illinois period, our threshold for whether you're charged with a felony or a misdemeanor is 300 dollars. Anything over 300 dollars is a felony which has long collateral consequences. In Indiana, which is far less liberal than Illinois, the threshold is 750 dollars. In Wisconsin, it's 2000 dollars. What you find is that people are stealing, which I do not condone stealing, but the price that we all pay for it, someone steals your phone, one phone, or steals a phone from a retail establishment, is over 300 dollars. The conviction means they are far less likely to be able to get a job, housing, education, and we all suffer for that. We raised the threshold in our office using our discretion to 1000 dollars. We did that in December of 2016, and we just got the data back. We saw a 55 percent drop in the number of people who have been charged with a felony.
Q: You talked a little bit about how we have to change our stereotypes about the criminal justice system. How can my generation do that?
KF: I think your generation is, one it's really exciting because you've not bought into it yet, right? And I think it is engaging in these conversations with your classmates to question what you see and not just accept it as what it is. I think for so long people just accept particularly media images as just fact. What it also means is that you have to go out and actively engage with people who are not like yourselves, to be able to meet people and engage them in a meaningful conversation. What does this look like for you? What does Chicago look like for you? What I find fascinating and having grown up in the projects and now living in the suburbs in a lovely home, the world in the Chicago that I know is very different. I have a 15-year old daughter. And she, her viewpoint is completely different than mine, which doesn't make it wrong. It's just her perspective is different because she didn't grow up with the same burdens that I grew up with. And I didn't grow up with the same privilege that she grows up with. And so even having that diversity of conversation, so she does question why, why are you so hung up on these things? And I have to say well this is how I grew up. Why don't you care about certain things just because I don't see it? And so, I think your generation can really be involved in breaking some of that down by actively engaging with community.
Q: What has stood in your way?
KF: I don't know if it relates to this job, if anything has been in the way in as much as trying to figure out how to knock things down. I think I just assumed that things would be in my way and it's not even that it stopped me. It's that I've already framed it out. I already see what the landscape looks like. And so it has meant that I've had to be strategic. It means that you have to find partnerships and alliances with folks who may not be with you from the beginning. I think the biggest barrier in general is this ignorance about the system and fear. I think criminal justice policy is the one place where fear can dominate, where it is largely driven by that bogeyman, that I need to feel safe and so I will build all of these barriers for this false notion of safety. And trying to get people to come together and dispel that is a task. I won't say it's stopped me, but it's a task.
Q: It's hard.
KF: Yeah.
Q: Is there someone you've met or someone you've worked with that's changed your views on the system?
KF: I actually was just talking about this person, I don't know if it changed my views, but it made me look a little deeper. There is a guy who, well there are two, there is a young man named Xavier McGrath. But he was 15, maybe 14 years old and charged with first-degree murder. And so here is this kid who was involved in gangs, who had done the ultimate crime, and the system and the public would write this guy off, you killed somebody. And now he's a fierce advocate on behalf of young people in the criminal justice system. Another person is Eddie Bocanegra, and Eddie is doing a lot of great work with Arne Duncan and his group of with Chicago Cred. Eddie was 18 and committed a murder. And again, gang involved and it's not often that you sit with people who have taken a life. And my perceptions of what his heart look like, what is his ability to recover from that, his owning every day, the harm that he caused to family. But he's also good father and a good husband. And so for me, when we talk about humanity and when I talk about humanity, it is largely informed by people who I would have otherwise been afraid of and judged them wholly by their act, which were horrible acts, I mean they took a life. But see their humanity and their ability to contribute. Because they're contributing.
Q: Yeah and like you said there was only a small amount that are truly dangerous.
KF: That's right.
Q: It's sometimes the situation that they're in.
KF: It's just the act and even if that small amount, if you threw X and you threw Eddie into that amount, they took a life. Most people don't commit murders. But the question that you have to ask yourself is are you redeemable, right? Can you contribute? If you write them off altogether, then Eddie is not working to save the next young man who is willing to pick up a gun. Eddie is standing in the way of another kid pulling a trigger. He's literally working on crime prevention. And he can get to young people in a way that I never will. X can get to people in a way that I never will. The fact that they're able to use these acts and affirmatively give back, pay penance for what they did, not in a prison, but in community was really something to be applauded. And you have to be able to see their humanity to even want them to do that.
Q: Before we conclude is there anything else you think would be important for me to know as I'm studying the criminal justice system and the criminal justice reform?
KF: There is so much.
Q: I know, there is so much.
KF: There is so much. I mean I would say to you, an interesting exercise for you would be, as you look over criminal justice policies just nationwide over the last 30 years, you'll find a little trick, which is some terrible tragedy will happen and then quickly someone will try to make a law to fix it. And they won't think about the long-term impact. So, you'll have Molly's Law, you'll have, we just saw today we have the Commander Bauer Law which actually is a good bill around guns. But if you look at the three strikes laws, if you look at it, it's usually tied to an incident. And what is fascinating is there has not been any foresight into what the consequences are from here on out when we now are trying to unravel, untangle bad policy. Before, it was because it wasn't rooted in research, it wasn't rooted in data, it was rooted in fear, and rooted by a need to have and quick and simple fix. None of this is quick, none of it is simple, but I think as you do your analysis of how we got here, you will find it is tied to a moment of tragedy and an overzealous response.
Q: That is so interesting, thank you.
KF: You're welcome, this was good.
Q: I think it's amazing what you're doing.