Tucked into the new and much-debated 764-page law that does away with Illinois’ cash-bail system is a single paragraph that could have a big impact.

It means that people caught with small amounts of drugs won’t have to sit in jail for days until they’re brought before a judge.

That might sound like a small thing. But advocates for people who use drugs say spending any time behind bars can have disastrous consequences, like losing a job or going through the painful process of withdrawal from drugs.

The Pretrial Fairness Act, which is part of the sweeping SAFE-T Act, is scheduled to take effect Jan. 1.

The law changes the rules for how the police can handle people accused of Class 4 drug possession felonies, which involve having less than 15 grams of cocaine, heroin or other controlled substances.

Class 4 offenses — the lowest level felonies — carry a sentence of one to three years in prison, even for being caught with no more than a baggie that contains drug residue.

In Chicago, most of those cases ultimately get dismissed, a Better Government Association/Chicago Sun-Times investigation found last year.

Under the new law, a police officer who catches people with small amounts of drugs will have discretion to release them with a citation that orders them to show up in court on a specific date within 21 days.

But if they instead are held in a police lockup until court, they must appear before a judge within two days, when, under the Pretrial Fairness Act, they would almost certainly be released until trial.

Raymond Galloway, a cook who was unable to work after he was jailed last year on a Class 4 drug possession case that ended up being dismissed, says it’s a good change.

Galloway was featured in the December 2021 BGA/Sun-Times investigation, “The costly toll of dead-end drug arrests.” It described how thousands of people in Chicago had been getting locked up only to have a judge soon dismiss the drug charges they faced, though not until they’d spent time in jail, sometimes losing jobs or homes as a result.

He called the move to give police discretion in handling Class 4 drug arrests “awesome.”

“People won’t lose their jobs or apartments or housing or some other things that are important to them,” Galloway says.

Cook County Public Defender Sharone Mitchell Jr. says the Pretrial Fairness Act “takes an important step to remedy the harms of the short jail stays documented in your article by allowing police to release people accused of simple drug possession from their custody without detaining them for up to two days in order to send them to court.”

Mitchell notes that the new law extends to minor drug-possession cases the same discretion the police already have with arrests for most misdemeanor charges.

The public defender’s office has urged that the police not arrest drug users at all.

In recent years, that’s increasingly been the case in Chicago. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, arrests for possession of small amounts of drugs have plummeted in Chicago as officers focused on a surge of violent crime.

In 2019, through mid-October, Chicago police officers arrested more than 6,400 people on Class 4 drug-possession cases for which that was the most serious crime involved in the arrest.

Over the same period this year, about 1,300 people were arrested.

This year through the end of September, another 300 people were caught by Chicago police officers with small amounts of drugs but released without charges in a program that allows them to enter drug treatment and avoid court and jail altogether.

Asked how the Chicago Police Department will respond to the new law about Class 4 drug offenses, a spokesperson says that’s being reviewed.

The Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police “hasn’t taken a position on specific matters relating to the Pretrial Fairness Act,” according to Lou Jogmen, president of the group and Highland Park’s police chief. “We have generally deferred on those issues to the experience and expertise of the state’s attorneys.”

Lake County State’s Attorney Eric Rinehart, whose office prosecutes Highland Park’s criminal cases, has been a vocal supporter of the new law, as is Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx.

Dozens of other state’s attorneys across Illinois have filed lawsuits to try to keep the SAFE-T Act and its Pretrial Fairness Act from taking effect, arguing that the measures are unconstitutional. Those cases have been consolidated in the Kankakee County circuit court.

One Cook County judge, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he says he’s not authorized to talk publicly about his views on cases that might come before him, says he’s not a fan of the new Class 4 drug possession language in the Pretrial Fairness Act. He says people caught with drugs should go before a judge immediately and get screened to see whether they can be put in a drug-treatment program.

“We’re pushing the line back up to three weeks,” he says.

The judge says he anticipates that many of those who will be released with citations to appear in court on drug charges won’t show up.

Raymond Galloway, a 48-year-old line cook at a Chicago soul food restaurant, got arrested on the West Side twice this year carrying small amounts of heroin.

Both times, the courts quickly tossed out his charges. Cook County’s judicial system, under an unwritten policy that even Cook County’s top prosecutor calls a failure, routinely dismisses minor drug possession cases — but usually not until after those arrested spend a few weeks in jail, often with life-changing consequences.

Galloway is among tens of thousands of Chicagoans — mostly Black men — who have been jailed in the past two decades on drug charges everyone knew from the beginning were never going to stick, an investigation by the Chicago Sun-Times and the Better Government Association has found.

The police knew. The prosecutors knew. The judges knew.

Yet no one has put a stop to it.

Along with their freedom and their dignity, Galloway and others have lost jobs and homes and relationships. They’ve had to pay thousands of dollars to get their cars out of the city’s impound lot. And they often struggle to pay bills while fighting their addictions.

“I can’t pay the phone bill,” Galloway said. “I’m two months behind on my rent. Child support, I got kids to take care of. I can’t do anything.”

In addition to the human toll, this constant churn of dead-end arrests costs taxpayers tens of millions of dollars every year.

“What a waste of time and resources to drag people into court on a drug charge and dismiss it,” said Ben Ruddell, director of criminal justice policy for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois.

“What’s the point?”

Most cases under a gram dismissed

The BGA and Sun-Times analyzed 280,000 drug possession cases using nearly two decades of court data compiled by The Circuit, a collaborative of news organizations, including the BGA and Injustice Watch. The examination disregarded arrests involving marijuana, which has been decriminalized in Illinois.

About half of the drug possession cases in Chicago between 2000 and 2018 — about 140,000 — were dropped at their earliest stages.

And that dismissal rate has soared in the most recent years.

For instance, an examination of all 10,480 cases from 2018 in which drug possession was the most serious charge found that a whopping 72% were tossed out.

These dead-end arrests are the result of a long-standing, commonly understood rule among prosecutors not to pursue criminal charges against anyone caught with user-level amounts — around a gram, according to interviews with judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys, as well as an examination of hundreds of case files.

Under Illinois law, all drug possession cases involving less than 15 grams — as little as a single pill of Xanax or a grain of heroin — are lumped together under the same felony offense, making it impossible to isolate statistics for specific quantities.

To examine the lowest-level cases, the BGA and Sun-Times reviewed a random sample of 400 arrest reports from 2018 to determine the exact weight of the drugs listed.

About 95% of the cases involving less than a gram, about the weight of a paper clip, were dropped.

‘A colossal waste’

It’s difficult to find anyone involved in this catch-and-release system who’s willing to defend it or to end it.

Cops say they’re obligated to enforce the law.

But even Cook County’s top prosecutor — State’s Attorney Kim Foxx — acknowledges the futility of the endless cycle of arrest and release, which she says has been the norm at least as far back as when she first began prosecuting such cases in 2008.

She said young prosecutors almost felt as though they were being subjected to “hazing” when they brought drug possession cases to court.

“My colleagues were, like, ‘You’re never going to get a finding of probable cause on anything less than a half a gram,’ ” Foxx said.

After she was elected state’s attorney in 2016, she told her prosecutors to release low-level drug users within days. Previously, she said, that often took weeks.

When people are arrested, they have a bail hearing. Then, the case goes to a preliminary hearing.

“My directive was: If we knew these cases were going to be dismissed at the preliminary hearing stage, we would try to dismiss them [earlier] at the bond hearing,” she said.

“Just transporting the people to the courthouse, the sheriff and all, it was a colossal waste to me on a case that was just getting thrown out.”

But the steady flow of drug users into courtrooms continues.

The Chicago police have begun a diversion program to allow some people caught with small amounts of drugs to go into treatment instead of the courts, but the program — which began in 2016 — benefits only a small fraction who meet the stringent entry requirements.

Over the past three years, Illinois lawmakers have unsuccessfully proposed downgrading possession of small amounts of drugs from a felony to a misdemeanor.

But the idea follows a national trend of states reducing drug possession penalties.

In the boldest such reform, Oregon voters recently approved a measure that decriminalizes possession of small amounts of drugs.

‘It was dust, man’

Galloway said he first snorted heroin a few years ago while he was partying with friends. He’d done cocaine before and was curious about heroin.

“I was, like, ‘Damn, this got me feeling good,’ ” Galloway said.

Then he got arrested for heroin possession — twice.

First, he got caught with 0.2 grams of heroin in April.

“It was dust, man,” Galloway said. “I was, like, ‘Y’all taking me to jail for this?’”

He had to stay in a halfway house until that case was dropped.

In June, he was arrested for possession of 2 grams of heroin and ordered to live in another halfway house. That case was tossed out, too. The judge let him return to his Uptown apartment but ordered him not to leave except to get his daily methadone treatment to keep from going into a withdrawal.

“The withdrawal from heroin would kill me,” Galloway said.

Because of his arrests, Galloway was unable to work regularly for more than six months, which he said cost him more than $6,000 in lost wages.

In late September, a judge lifted Galloway’s stay-at-home order.

He returned to work at a soul food restaurant, where he prepares yams, collard greens and other comfort food.

His boss said his absence had “really messed things up.”

Galloway is now free on bail while he awaits trial for his 2020 drug-selling case.

His legal woes are an exception in the majority of drug cases: For seven of 10 people charged only for drug possession, it was their first and only charge since 2000, records show.

The BGA has filed suit against the Chicago Police Department on grounds it failed to turn over body-camera footage of Galloway’s arrests within the time required by law. But the BGA was able to obtain another video of Chicago police drug arrests through the Illinois Freedom of Information Act.

West Side drug arrests

All of Galloway’s arrests happened in the West Side’s 11th police district, which is about 5 miles from downtown Chicago.

The 11th district has twice the drug arrests of any other police district in the city. In fact, more than half the drug arrests throughout the city are in a relatively small area on the West Side, according to the city’s arrest data.

The Eisenhower Expressway runs from the suburbs, through the West Side just south of Garfield Park and into downtown Chicago. Sometimes, it’s called the Heroin Highway.

Every day, people pull off the highway to buy drugs in open-air markets on side streets, alleys and vacant lots on the West Side. And every day, some get arrested for having small amounts of heroin, cocaine or illicit pills.

Movie palaces and fur stores

Decades ago, movie palaces and fur stores anchored a glittering hub of commerce along Madison Avenue just west of Garfield Park. And about a mile away, Sears once operated a massive distribution center. There were plenty of jobs.

In the late 1960s, riots triggered by the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. burned out sections of the West Side that were never rebuilt. White people fled, and their money went with them.

Sears closed its Homan Square facility in 1987, moving its headquarters to the Sears Tower. Today, the West Side’s population is poor and predominantly Black. Life expectancy in West Garfield Park is 68 years — 15 years less than in mostly white Edison Park on the Northwest Side, according to census data. Jobs are scarce. So are grocery stores.

This is the “constellation of forces” that produces open-air drug markets such as the ones on the West Side, according to Dr. Anthony Iton, a national expert on the effects of poverty and racism on public health.

“Let me take away your education, let me take away maybe one or both of your parents, let me take away your bank account, your transportation, let me just sort of constrain your choices so dramatically but in a way that you actually see opportunity, but you can’t get to it,” he said.

“That causes enormous stress, and the more stress you have, the more you’re likely to seek ways of short-term alleviation of that stress,” said Iton, senior vice president of health communities with the California Endowment.

‘Good dope sells itself’

Michael Pitts, 36, a Four Corner Hustlers gang member serving a 12-year federal drug sentence, said a West Side heroin operation staffed by four or more people can bring in up to $10,000 per day.

“Good dope sells itself,” Pitts said by email.

And there’s no shortage of sellers. Pitts, who sold heroin in West Garfield Park, said somebody is always “ready to hustle or ‘jug,’ as we call it, once a spot is gettin’ money.”

In a typical open-air market on the West Side, everyone has a job: Some people are lookouts; someone works “security” and holds a gun; and someone else supplies heroin, cocaine or pills to the sellers on the street.

Other parts of the city — even those with similar economic problems — don’t have the same levels of street dealing as West Garfield Park, Humboldt Park, Austin and North Lawndale, all on the West Side.

South Side gangs used to deal drugs outside the Robert Taylor Homes and other public housing complexes. But the high rises were torn down, and times have changed. Much of the street dealing on the South Side is gone, said Roberto Aspholm, author of “Views from the Streets: The Transformation of Gangs and Violence on Chicago’s South Side.”

“Why would I stand on the street corner and expose myself to police and my opposition and the elements if I can just work off of a phone?” Aspholm said. “That’s the transition of the South Side.”

On the West Side, people of all walks of life drive or walk up to the outdoor drug markets. The Eisenhower Expressway and the Blue Line and Green Line trains provide easy access.

In West Garfield Park, people who use heroin — many of them middle-aged and worn-out — trudge along Pulaski Road, crossing empty lots and approaching huddles of men who “sling dope” in the side streets and alleys.

This corridor of the West Side is not only a heroin marketplace, it’s also extremely violent. On just one block in West Garfield Park, five people were arrested on drug charges over the past year, five people were shot, and seven people were charged with carrying guns.

Last year, the 11th police district, which includes West Garfield Park, had more killings than many cities. In 2020, for instance, there were 82 killings in the entire city of Minneapolis, compared with 99 in the 11th district.

‘Officer, it’s not you. It’s just a low amount’

The low-level drug possession cases from the West Side are handled in Cook County’s felony branch court next to the 11th district police station. Most of the cases get thrown out. Defendants are often seen leaving the courthouse with smiles on their faces, some pumping their fists in victory and some skipping out of the door.

“People shuffle up, the case is dismissed, and they sprint out,” said one judge, who asked not to be named. “That’s what I would do. Before someone changes their mind.”

Judges and prosecutors say they’re reluctant to clog courtrooms and jails with people caught carrying a thimble-full of heroin or cocaine.

Nick Roti, a former chief of the organized crime bureau of the CPD, remembers being a street cop and judges explaining why his drug cases were being dismissed: “They’d say, ‘Officer, it’s not you. It’s just a low amount. Don’t worry.’ ”

Often, officers show up in court only to watch their cases disappear before they’re even called to explain the arrest. A lot of preliminary hearings for drug possession are wrapped up in less than a minute. The defendant’s name is called, he or she walks up, and the case is dismissed.

‘It would have taxed our abilities’

Prosecutors decide whether to charge someone with felonies such as murders and rapes. But drug charges have always been excluded from that felony review process, in part because prosecutors would have to look at thousands of cases per year. So police officers typically decide whether to charge people with drug possession.

Gino DiVito, a retired Illinois appellate judge who helped create felony review in 1972 when he was a prosecutor, said the decision was left to the cops because there was a mountain of drug possession cases every year.

“It would have taxed our abilities,” DiVito said.

Another reason: They’re the simplest felony cases. Unlike murder cases, drug possession arrests often hinge on the word of the officer. They typically don’t require a confession or witness testimony.

Some defense attorneys say that gives cops too much latitude to stop and search people for drugs.

In their reports, officers often cite “suspicious behavior” in a known drug area as the reason for stopping someone, according to a review of hundreds of arrest reports.

That can mean two people talking outside an Uptown L stop. Or, in Raymond Galloway’s case, chatting with a woman on the street and walking away when he sees a cop.

Arrest reports contain head-scratchers like this one: An officer stopped a woman in Austin in 2015 after she walked through a vegetable garden in the winter. The officer wrote the woman’s actions were “nonamenable to gardening” because snow was on the ground. She was arrested for possession of 0.3 grams of heroin. Her case was tossed out.

The steep cost of drug arrests

It’s expensive to lock someone up — even briefly — for having small amounts of drugs.

Kathie Kane-Willis, the Chicago Urban League’s research and policy director, once calculated the cost of jailing people whose drug charges were tossed out. In 2008, while she was an instructor at Roosevelt University, Kane-Willis studied 10 weeks of drug arrests at one Cook County branch court.

More than half of the possession cases for drug amounts lower than 15 grams were dismissed. About 75% of those cases involved half a gram or less of a controlled substance. During the study, about 100 defendants’ cases were dismissed, costing Cook County about $350,000. That included court costs and the cost of jailing those people, the study found.

The BGA and Sun-Times found more than $100 million was spent on briefly housing people in the Cook County Jail on low-level drug possession charges between 2013 and 2018. That figure includes the jail’s payroll and other basic incarceration costs but not medical care.

It’s a small fraction of the jail’s total budget over that period, but Kane-Willis said the money would be better spent helping drug users with their health and housing problems.

“I’ve spent two weeks in jail kicking dope, rather than going to my methadone treatment appointment,” said Kane-Willis, a former heroin user. “Is that a better system?”

‘A chronic disease’

The Chicago Police Department didn’t respond to requests for comment about officers making low-level drug arrests. But Roti, the former police supervisor, said some low-level drug arrests serve a purpose.

Roti said gang members who run West Side drug markets entrust hand-to-hand sales to “buffers,” people who aren’t in a gang but sell small amounts of heroin to pay for their addiction.

When buffers are arrested for drug possession, they can give up information that helps build cases against violent gang members on some of the most dangerous streets in the city, he said.

Roti said the number of buffers who get arrested by narcotics officers is fairly small. A lot more people who use drugs get arrested as a result of patrol officers responding to complaints from aldermen and residents about drug activity, he said.

Roti said weaker drug laws — such as one being contemplated in Illinois that would make possession of 3 grams of heroin or less a misdemeanor — would benefit drug dealers and make it harder for officers to tackle citizen complaints about drug dealing.

The Chicago police get tens of thousands of such complaints every year.

“How do you answer those calls for service?” Roti said. “Write a couple of tickets and drive away? More people come up, they sell more drugs. People don’t want to live like that.

“No person with a substance-abuse disorder walks around with 3 grams of opioids in their pocket.”

Three grams of heroin is equivalent to 30 “dime bags” sold on the street, Roti said.

Still, like others in law enforcement, Roti said drug addiction is ultimately a health problem.

“They say, ‘the war on drugs’ — they love to throw that around — they make it sound like it’s a war against addicts,” he said. “I’ve never seen a war on drug addicts. I think people need to look at this more like a chronic disease.”

Keeping people who use drugs out of jail

Roti spearheaded a CPD program that connects arrested people to treatment. The program is for people arrested with less than 1 gram of cocaine or heroin. They aren’t charged with a crime if they agree to meet with a counselor. But they’re barred if they’ve been charged with selling drugs or have convictions for violent crimes or gun possession.

Participants are in their late 40s, on average, and are typically unemployed, according to the University of Chicago’s Urban Labs Crime Lab, which is monitoring the program. Since the program started in 2016, police have referred more than 800 people to drug treatment. Some weren’t arrested but walked in to a police station for help.

In a sample of about 50 people in the program, 31% stayed in treatment longer than three months. The program — the largest of its kind in the country — operates in half of the city’s police districts and is expected to expand to all of them.

Addiction experts say keeping people who use drugs out of jail can save their lives. That’s because their tolerance for heroin diminishes in jail. They can risk overdosing if they return to their old habits when they’re out.

Since 2017, Cook County Jail detainees have been asked whether they use drugs, and they get treatment to minimize withdrawals, said Matthew Walberg, a spokesman for Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart. Methadone, Suboxone and Vivitrol have been given to detainees to treat opioid addictions, he said.

Detainees also are handed doses of the overdose-reversal drug naloxone when they exit the jail in case they relapse, Walberg said. More than 18,000 kits containing two doses have been distributed, he said.

“We’ve had some people who were given the naloxone within 40 minutes of leaving,” he said.

A card table on a sidewalk

In addition to the diversion programs, community outreach groups are going straight to the heroin markets on the West Side to offer help.

Thresholds and the West Side Heroin/Opioid Task Force send outreach workers to meet people on sidewalks and street corners. They provide naloxone, clean needles and syringes. They can arrange for them to get methadone treatment if they want to kick their drug habits. They also help people apply for government IDs.

On a chilly morning in late September, Elizabeth Elamri and her friend Rafi walked up to outreach workers sitting at a card table on a sidewalk near Roosevelt Road and Albany Avenue. They walked away with overdose-reversal supplies. Then they went down the street and scored some heroin.

Elamri, 56, said she’s had two friends die of overdoses. Rafi said his wife once revived him with naloxone.

“They’re saving lives here,” he said of the outreach workers.

Gail Richardson, who said she used to take heroin and was convicted of dealing drugs, is one of those workers.

“I have sat here and cried,” said Richardson, who works for the West Side Heroin/Opioid Task Force.

“That once was me,” she said of a man who walked up for help. “When you get up in the morning, heroin is your breakfast and coffee.”

Tim Devitt, Thresholds’ vice president of clinical operations, said even more street outreach is needed. A change in the way drug treatment is defined by the state could help thousands of people, Devitt said. The state will pay for drug treatment that’s performed in a building, but the streets are where most of the need is, he said.

“It’s important to expand that definition to include support and services that happen outside four walls that can include outreach,” Devitt said.

People who use drugs need help with housing, jobs and forming relationships with other people, according to Devitt, who’s excited about the passage of the state’s Housing is Recovery law, which will provide rental subsidies to people at risk of dying of overdoses.

‘No great revolution’

Ruddell, the civil rights lawyer, is pushing for Illinois to pass a law to reduce low-level narcotics possession offenses from felonies to misdemeanors. Low-level narcotics possession is a felony in Illinois and 26 other states.

“This is no great revolution,” Ruddell said.

He noted that, in 2014, then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel and police Supt. Garry McCarthy told legislators they supported making possession of less than 1 gram of a controlled substance a misdemeanor.

Ruddell is an architect of a recent bill that would go even further, making possession of under 3 grams of heroin or methamphetamine and under 5 grams of cocaine a misdemeanor.

The bill stalled in the spring session of the Illinois Senate after winning House approval. Police associations opposed the measure. ​​The leader of the Illinois Sheriffs’ Association said the bill wrongly reduced the penalties for what he considered to be large amounts of drugs.

And downstate lawmakers said the bill would make drug problems worse in their communities.

In Chicago, the mayor’s office and police department didn’t make any public statements about the legislation. The Cook County sheriff’s office didn’t take a position.

But the bill got support from the Cook County state’s attorney’s office and the Lake County and Champaign County sheriffs.

“People dealing with addiction need their safety net of support strengthened, not taken from them through incarceration,” Lake County Sheriff John Idleburg said in a letter to the Illinois House Judiciary Criminal Committee chairman. “Unfortunately, this is exactly what stiff criminal penalties associated with lower-level drug possession offenses do for people stuck in a destructive cycle of addiction and drug use.”

The bill isn’t dead, but it’s on a back burner, according to sources in the General Assembly.

Ruddell said the legislation would be a big step toward changing the way Chicago and other cities deal with people who use drugs.

“They’re still locking people up, and it’s still primarily Black people from low-income neighborhoods that we’re doing this to and sending them to prisons or jails,” Ruddell said. “Those are people whose employment and housing are being set back because of felony records. We need to focus on connecting people with access to services in their communities.

“Treating low-level drug possession as a felony isn’t working. It’s not reducing the use of drugs, the availability of drugs or the deadly overdoses.”

Frank Main is a reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times. Casey Toner and Jared Rutecki are reporters for the Better Government Association. This story uses data from The Circuit, a courts data project by Injustice Watch and the BGA, in partnership with civic tech consulting firm DataMade. The University of Southern California’s Annenberg Center for Health Journalism provided support for the project through a 2021 National Fellowship.

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MADRAS, Oregon — Alicia Hume feared she was headed to jail after a sheriff’s deputy pulled over her borrowed Volkswagen Beetle and saw her put a bottle of eight fentanyl-laced oxycodone pills in her bra.

She faced a misdemeanor drug possession charge that could mean up to a year in jail, more than $6,000 in fines and court-ordered addiction treatment.

Instead, the Jefferson County, Oregon, sheriff’s deputy used his discretion to let the 42-year-old mother of two drive away that September night. And prosecutors later dropped her case, saying the deputy should have written her a ticket instead of charging her with a crime.

That’s because of a new Oregon law — the first in the nation — making possession of small amounts of drugs, such as heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine, into the equivalent of a minor traffic infraction.

“I was, like, ‘Oh, thank God,’ ” Hume said of her brush with the law in central Oregon.

Hume worried she would suffer from drug withdrawal in jail after her latest arrest.

“I would have been ‘pill sick,’ ” she said. “I was just thinking, ‘Oh, my God, I’m so blessed.’ ”

Since the Oregon law went into effect in February, police officers have written more than 1,300 tickets for drug possession instead of arresting people such as Hume, achieving the ballot measure’s aim of keeping people out of jail. It also steers hundreds of millions of dollars into expanding treatment throughout Oregon, which regularly ranks among the worst states for substance abuse and mental health problems, as well as access to care.

But records show few have entered drug treatment through the ticketing system, which the law also was supposed to encourage. And interviews suggest many cops aren’t carrying out their new responsibilities.

A new approach

Touted by supporters as a way to end “the war on drugs,” the controversial Oregon law is part of a growing trend away from a decadeslong practice of using jails to combat drug addiction and toward treating it as a public health crisis.

Oregon already was among states no longer charging low-level users as felons — a tectonic shift from 50 years ago, when then-President Richard Nixon declared drug abuse “Public Enemy No. 1.”

Last year’s referendum, known as Measure 110, not only ended the practice of jailing drug users but also established new money and new avenues for treatment and counseling.

Throughout the rest of the country, people go to jail for low-level drug possession. In Illinois, it’s still a felony.

The analysis used data from The Circuit, a collaborative of news organizations including the BGA and Injustice Watch, that compiled Cook County court records from 2000 to 2018.

The BGA and Sun-Times traveled to Oregon to examine the impact of its drug law. As civil rights activists in Illinois push for policy changes, Oregon’s experience shows reform doesn’t always lead to its intended consequences — at least not right away.

Judge: Law wasn’t getting people into treatment

More than 1.3 million people voted last November for Measure 110, which fortifies the state’s drug-treatment network with more than $100 million per year from existing marijuana tax revenue. Most sheriffs and district attorneys in Oregon opposed it.

Under the new law, which passed with 58% of the vote, anyone caught with less than 1 gram of heroin or 2 grams of cocaine or methamphetamine should be issued a $100 ticket instead of being arrested. Officers are supposed to confiscate and destroy the drugs, write the user a ticket and send them on their way.

Oregon’s population is mostly white, but Black people were disproportionately targeted by drug arrests in the past. Supporters say Measure 110 should end that disparity, at least for those caught with small amounts of drugs.

The state also will save money because the law will prevent people from being charged and spending time in jail, officials say. About 9,000 people per year were being arrested in cases in which drug possession was the most serious offense, according to the ballot proposal.

Sam Junge, who helps run the volunteer organization Portland People’s Outreach Project, said his group qualified for nearly $450,000 in grant money through the measure. The money will help pay for condoms, pipes, syringes and the overdose-reversal drug naloxone, along with rent for space they can use for storage and where people who use drugs can go to relax and charge their phones.

But records and interviews show Oregon’s new law has so far fallen short of one of its central goals — getting people into drug treatment through law enforcement. It’s a failure advocates of the new measure attribute to growing pains.

Under the law, a state hotline was set up, so people who get police-issued drug tickets can call to arrange for a substance-abuse assessment. If they get an assessment or go into treatment, the courts will toss out their fines.

Through Sept. 30 — eight months into the new program — only seven of the more than 1,300 people issued tickets had presented a judge with proof they used the service, according to state records.

Andrew Balyeat, a judge in Bend, Oregon, said most people don’t even show up in his court for hearings about their drug tickets.

“I look at these numbers, and I have to agree with you that if the goal was for people to get treatment, it doesn’t appear at this time that it’s working,” Balyeat said.

Jacob Stoner, 30, who got a ticket for methamphetamine possession, was a no-show for his Bend, Oregon, court hearing in late October, records show. Had he appeared in court and shown he’d obtained a drug assessment through the state hotline, the judge would have tossed out his ticket.

His was the only drug-ticket case on the court’s docket that day. Stoner couldn’t be reached for comment.

The court system is dealing with hundreds of people who failed to appear in court for their drug tickets, according to a state report on the program’s progress.

Those who fail to appear after being issued a drug ticket can’t be charged with a crime, unlike those failing to appear on traffic infractions. But unpaid drug tickets still go through debt collection like any other kind of civil citation, officials said.

Hotline woes

Under the law, ticketed people can pay the fine, appeal or call the state’s hotline to arrange to get an evaluation for possible drug treatment and help with other health problems, housing, employment and child care.

If they show the judge they went through the screening or independently got drug treatment within 45 days, their tickets get dismissed, and their fines get wiped away.

The police are supposed to destroy confiscated drugs after they conduct a field test to confirm what they are.

When police officers hand out drug tickets, they’re also supposed to give people a palm card with instructions for calling the hotline, according to Dwight Holton, CEO of the nonprofit Lines for Life, which runs the hotline.

But boxes of the cards sat unopened in police stations, according to Holton and others involved in the implementation of the new measure.

The Jefferson County sheriff’s office, which charged Hume with misdemeanor drug possession before a prosecutor decided she should have gotten a ticket, wrote one drug ticket in the first eight months of the program.

“Even if we wrote them a ticket, there’s no teeth,” said Marc Heckathorn, Jefferson County’s sheriff.

Holton, a former U.S. attorney in Oregon, is pushing for the state to put hotline information on the drug tickets, which he and other advocates think might increase the number of calls.

Janie Gullickson, a chief petitioner for the ballot measure, acknowledged that people caught with narcotics might not call the state’s hotline, get substance-abuse assessments and go to court to get their tickets dismissed.

But she said the expanded health care funding would help people whether they got a ticket or not, she said. The law allocated $302 million over two years for behavioral health services in every county.

“A huge shift in the system is going to take some time, right?” Gullickson said. “It’s not instantaneous.”

Skepticism among people who use drugs

Some people who use drugs, such as Portland resident Sabrina Brandt, say the law doesn’t go far enough in decriminalizing drugs. They say drugs should be completely legalized and tested for dangerous impurities.

Brandt gives out hugs, water bottles and clean hypodermic needles to those living in the tent encampments sprawled along Portland’s downtown sidewalks, wooded bike paths and highway underpasses.

Brandt, who was wearing a black T-shirt with the message “Drug Users Deserve Dignity and Care,” said she has survivor’s guilt, having outlived many of her friends who died from drugs.

She said that’s why she volunteers to help people avoid overdoses.

Brandt, 38, is among the thousands the new Oregon law was intended to help. Her arms are scarred from decades of drug injections, which she said she started when she turned 16.

Brandt said she likes how the ballot initiative treats drug use as a public health problem instead of a crime.

“It’s great that Oregon voters passed this and the fact that other states are looking at us, like, ‘Wow, this could be done,’ ” she said. “It could be done in other states and in better ways.”

Brandt isn’t completely sold on the new law, though. That’s because longtime users such as her often walk around with larger amounts of narcotics than the Oregon law decriminalized, she said.

“From people I’ve talked to, including drug dealers, people who use every day and people that use recreationally, it really hasn’t changed business as normal,” she said.

Brandt said she has injected a mix of heroin and cocaine, known as a speedball. She’s been in and out of jail much of her life, mostly for drug possession and crimes connected to drugs.

She’s been homeless but now lives in a first-floor, two-bedroom apartment in southeast Portland with her boyfriend, Justin Adam “Jelli” Marshall, and their cats, Scooter and Ollie.

Marshall works as a handyman at a bar and makes extra money fixing mopeds and bicycles. He and Brandt are volunteers for harm-reduction programs that help people addicted to drugs.

Marshall, whose drug of choice is speed, said he also has misgivings about Oregon’s new drug reform.

He said he worries that failing to pay the $100 fine will “just get you wrangled into the system.”

Outreach worker: Law put ‘cart before horse’

This summer, 25-year-old Jerry Adams was living in a tent with his cat in downtown Portland. He pointed out rampant drug use along the sidewalk where he was camping with other people.

“Literally, like that tent right there,” he said. “There’s a dude who lives in it. And you can see him getting the air out of his needles, about to shoot up.”

Thousands of people live in such camps throughout Portland, but they’re concentrated downtown to take advantage of the services offered there. Oregon has one of the highest rates of homelessness in the United States, nearly four times the Illinois rate, according to 2019 census estimates. About 35 of every 10,000 people are homeless in Oregon compared with about eight of 10,000 in Illinois. And drug abuse often goes hand in hand with life on the street. So does mental illness.

Adams was staying downtown because his pregnant girlfriend was living nearby in temporary housing provided by the street outreach group Outside In, which also has a needle exchange.

Ria Tsinas, an Outside In needle exchange worker, said she can’t keep up with the demand from homeless people seeking syringes, needles and alcohol pads to stay safe while they shoot up.

She once had to close her office at 5 p.m. on a Friday, but people were still banging on the door for help an hour later. It shows Oregon’s new drug reform isn’t enough, Tsinas said.

“It’s like they put the cart before the horse,” she said. “What people want is a place to go.”

As drug users walked away from the site empty-handed, Tsinas said she sometimes doubts whether she’s doing any good. She recounted scenes of despair: People sleeping in the streets, doing drugs, in the grips of severe mental illness. Untreated and alone.

People, she said, the world left behind long ago.

Most prosecutors opposed Measure 110

One vocal opponent of the drug reform measure was John Haroldson, the district attorney in Benton County, home of Oregon State University.

Haroldson said the state should have continued to use drug courts for low-level possession cases instead of decriminalizing those offenses. Drug courts have been used in Oregon for decades and provide a “stick” to get treatment for users, he said.

“If people could stop using drugs on their own, then we wouldn’t have a problem,” Haroldson said.

In Cook County, the courts and police have programs to divert some drug offenders away from prison, but they do little to stop the churn of dead-end drug arrests. Cook County’s drug-court treatment program, for instance, is focused on providing help for those already on probation.

In Oregon, Haroldson said, supporters promoted Measure 110 on a “false premise” it would keep people out of prison. He was among 25 of Oregon’s 36 district attorneys who opposed the ballot initiative.

Since 1989, Haroldson said, people convicted of low-level felony drug possession offenses were sentenced to probation, and when they violated the conditions of their probation, they were sent to the county jail for up to six months.

Then in 2017, low-level possession offenses were reduced to misdemeanors.

Before voters approved the ballot measure last year, Haroldson said, cities in Oregon already had programs in which people arrested for drug possession weren’t charged and were referred for treatment.

Haroldson said he hopes Measure 110 will have a positive impact, but he’s “concerned” because he doesn’t think it’s based on an evidence-based approach such as drug courts.

“I imagine you’ve seen what Portland looks like,” he said of the widespread homelessness and drug use. “Ask yourself: How’s that working out?”

‘Hope to never see you again’

John Hummel, the district attorney of Deschutes County in central Oregon, strongly supported Measure 110 and still does.

Hummel, who began his career as a public defender and worked in health care policy for low-income people, said his background affected his policies when he was elected top prosecutor in 2014.

“I already had the mindset that the war on drugs has been a failure, and we need to just wave the white flag,” he said.

Deschutes County, in which the biggest city is Bend, draws tourists for skiing, white-water rafting and mountain biking in forests of ponderosa pines, but this health-conscious area is grappling with drug problems, too.

There, as across Oregon, many people are arrested for methamphetamine possession.

As district attorney, Hummel created a diversion program called Clean Slate to keep people who use drugs out of jail. Those with a low risk of getting rearrested are freed without charges and pointed toward health services.

“I shake your hand and say, ‘Good luck to you,’ ” Hummel said. “ ‘Hope to never see you again.’ ”

Those deemed likely to commit future drug offenses are assessed for possible substance-abuse disorders and other health issues. They can go to clinics that offer dental care, drug treatment and housing assistance. If they participate and stay crime-free, their arrests are expunged.

Hummel said Clean Slate has reduced the number of drug users he sees again in court. Less than 20% of “low risk” people have reoffended over the past three years, and less than 60% of the rest did. That reduced the number of drug-related crimes such as thefts, Hummel said.

“Now, we’re freeing up time to work on the child sex abuse, domestic violence,” he said.

Hummel said he’s continuing to offer Clean Slate to people arrested for higher drug amounts than those decriminalized by Measure 110.

Michelle Tobin, a landscaper who’s been arrested for drug possession, is a Clean Slate graduate.

Tobin said she started using methamphetamine when she was a teenager. It helped with her attention deficit and was cheaper than prescription drugs, she said.

Last year, an officer pulled her car over on Super Bowl Sunday and found a pipe. Police said there was methamphetamine residue in it.

“I was crying,” she said. “You’re willing to go put me in jail for a f- – -ing pipe?”

Instead of jail, she was admitted to Clean Slate.

“Technically, that case was never filed,” Tobin said. “So, like, if a cop pulled up my name, it wouldn’t say I had these charges as long as I completed this program. And I just had to go to my doctors’ appointments. It sets you up with counselors, therapists, whatever they feel that could be beneficial to you.”

She said Clean Slate might have kept her from losing her job.

“I didn’t have that humiliation of going to jail or the possibility of missing a court date and being thrown in jail if the judge was having a bad day,” she said.

This year, a friend of hers got caught with drugs, but the police didn’t arrest her because of Measure 110. The woman got into treatment because of the new law.

Tobin’s friend was one of 67 people to get a drug ticket in Deschutes County this year through the end of September, according to court records.

Tobin said it’s good that Measure 110 provides people across the state with the same opportunity to stay out of jail and get access to health services that she got in the county’s Clean Slate program.

“Decriminalizing, I think, is gonna help a lot,” she said.

Hummel said Oregon’s sweeping drug reform law represents a recognition that programs such as Clean Slate work.

But he said the implementation of the law needs “tweaks.”

“So my friends around the state who were opposed to 110, if they see some piece of it that they think isn’t working, they go, ‘ha ha,’ and do a little victory dance,” Hummel said. “What are they advocating for — going back to the system that has failed miserably since the founding of Oregon?”

Casey Toner and Jared Rutecki are reporters for the Better Government Association. Frank Main is a reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times. This story uses data from The Circuit, a courts data project by Injustice Watch and the BGA, in partnership with civic tech consulting firm DataMade. The University of Southern California’s Annenberg Center for Health Journalism provided support for the project through a 2021 National Fellowship.

Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx started working out in 2012 to cope with the grief after her mother’s death from cancer.

That’s when she met Juan Johnson at the gym, where he was a muscular trainer trying to hide his tattoos. Soon, he was her personal trainer.

The two bonded over their similar backgrounds. Foxx grew up in the now-demolished public Cabrini-Green housing complex; Johnson grew up in a rough part of Humboldt Park.

“We had personal intimate conversations about our life and her life where she grew up and stuff like that,” Johnson said. “She just opened my eyes to a lot of stuff.”

When Foxx knew him, Johnson was a 210-pound weightlifting fanatic. Now, he weighs 140 pounds because of heroin use, which he resumed about five years ago following a long stretch of sobriety when he ran his training business and counted Foxx among his clients.

“It’s so painful, actually, to hear that he is not doing well,” Foxx said after hearing about Johnson’s recent troubles. “It breaks my heart.”

Johnson was among several hundred low-level drug possession cases the Better Government Association and the Chicago Sun-Times randomly examined.

The arrests were concentrated in swaths of the West Side, where drugs are sold at open-air markets, and most of the people arrested were older Black men such as Johnson. Under state law, possession of any amount of controlled substance — even just the residue left in a baggie — is an automatic felony.

In interviews, Johnson revealed his relationship with Foxx during a discussion about his fitness career. He said he was Foxx’s trainer at a gym for a few years, and he did not do drugs during that period.

For him, the arrest was humiliating. He said he stopped communicating with Foxx because he was embarrassed about his drug use and legal struggles stemming from it.

Foxx said she didn’t know about it. She remembers Johnson as “a sweet, humble guy.” He’d gotten out of prison for a federal gun conviction and had worked hard to become a trainer at the LA Fitness in Broadview, where they became friends, Foxx said.

“He talked about the struggle of finding employment and how grateful he was — with having the record that he had — to be able to do this,” she said.

“I think I paid him $30 an hour. I spent four mornings a week with him, 6 o’clock every day. He was on time every time.”

Johnson was arrested for drug possession in 2017, about a year and a half after he said he started using heroin again. A Chicago police officer pulled over his car in Brighton Park while he was working as a ride-share driver. Police said they found a straw and 0.4 grams of heroin in his wallet and towed his car. He was in jail for a week until he was released on bail. About two weeks later, his case was dismissed.

Johnson said he had to pay $3,000 to get his car out from the police impound lot. Last year, the city lowered such fees, which Mayor Lori Lightfoot had promised to do during her campaign.

Johnson also lost his job because of the arrest. He wondered: “Am I going to go back to the streets?” He said he eventually got another job, but the arrest set him back financially.

Johnson remembers when Foxx was elected state’s attorney for the first time in 2016. He said he went on LinkedIn and congratulated her for “knocking out” incumbent State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez.

“I still got [Foxx’s] text that said, ‘She should have known better to go up against me,’ ” Johnson said.

But he said he was too ashamed about his arrest to congratulate Foxx on winning reelection in November 2020.

In an interview on a Humboldt Park bench, Johnson recalled his old life as a trainer. At the peak, he said, he made $5,500 per month training clients. This was during a period of sobriety he describes as one of the happiest periods of his life, when he had money, stability and peace of mind.

“And I let that go,” he said.

Foxx said she’s familiar with that.

“People in my family have struggled with addiction and arrests,” she said.

“The reality is for so many people who maybe are not ready for services or who have tried it for multiple years or who cannot unstick themselves from the addiction, it is just this unending cycle for them and for the people who love them, who root for them.”

Casey Toner and Jared Rutecki are reporters for the Better Government Association. Frank Main is a reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times. This story uses data from The Circuit, a courts data project by Injustice Watch and the BGA, in partnership with civic tech consulting firm DataMade. The University of Southern California’s Annenberg Center for Health Journalism provided support for the project through a 2021 National Fellowship.

CHICAGO — Accused murderers, robbers and rapists in Cook County Jail’s oldest maximum-security complex often use toothpaste caps and toilet paper to jam their cell doors and sneak out.

Sometimes, they don’t even need to resort to such tricks. The aging locks in the doors malfunction on their own.

“Some of them are so bad they can literally slide the door, give the door a little jiggle, and it will slide open,” a Cook County sheriff’s correctional officer said.

Between February 2007 and last May, there have been at least 288 problems with jail doors in the 608-cell complex called Division 1, a Chicago Sun-Times/Better Government Association investigation has found.

A Cook County sheriff’s spot check about a year ago showed that 69 cell doors in the division — more than 11 percent — were “found to be not closing properly, with the potential for being breached,” records show.

Those doors have been fixed, officials said. But problems continue. And they aren’t limited to cell doors. County records show stairwell, corridor and tunnel doors have been malfunctioning, too — though not with the same frequency as cell doors.

“It’s Jail 101: The doors ought to lock,” said Charles Fasano of the John Howard Association, a watchdog group that monitors the jail under a federal court order.

County officials said they’re trying to fix the problem through repairs and a new security strategy. Division 1, which opened in 1929, is unique because its cell doors slide open, rather than swinging on hinges like the 3,168 cells in the jail’s other 10 divisions.

“Guys have figured out that using a cap from a tube of toothpaste with a piece of paper” can keep cell doors open while making it “look like they’re locked on the [electronic] panel,” Fasano said.

The concern isn’t so much about inmates escaping — they would need to go through three more sets of locked doors before they would even reach a hallway — but about gang fights. In August, rival gang members in Division 1 left their cells and began stabbing each other with homemade knives.

Inmates told sheriff’s investigators the correctional officer on duty pushed a button to unlock all the cell doors at the same time, an error that led to the melee. But the officer insisted he didn’t open the locked doors simultaneously and that the inmates must have done it on their own.

Another officer, as well as an inmate involved in the fight, told the Sun-Times that malfunctioning doors contributed to the problems then.

Of the 288 reports of door malfunctions, 245 involved cell doors. They included 129 reports of cell doors not locking, being off-track or otherwise “broken.” Another 112 involved problems with electronic panels and switches that control the doors.

A few years ago, similar problems surfaced in the jail’s other maximum-security complex, Division 9, Fasano said. In one case, in February 2006, correctional officers were doing an inspection when they found a cell door open and a playing card jammed in the lock, according to a sheriff’s office report. An inmate in the cell got combative when questioned and punched one of the officers in the face.

In August, the sheriff’s office launched a new security strategy to deal with faulty doors. Correctional officers must now double-check a panel that tells them whether cells are open or locked. And they go cell-to-cell to check, sheriff’s spokesman Steve Patterson said.

Last year, the county spent more than $70,000 to fix more than 70 doors in Division 1.

A $350,000 contract is pending to replace worn-out parts in the locks in another 533 cells, said James D’Amico, director of the county’s Facilities Management Department.

In the last four years, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, who runs the jail, has gotten about $4.5 million from the county for door and frame replacements in Divisions 4, 5, 6, 9 and 10, Patterson said.

“The sheriff is, in a sense, a tenant, and the County Board president is the landlord,” Patterson said. “We have absolutely no control of the maintenance of the facility. It’s a strange setup — and one the sheriff is not happy about.”

D’Amico meets once a week with sheriff’s officials about door repairs that are needed. He said his staff is doing its best despite having a budget that’s been slashed from $3.5 million to $1.5 million since 2003 and a staff that’s gone from 470 to 370 over the same period.

A federal judge overseeing jail conditions has ordered the county to hire more facilities management staff but has not said how many yet, D’Amico said.

The same judge has ordered Dart to hire more than 200 correctional officers to bolster jail security.