Chicago

Civilian review boards exist to provide independent, civilian oversight of law enforcement. In addition to civilian review boards, some cities also have inspectors general or oversight commissions, which are third-party government agencies or officials that provide external oversight of law enforcement policies and practices.

Dozens of jurisdictions across the country have some type of civilian oversight body, but despite the growing prevalence of civilian oversight in cities across the country, many communities have lost faith in their effectiveness. Effective oversight is only possible if oversight bodies are independent from the police department, representative of communities most impacted by police brutality, adequately funded, granted subpoena power, and equipped with full investigatory and disciplinary power.

For policy background and further resources, see our toolkit page on independent oversight here.

This jurisdiction has multiple oversight bodies, which are evaluated below. The overall score reflects evaluations of all applicable oversight bodies.

City Data

  • 2,722,586
    Total Population
  • 20.6%
    Poverty status in the past 12 months
  • 12,474
    No. of Police

Sources »

Racial and Ethnic Demographics

  • 29%
    Latinx
  • 30.5%
    Black/African American
  • 32.7%
    White, non-Hispanic
  • 6.2%
    Asian
  • 0.3%
    American Indian and Alaska Native
  • 0%
    Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
  • 11.2%
    Some other race
  • 2.6%
    2 or more races

Independent Oversight Methodology

Center for Popular Democracy researchers evaluated each jurisdiction based on a full set of policy criteria as developed in the Reform/Transform toolkit in collaboration with policy experts and advocates. Because the original tool is lengthy and the questions are numerous, we organized the full list of questions into a smaller number of thematic groupings. This process yielded 14 broad groupings of questions (which encompassed all of the sub-questions from the original, full-length tool).

Finally, we developed a ranking system to differentiate jurisdictions’ performance based on how successfully the authorizing legislation and/or other written policies governing their civilian review boards and/or other external oversight agencies fulfill these 14 broad criteria. Because not all questions should be weighted equally (some criteria are more essential to giving a policy teeth than others), our ranking system reflects researchers’ judgements about what components are critical to real accountability based on research and previous conversations with policy experts. Read more »