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PROPOSED RESOLUTION
96 ACRES ARTWORK INSTALLATION AT COOK COUNTY JAIL
WHEREAS, Cook County is a home rule unit of local government pursuant to Article VII, Section 6(a) of the 1970 Illinois Constitution, and as such may exercise any power and perform any function pertaining to its government and affairs; and
WHEREAS, in 1928, construction was started on a new County Jail at 26th and California, next door to the city's House of Corrections and finished by the end of the following year, with the adjoining Criminal Courthouse completed soon after, resulting in the new County Jail and neighboring House of Corrections housing what was then believed to be the largest concentration of prisoners in the free world; and
WHEREAS, in 1969, the Illinois State Legislature voted into law a statute that created the Cook County Department of Corrections (CCDOC), combining the County Jail and the city's House of Corrections under one authority which up to that point performed virtually the same tasks, but run separately for more than 40 years, thus combining staff and inmate populations from both facilities to form one correctional institution; and
WHEREAS, CCDOC, at 96 acres, is one of the largest single site county pre-detention facilities in the United States, covering more than eight city blocks with ten divisions, a health services facility, two education departments, a privatized food service and commissary; and
WHEREAS, 96 Acres is a series of community-engaged, site-responsive projects that involve community stakeholders' ideas about social and restorative justice issues, that examine the impact of incarceration at the Cook County Jail on Chicago's West Side; and
WHEREAS, 96 Acres uses multi-disciplinary practices to explore the social and political implications of incarceration on communities of color, employing creative processes and coalition building to generate alternative narratives reflecting on power and responsibility by prese...
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