From The Appeal
This piece was published in partnership with the Chicago Reporter.
On an April night in Chicago, Alexis Mansfield, an attorney who regularly assists women with criminal justice involvement, received a phone call from a woman in distress. The caller had previously been incarcerated, but was now on house arrest as part of one of Cook County’s Electronic Monitoring Programs. But she was unable to reach her assigned monitoring agent to report she was having an emergency. So she called Mansfield, who had helped her with legal representation previously.
The woman told Mansfield her partner was physically attacking her and that she needed to leave her home. Fleeing, however, would violate the conditions of her confinement and potentially send her back to jail. But staying could cost her her life.
“She said, ‘I can either go to jail or I can wait for him to kill me,’” Mansfield said. “In that situation, at least she knew me, so that I could contact somebody higher up and get it fixed immediately for her to get to a shelter. But we still have situations where people can’t go to a domestic violence shelter without it being a violation, so we’re literally forcing people to stay in abusive situations.” Continue reading >>>
|
|
|
|
