Masturbation Epidemic In Cook County Court Lockups Raises Questions About Jail Conditions County Budget Defendants Rights

                     In an October 31 letter          directed to felony trial attorneys, a supervisor in Cook County public defender Amy Campanelli’s office forbade staff from entering     courtroom lockup areas at the criminal court building at 26th and     California “until further notice.” The reason? Public defenders are being sexually harassed and even assaulted while visiting their clients in lockups. One of the most common forms of assault cited is defendants masturbating in front of female public defenders.



                     Such incidents weren’t unheard of in Campanelli’s decades of     criminal defense experience within and outside the public defender’s     office, but the frequency has dramatically increased, she says, since the Cook     County sheriff’s office scaled back guard staffing in holding areas located     outside of felony courtrooms.



                     “No lawyer should ever go to trial or have a motion heard without being     prepared. These clients’ lives are at stake,” she says. “And if I don’t     have the money I need in my budget my work loads are gonna increase.” As              a Reader investigation revealed last year, the causes for pretrial delays also frequently involve no-show cops and     retaliatory tactics by judges.



          Grace agrees that case-processing times are a huge problem, but they don’t hinge on the public defenders alone. She thinks the more likely root cause of inmates’ inappropriate behavior is the conditions of incarceration. “Sexuality is a human right and     when we treat people poorly there’s a lot going on. There’s a lot going     into indecent exposure, but I do think the conditions of jail are creating     this problem,” she says. “It’s about the lack of control and lack of power people     feel.” Though sheriff Tom Dart has ended the practices of strip searches and     solitary confinement in Cook County Jail (degrading experiences imposed by authorities that contribute to aggressive behavior by inmates), incarceration continues to expose inmates to violence, fear, intimidation, and a basic lack of         loving human contact, as one 2015 study frames the problem.



                     “I think masturbation is a distraction,” Mills says. “It’s not the real     problem—it’s just the symptom of the problem.”