The Ordinance

The Community Restoration Ordinance (CRO) is a community initiated proposal that proactively places financial and structural investment in Chicago communities, while retroactively addressing harm done under the Gang Database. 

CRO disrupts the cycle of criminalization in two crucial ways:

1. By immediately dissolving and preventing the creation of a new database that has perpetuated harmful narratives and inaccurate data
   • CPD is prohibited from creating any new gang database
   • CPD cannot share its data with other agencies
   • The city will provide a letter to individuals acknowledging the historical unreliability and racially discriminatory nature of the gang database, and that an individual’s inclusion cannot be verified as true and should not be interpreted as an indicator of criminal activity
   • The city will provide compensation, with a minimum of $2,000 and a maximum of $10,000 depending on individual circumstances.
2. By investing in the long-term reparations/restitution of Black and Latinx communities
   • This will be done by regularly publishing a”peace book” that provides a resource directory indentifying wraparound services and job opportunities with the purpose of reducing youth incarceration; suggesting diversion programs and ways to further implement restorative justice practices inside schools, courts, and juvenile detention centers; documenting the inequalities that contributes to intergenerational poverty and trauma and proposes solutions; describing models and instructions regarding how to curate neighborhood-based peace treaties.
   • Identifies ‘Peace Keepers’ in each ward who have the experience and relationships required to conduct peace negotiation and violence interruption
   • Select an independent arbiter responsible for distributing financial compensation
   • Develops a comprehensive plan for rehabilitative reparations to fully respond to the harm of the gang database in Chicago communities, including the secondary harms experiences by the family members, friends and loved ones designated as gang members
   • Proposes remedies to gun violance, including but not limited to free college tuition, free drug treatment centers, employment priority preferences when applying for city jobs, trauma centers, trauma-informed schools, mental health care clinics, standby psychiatrists or therapists, restorative justice, community centers, transformative justice, fair housing, food justice and economic justice.