Courtroom 302

Content Warning: The source material and this guide contain extensive discussion of mass incarceration, systemic racism, and substance use disorders. They also touch on topics of sexual assault, domestic and child abuse, and hate crimes. This guide obscures the n-word when reproduced in quotes.

Born and raised on Chicago’s South Side, Steve Bogira has been a staff writer for the Chicago Reader—a nonprofit alternative weekly newspaper—since 1981. As an investigative reporter, his career has focused on housing discrimination, de facto segregation, and economic inequality in the greater Chicago area. His book Courtroom 302, first published in 2005, details events in a single Chicago courtroom over the course of one year. In the process, Bogira uncovers some of the hidden sources of inequality in the criminal justice system not just in Chicago, but across the US.

Dan Locallo (now retired) was the judge at Cook County Courthouse and is the center of Bogira’s exploration of The Injustices of the US Justice System. He lived in the affluent Chicago suburb of Norwood Park, comprised mostly of white people of Polish, German, Italian, and Irish descent. He had a sister and two brothers. His older brother, Victor, was the family rebel but was later “diagnosed a paranoid schizophrenic” (197).