From 1972 to 1991 and beyond, detectives working under the supervision of Chicago police commander Jon Burge tortured or otherwise coerced confessions from over 118 black criminal suspects at Area 2 and Area 3 headquarters on the city’s South and Southwest Sides. As early as 1990, an internal investigator concluded, “The type of abuse described was not limited to the usual beating, but went into such esoteric areas as psychological techniques and planned torture.” Seeking to clear cases and punish wrongdoers, Burge and his crew regularly employed deception, threats, discomfort, mental stress, beatings, suffocation, mock execution, and electroshock. Nearly all detectives involved were white, virtually all their victims black. Coerced confessions helped convict scores of defendants. Over a dozen wound up on death row, including several who later won their release. Other actors in the criminal justice system facilitated abuse as well, including patrolmen, police supervisors, prosecutors, judges, and elected officials. The Burge scandal later spawned or united various social movements. For over 30 years, a shifting coalition of torture survivors, their families, civil rights attorneys, community activists, journalists, and academics helped corroborate torture allegations, fire Jon Burge, free the wrongfully convicted, win financial settlements, clear Illinois’s death row, abolish the state’s death penalty, send Burge to prison, and win passage of a municipal reparations package. While the Burge scandal reveals the interplay between personal bigotry and structural racism within the criminal justice system, it also shows how ordinary people held perpetrators accountable despite the intransigence of local officials.

A southeast side story -- "They wanted to be choirboys" -- "They believed they were at war" -- "Before our communities become virtual armed camps" -- "Third-world torture-Chicago style -- The Chicago torture justice movement.