Joel Handley, a former assistant editor at In These Times, is a Chicago-based independent journalist and freelance editor.
Feature
Who Do You Protect, Who Do You Surveil?
The Chicago Police Department has spent millions on high-tech spying equipment, including cell-phone tracking technology, but is extremely secretive about its use.
Joel Handley
Feature
Under ACLU-Drafted Bill, Illinois Police Must Forget Where You’ve Been
A new Illinois State Senate bill could end the mass collection and indefinite storage of license plate tracking data by police.
Joel Handley
Feature
Chicago Police Tight-lipped About Use of License Plate Scanners, Despite $500,000 New Contract
A secretive contracting process—and limited responses to information requests—leave Chicagoans in the dark about how their license plate data is being collected and used.
Joel Handley
Feature
EXCLUSIVE: New Documents Show FBI Targeted NATO Protesters
In the lead-up to the 2012 NATO Summit in Chicago, federal agents teamed with local police to find and interrogate suspected anarchists.
Joel Handley
Feature
Slip of an Officer’s Tongue Suggests Police Are Monitoring #BlackLivesMatter Protesters’ Cell Phones
Are Chicago police using 'stingrays' against activists?
Joel Handley
Feature
Introducing ‘We Surveil and Protect’: An In These Times Investigation
A brief history of surveillance by the Chicago Police Department.
Joel Handley
Feature
A Budget by the People, for the People
Participatory budgeting is on the menu in Chicago.
Joel Handley
Why I Followed Rahm Emanuel to the Bathroom
Joel Handley
Feature
Whose Budget? Their Budget.
At their first participatory budgeting vote, 5th ward residents take $1 million in municipal funds into their own hands.
Joel Handley
Feature
A Crash Course in Citizen Budgeting
What Chicago can learn from participatory budgeting projects around the world.
Joel Handley
Feature
Budgetary Power to the People
An experiment with direct democracy on Chicago's South Side.
Joel Handley
Feature
Out of Order Comes Chaos
Chicago's black gangs aren't the criminal enterprises they once were, but the police won't change their story.
Joel Handley
Feature
Illinois’ Injustice System
Budget cuts are hard on ex-cons trying to make good.
Joel Handley
Feature
The Poverty of School Reform
In Chicago's African-American neighborhoods, schools change quickly—regardless of what families want.
Joel Handley
Dispatch
Donald Rumsfeld’s Ugly Suits
U.S. citizens suing the former defense secretary for torture may finally get a day in court.
Joel Handley
Dispatch
Divesting From Private Prisons
A new coalition of immigrant and labor groups tries to shame the nation's largest investment firms.
Joel Handley
Labor
After Valentine’s Day Firing, Ill. Workers Protest for Better Severance Pay
Joel Handley
Dispatch
‘Zee’ End of Blackwater?
The troubled security firm gets a makeover.
Joel Handley
