Cook County Public Defender Sharone Mitchell tells WCPT’s Richard Chew he wants the justice system to focus on helping people, not cycling them back through it. "I would love the criminal legal system to be a place where we look at somebody's issues that they have, and try to give them the things they need and not be so mad at them, but be focused on the idea that we know that they're coming back and that it's our goal to do all that we can to make sure that they don't."

Cook County Public Defender Sharone Mitchell tells WCPT’s Richard Chew his office is committed to fighting the uphill battle of public defense. “So to work around hundreds and hundreds of people like that, it's not so lonely and it's not so hard. And just knowing that you're doing the right thing, knowing that you are speaking up for a person that may not have somebody to speak up for them, and they may have never had somebody to speak up for them, and that you're just trying to tell their story and there's going to be a judge that decides what happens. And, sometimes that's that's just all you need to continue to work.”