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At least it doesn't look terrifying.

See, without that official booking, there's no publicly available record of where they are, meaning concerned family or -- even more importantly -- lawyers have no way of locating them. Even a first-year cop show procedural fan knows a person who's taken into custody is supposed to get a phone call and a lawyer if they so desire.

By far the scariest thing about Homan Square is how well they kept it hidden. It was first brought to the public's attention by way of an investigation by The Guardian. Even the guy who founded Northwestern University Law School's Center on Wrongful Convictions didn't know about it, and he's in Chicago. If you'd expect anyone to have the scoop, it would be him.

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Hey! Have you ever wondered why the Governor of Illinois just up and commuted every death sentence in the state to a life sentence? Most of the credit for that goes to a man named Jon Burge, and he's definitely not a hero for it.

From 1972 to 1991, Burge presided over Chicago's notorious Area 2 precinct, where suspects were routinely abused and tortured into confessing to crimes before family or lawyers even knew where they were.

Wikipedia

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There's a picture of a cattle prod on his Wikipedia page, if that gives you any idea what he was like.

His actions led to countless false confessions which only happened after suspects were subjected to things like having their pets shot or guns held to their children's heads. Eventually, enough tales of coerced and potentially false confessions poured in that Governor George Ryan declared a moratorium on death penalty executions in Illinois.