CHICAGO, (Reuters) – Anyone arrested in Chicago and  held overnight during the past decade could be eligible for  compensation of between $90 and $3,000, based on a settlement  approved by the city council yesterday.

The law firm Loevy & Loevy said the $16.5 million  settlement of its lawsuit could cover half a million people  arrested by police since March 1999.

The lawsuit said police repeatedly held “citizens  incommunicado … in what amounted to an institutionalized  system of police torture in Chicago,” usually with the aim of  eliciting confessions. The settlements will be paid to three classes of  plaintiffs, the law firm said: Several thousand people who were  held in interrogation rooms for at least 16 hours, often  shackled to a wall, without proper access to food, water or  restroom facilities; some 14,000 felony suspects who were held  more than 48 hours without seeing a judge; and hundreds of  thousands who were arrested and put in “cold jail cells without  access to mattresses or bedding.”

Part of the settlement will be paid by an insurance policy.  Chicago has been cutting spending to erase a budget deficit  that, heading into this year, was more than $500 million.

Separately, a federal trial is about to begin in Chicago  for retired police commander Jon Burge, who is charged with  perjury and obstruction of justice. A special commission found  ample evidence that Burge and some of his detectives in the  1980s routinely used electric shocks on suspects and hit them  with thick phone books.