6 months after Illinois ended cash bail, jail populations are down as courts settle into new patterns

CHICAGO

In one of the most serious cases on the detention hearing call at the Leighton Criminal Court Building on a day earlier this month, a judge ordered a teen jailed pending trial after he was accused of shooting a woman in the neck during an attempted carjacking.

“It’s difficult for the court to come to the finding that an 18-year-old is so dangerous,” said Cook County Judge William Fahy. “I can’t overlook the nature of this offense and the level of violence involved. … This poor victim was shot twice.”

More than six months into implementation of the law that eliminated cash bail and reformed the state’s pretrial justice systems, counties have settled into new patterns, with longer detention hearings and money no longer a factor in whether someone will be released from jail.

Illinois was the first state in the nation to legislatively outlaw cash bail, ensuring that outcomes here would be watched closely. With half a year past, experts are taking stock of the Pretrial Fairness Act in practice, while advocates push for funding to support measures that they say will set the law up for success, particularly for the state’s underfunded public defense system.

“It’s a sea change in how things were done,” said Carolyn Klarquist, director of the Pretrial Fairness

Unit in the Office of the State Appellate Defender, which is overseeing most appeals related to the act.

Newly released data from the Cook County courts also offers the first glimpse of detention outcomes, though experts caution that it’s still early to compare rates of court appearances and reoffending before and after the law.

The Pretrial Fairness Act has already ushered in significant change for county jails, with reductions in population across the state and in Cook County, according to state and county data.

Its implementation has also come with some growing pains. Appeals of judicial detention decisions have soared, straining the state’s high courts and spurring new rules meant to stem the flow. The law, which seeks to give all defendants a robust defense in the pretrial stage, has underscored the dearth of resources for public defense in some mostly rural parts of the state.

Overall, though, new routines have taken hold, with the law mostly “working as intended” in Cook County, according to a recent report from the

Civic Federation and League of Women Voters in Cook County.

Since the reforms took effect in September, the Cook County prosecutor’s office sought detention in about 18% of cases, with judges granting such petitions about 60% of the time, data from the chief judge’s office shows.

Across the state, judges have granted nearly 64% of detention petitions brought before them by prosecutors since the law took effect, according to data from the Office of Statewide Pretrial Services, which serves 74 counties.

Previously, defendants would go before a judge, who would detain them or order release, often on condition of posting a monetary bail. Under the new system, prosecutors ask a judge to hold defendants in jail in cases deemed to present a flight risk or danger to the public when charged with an offense where detention is allowed. Everyone else is released with conditions, sometimes including electronic monitoring, after an initial appearance.

Proponents of the law have long argued that cash bail deepened disparities in the system by disproportionately jailing people too poor to make bail, and often point out that defendants were still allowed release under the old system if they could afford it.

The measure, though, has been controversial for those concerned about the public safety impact of the provisions – particularly Republicans. Opponents of Gov. J.B. Pritzker have sought to paint him and his Democratic allies as weak on crime.

Since the Pretrial Fairness Act took effect, warrants in Cook County were issued for a failure to appear in court in about 10% of cases in which defendants were released, according to court data.

When looking at new criminal activity, about 7% of those released were charged with a new, nonviolent offense and 4% with a violent offense, the data shows.

It’s not yet clear how this compares with such rates before implementation of bail reform.

During a panel discussion Friday about the reforms, Don Stemen, a professor at Loyola University Chicago studying the impact of bail reform, said the relatively short time that the law has been in effect makes it difficult to draw conclusions about recidivism and court appearance rates, though studies are in the works.

With shorter time frames, Stemen said, success rates may be high due to less time to reoffend or miss court dates.