Nine months after cash bail ended in Illinois, the state is taking its first steps in publishing the data that crafters of the bail reform law saw as essential to judging its effectiveness.
The data shows that judges in the 75 counties served by the Illinois Supreme Court’s Office of Statewide Pretrial Services had collectively issued failure-to-appear warrants in just 5% of more than 28,000 court dates as of Friday. Judges had approved about 63% of petitions to detain a defendant pretrial that were sent to them by prosecutors.
The OSPS, launched in 2021 to provide things like pretrial safety assessments and electronic monitoring for 75 of Illinois’ 102 counties, published the data in a new dashboard this week. It represents a key – but still early and incomplete – step in tracking Illinois’ progress as the first state to fully end cash bail through a wide-ranging criminal justice reform known as the SAFE-T Act.
Some state’s attorneys, sheriffs and other law enforcement organizations were staunchly and publicly opposed to the law when it passed – launching several lawsuits that ultimately delayed cash bail’s elimination by nine months. But retired Cook County Judge Cara Smith, who now leads the OSPS, said she believes the data shows everyone is taking their responsibilities under the SAFE-T Act “very seriously.”
“I think judges and the other stakeholders – everyone, regardless of what their position might have been on the policy behind the SAFE-T Act – that everyone’s doing their job,” she told Capitol News Illinois.
For David Olson, co-director of the Loyola University of Chicago’s Center for Criminal Justice, or CCJ, the data demonstrates the complexities of tracking a reform as large as the SAFE-T Act in a state as geographically diverse as Illinois.
“Everyone wants to know: ‘How’s it going in Illinois?’” Olson said in an interview. “Well, which of the 102 Illinois(es) do you want to hear about? There’s 102 counties, and every one’s a little bit different.”
New pretrial detention system
The SAFE-T Act included a provision known as the Pretrial Fairness Act that ended the use of cash bail in Illinois, meaning a person cannot be jailed while awaiting trial simply because they can’t afford a dollar amount assigned by a judge. After litigation forced a delay in implementing the PFA, cash bail was officially eliminated on Sept. 18, 2023.
It created a replacement system in which prosecutors can petition judges to detain an individual based on the seriousness of the alleged crime and the defendant’s dangerousness or risk of fleeing prosecution. Before a judge can order detention, the state must prove “by clear and convincing evidence” that the defendant committed the crime, poses a specific threat to a person or the community and that no other pretrial conditions can mitigate the defendant’s risk.
The law also gives defendants a right to legal representation at their first court hearing, with the intention of making hearings more deliberative when an individual’s freedom is at stake as they await a full trial.
OSPS had completed more than 16,600 pretrial investigations since cash bail ended as of Friday, with just over 10,200 of them for defendants accused of a felony. As part of those investigations, the OSPS provides individual reports about a defendant to judges, public defenders and prosecutors prior to a first appearance in court. The investigations usually include an interview with the defendant, a detailed criminal history, employment information and more.
The data showed that about 52% of cases that were subject to an OSPS pretrial investigation contained at least one offense considered “detainable” under the SAFE-T Act. As of Friday, prosecutors had petitioned the court to detain the defendant in 62% of those cases.
The fact that judges approved 63% of those petitions, Smith said, was evidence the system was working.
“If we would have seen 99% of detention petitions are granted, that would have been a red flag,” Smith said.
Smith also stressed that the statewide data only tells part of the story – county- and circuit-level data is just as important. The various circuit courts within OSPS’ jurisdiction had detention petition approval rates ranging from 48% to 84% as of Friday, though Smith pointed out percentages can be misleading, especially in smaller counties with low case volumes.
Four large counties that are not part of the OSPS – Cook, DuPage, Kane and McHenry – report some level of pretrial detention data individually. Detention petitions as of Friday were granted at a 38% rate in Kane County, 41% in DuPage and 40% in McHenry.
Cook County, which has the highest volume of cases of any jurisdiction by far, broke down its data further, reporting that detention was granted for 61% of 93 petitions filed for misdemeanor cases as of June 8, 41% of 1,485 domestic violence cases, and 70% of 2,641 felony cases.
Judges as of Friday had issued failure-to-appear warrants in only 5% of 28,416 court dates in the 75 OSPS counties since cash bail was eliminated. But Olson – whose CCJ has been studying pretrial detention since before the SAFE-T Act’s passage – cautioned that those numbers could increase, as failure-to-appear warrants are most accurately accounted for once a case has concluded.
Hannah Meisel contributed.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government. It is distributed to hundreds of newspapers, radio and TV stations statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, along with major contributions from the Illinois Broadcasters Foundation and Southern Illinois Editorial Association.
