Giving Compass' Take:
- Madeline Buckley reports on the effects of Illinois’ historic bail reform to prevent financial disparities from impacting whether defendants receive pretrial detention.
- What are the harms of pretrial detention? How can donors support further reforms to build a more equitable and justice criminal legal system?
- Learn more about key issues in criminal justice and how you can help.
- Search our Guide to Good for nonprofits focused on criminal justice in your area.
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During a recent public appearance, Cook County Public Defender Sharone Mitchell recalled the early days of working to pass, defend and then implement Illinois’ historic bail reform law amid intense furor.
“When I got a call from my aunt in North Carolina asking me if I was involved in a law that legalized murder, I knew it was crazy,” Mitchell said.
Illinois’ historic bail reform measure took effect nearly a year ago, eliminating money as a factor in whether a defendant is released from jail while awaiting trial and ushering in broad changes in how pretrial justice is handled.
Illinois’ Historic Bail Reform: Examining Its Impacts After One Year
The passage and eventual implementation of Illinois’ historic bail reform law took an arduous path, with controversy over the law reaching a fever pitch and yielding misinformation campaigns as well as legal challenges.
“There was so much information, research, data, evidence proof but we were stuck on fake narratives about what was going to happen,” Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx said at the same public summit about the Pretrial Fairness Act. “We don’t need 20 years to talk about what happened with the Pretrial Fairness Act. We don’t need 20 years to talk about the use of the term ‘purge’ … I just feel compelled in my time left in office to say truths that need to be spoken. It was racist. It was racist.”
Now that a year has passed since Illinois became the first state to legislatively outlaw bail, state and local officials are taking stock, hoping to leave the politics behind and evaluate the impact guided by data and other evidence.
With the caveat that studying such an impact can take years, researchers say the rate of defendants failing to appear in court has not increased after the passage of Illinois’ historic bail reform law. They point out — without giving it a causal link — that violent crime and property crime did not increase in the months after the law’s passage.
Read the full article about Illinois’ Pretrial Fairness Act by Madeline Buckley at Chicago Tribune.