In 2015, a pregnant and homeless 30-year-old woman spent 135 days in an Illinois jail because she stole two plums and three candy bars from a Save A Lot store, demonstrating the importance of the fight for cash bail reform.

That same year, a 41-year-old Illinois woman, who was later determined to have a mental illness, spent 112 days in jail for “criminal trespassing” — smoking a cigarette on the steps of a vacant mobile home.

These kinds of stories, recorded on the Cook County Sheriff’s Office blog, are common throughout the United States. Women and LGBTQ+ people who encounter law enforcement while experiencing poverty, health crises or gender-based violence are often trapped behind bars for days without a criminal conviction because they cannot pay their pretrial bail.

In 2021, Illinois decided to make a change and became the first state to eliminate the use of cash bail through the Pretrial Fairness Act. As of September 2023, Illinois courts use risk assessment tools to determine a person’s potential threat to public safety before releasing them pretrial, rather than basing the release on the person’s ability to pay.

Bail reform in Illinois is part of a larger movement over the past decade that called attention to racial bias to the justice system. That momentum is now in jeopardy as conservatives target bail reform and other measures that aim to reduce incarceration and strict criminal penalties.

In August, President Donald Trump signed two executive orders threatening to withhold federal funding from states and localities that significantly reduce the use of cash bail. In September, Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York and Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee also introduced bills in Congress to reinstate money bail in Washington, D.C., where the practice ended in 1992.

Republicans often argue that they want to crack down on crime and protect women, even as government data indicates significant declines in violent crime over the last 30 years. But advocates working on bail reform around the country argue that these policies benefit women on multiple levels, from those accused of crimes to survivors of gender-based violence.

Read the full article about the fight for cash bail reform by Candice Norwood at The 19th.