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The Pretrial Fairness Act: Why It Is Needed and How It Will Improve Pretrial Safety and Justice in Illinois
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The Pretrial Fairness Act: Why It Is Needed and How It Will Improve Pretrial Safety and Justice in Illinois

The implementation of the Pretrial Fairness Act has ushered in a new pretrial process, marking an important step toward making Illinois’ system safer and more equitable.

Advancing Racial Equity and Justice, Criminal Justice Reform, Race and Criminal Justice, +1 More

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An office sign with a notice on cash bail
The bond office at Division 5 of Cook County Department of Corrections, September 18, 2023, when the Pretrial Fairness Act took effect, eliminating cash bail in Illinois. (Getty/Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service)

With the recent implementation of the Pretrial Fairness Act,1 Illinois became the first state in the country to eliminate the use of cash bail in all cases, meaning that people accused of a crime will no longer be held in jail for weeks or months simply because they lack the money to buy their freedom. In addition, the act will bring about a host of other changes that center safety and fairness in the pretrial decision-making process.

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For years, advocates have called for changes to Illinois’ pretrial processes, noting the ways that they fail to adequately assess safety and protect the rights of people accused of crimes, perpetuated unnecessary pretrial incarceration, and neglected the needs of victims. A wide range of diverse stakeholders supported eliminating cash bail because of the ways it conditions pretrial release on access to wealth rather than safety, disproportionately harms communities of color, and extracts wealth from people with the fewest economic resources. These stakeholders include people directly affected by the bail process, survivors of crime, reform advocates, legislators, and other elected and government officials. More than two years after its initial passage in the Illinois legislature, implementation of the Pretrial Fairness Act began across Illinois on September 18, 2023, marking a significant milestone on the way to creating a safe and just pretrial process.2

A wide range of diverse stakeholders supported eliminating cash bail because of the ways it conditions pretrial release on access to wealth rather than safety, disproportionately harms communities of color, and extracts wealth from people with the fewest economic resources.

The Pretrial Fairness Act will improve safety and justice throughout Illinois’ pretrial system and has the potential to serve as a model for positive pretrial reforms nationwide.

Also read

Why Illinois needs the Pretrial Fairness Act

Cash bail jeopardizes public safety by:

  • Allowing wealth, not safety, to determine pretrial release. Like most of the country, Illinois’ pretrial system historically relied heavily on the use of cash bail as a condition of pretrial release: People would pay an amount set by a judge in order to secure release from jail pretrial. Proponents argue that cash bail helps protect the public, but in practice, the officials setting bail typically lack the information necessary to make informed decisions on release, and wealthy individuals can buy their way out of jail regardless of the safety considerations in their case.3 In fact, cash bail systems have often been called “assembly line” justice because release decisions are made quickly, often in a matter of minutes, by judges relying on arbitrary bail schedules that set predetermined cash bail amounts based on offense type.4 Without knowing individual circumstances, judges cannot adequately assess safety considerations or determine whether conditions of release are necessary to protect victims of crime, ensure return to court, or support people who are released pretrial. Prior to the Pretrial Fairness Act, an average pretrial detention hearing took just four minutes.5 This process rarely allows for an in-depth investigation into factors relevant to the release decision.

Instead, cash bail systems rely on access to money as a fundamentally flawed proxy for safety in the pretrial process. In these systems, people with money—regardless of the seriousness of the offense they are charged with or the public safety considerations in their case—can pay to secure release pretrial. This issue is of particular concern to advocates for survivors of crimes such as domestic or sexual violence: A 2021 op-ed said that, before reform, there was a practice of “releasing people who can pay the bond with minimal regard for the threat they may pose to survivors.”6 As a result, cash bail systems jeopardize the immediate safety of crime survivors and threaten public safety broadly.

  • Perpetuating unnecessary incarceration and its associated harms. In addition to compromising public safety, cash bail results in the incarceration of many who could safely remain in the community pretrial, thus unnecessarily inflicting the serious harms of incarceration on families and their children. Prior to reform, Illinois’ cash bail system jailed an average of more than 250,000 legally innocent people before trial each year, disrupting their family and community relationships and putting at risk the custody of their children, employment, housing, and access to other resources simply because they lacked the money to afford to buy their freedom pretrial.7

Pretrial incarceration, even for a short time, can destabilize individuals and families by disconnecting people from employment, education, health care, their communities, and their children.8 Because of these destabilizing effects, spending more than 23 hours in pretrial detention has been “associated with a consistent and statistically significant increase in the likelihood of rearrest.”9 Parental incarceration has been associated with negative outcomes for children, including educational disruptions or challenges and an increased likelihood of experiencing homelessness, substance use disorders, or criminal legal involvement.10 In this way, cash bail systems harm both the immediate and future safety of families and communities.

Cash bail systems rely on access to money as a fundamentally flawed proxy for safety in the pretrial process.

Cash bail is profoundly unfair and perpetuates gross racial injustices

  • Cash bail practices unjustly subject innocent people to incarceration. A core tenet of the criminal legal system is the presumption of innocence and the idea that no one should be punished for a crime without being convicted. Cash bail practices undermine this core value by expanding the reach and harm of incarceration to innocent people. Cash bail practices not only can lead to unjust pretrial incarceration but also can compel people to take plea deals, regardless of their guilt or innocence, in order to secure release from jail.11 In fact, nearly 98 percent of criminal cases are resolved through plea agreements.12 Those who plead guilty experience the collateral consequences of having a record, including barriers to resources such as public benefits, housing, and employment.13 Additionally, new research shows that more than 50 percent of criminal case arrests end in dismissal, yet many of these individuals endure some pretrial incarceration before their case is ultimately dismissed.14 The government’s ability to strip people of their freedom and impose criminal sanctions is limited by design because of the destructive effects of incarceration. Requiring people to purchase their freedom pretrial undermines the presumption of innocence, as does the widespread jailing of legally innocent people who can safely remain in the community. A system that undermines the presumption of innocence and punishes people regardless of guilt or innocence will not inspire trust or legitimacy from the community.
  • Cash bail practices perpetuate racial injustices. Numerous studies have demonstrated that cash bail practices contribute to significant racial inequities in pretrial outcomes.15 Black people are 3.6 percent more likely to be assigned cash bail than their white counterparts, have average bail assignments that are $9,923 higher, and are more likely to be incarcerated pretrial.16 Black women are held in jail on cash bail more often and are less likely to be able to afford bail than their white or male counterparts.17 As a result, Black women make up 44 percent of the population of women in jail despite making up a significantly smaller portion of the general population.18 Given that 80 percent of women in jail are parents,19 the harms of pretrial incarceration spread to the accused individuals’ children and entire families.
  • Cash bail extracts wealth from people with the fewest resources. Eighty percent of people who are involved in the criminal legal system are considered “indigent,” meaning they can’t afford necessities.20 As a result, many people are held in jail on bail amounts as low as $250 or $500. People often must rely on family members and friends to supply bail money, thus spreading the economic impacts across families and communities. It is not uncommon for people to have to forgo paying for electricity, food, or rent to afford bail.21 Families across Illinois paid an estimated $140 million per year in cash bail prior to the implementation of the Pretrial Fairness Act.22

Illinois needs the Pretrial Fairness Act to create a system that appropriately balances protecting public safety with ensuring a fair and equitable pretrial process.

Under the Pretrial Fairness Act, the arbitrary practice of assigning cash bail will be replaced by individual assessments that allow judges to better assess the safety concerns in each case.

The Pretrial Fairness Act improves safety and fairness

The Pretrial Fairness Act improves safety by:

  • Centering safety in the pretrial process through individualized assessments. Perhaps the most important safety outcome of moving away from a wealth-based pretrial system is that people who pose a threat to their community will not be able to purchase their release. Under the Pretrial Fairness Act, the arbitrary practice of assigning cash bail will be replaced by individual assessments that allow judges to better assess the safety concerns in each case. This allows judges to assign conditions of release that will best promote safety and appearance in court, such as ensuring that people receive court reminders for hearing dates, are assisted with benefits enrollment, or are subject to no-contact orders or weapons restrictions when appropriate. If someone is charged with a detention-eligible offense23 and no conditions can ensure safety or appearance in court, judges maintain the ability to order pretrial detention.

The Pretrial Fairness Act also better protects crime survivors. The law requires that survivors receive timely notification of any hearing about pretrial release to ensure that they have enough time to develop a safety plan.24 It also gives them the ability to file for protective measures, including orders of protection, civil no-contact orders, or stalking no-contact orders, at each court date to ensure their safety. Crime survivors and victims’ rights groups who were included in the development of this law ensured that these and other provisions were specifically designed to meet the needs of those directly affected by crime.25

  • Restricting and reducing the use of pretrial incarceration and limiting its harms by issuing tickets to people to appear in court at a later date. One key way that the Pretrial Fairness Act reduces pretrial incarceration is by requiring—or empowering, in some cases—law enforcement to issue tickets for people to appear in court rather than arresting them for certain low-level offenses. However, law enforcement maintains the ability to take into custody people who are charged with a low-level crime when there is concern for their safety or the safety of the community.26

The Pretrial Fairness Act also restricts the use of pretrial incarceration to certain serious offenses. People will be held in jail until their trial date only if they are charged with a specified offense and they have “a high likelihood of willful flight” or pose “a specific, real, and present threat to a person.”27 Together, these provisions promote safety and limit the harms of pretrial incarceration by ensuring that it is used in cases only where it is necessary to protect safety and ensure appearance in court.

The two-year rearrest rate for individuals released pretrial decreased from 50 percent before the law to 44 percent after implementation. Data Collaborative for Justice at John Jay College, "Does New York’s Bail Reform Law Impact Recidivism? A Quasi-Experimental Test in New York City" (2023).

No link found between bail reform and crime

Although some believe that cash bail is necessary to promote safety, significant evidence shows that jurisdictions can reduce or eliminate the use of cash bail and build safer and more just systems in its place.28 A recent study of New York’s bail reform law revealed that its mandatory release provision, which guaranteed release for people accused of certain nonviole­­­­­­nt crimes, reduced recidivism. The two-year rearrest rate for individuals released pretrial decreased from 50 percent before the law to 44 percent after implementation.29 Another study examining the impacts of bail reform on crime in 11 jurisdictions, including Cook County, Illinois, found that there was “no clear or obvious pattern” that connected bail reform and violent crime.30 Given the severe impacts of pretrial incarceration on individuals and families, bail reform likely improves safety.

Six years before the implementation of the Pretrial Fairnes­­s Act, Cook County created new rules for assigning bail that decreased overall usage, and the outcomes offer valuable insight. During the six months before and after Cook County eliminated cash bail, its rates of rearrest for any crime and for violent crime remained the same, while the portion of people released without cash bail increased 119 percent.31 Although 170 people released without cash bail were rearrested in the year after reform, this number accounted for only 0.4 percent of all arrests made that year.32 Taken together, the research demonstrates that reducing unnecessary pretrial incarceration improves community safety.

The Pretrial Fairness Act improves justice by promoting and protecting the rights of people accused of crime

The Pretrial Fairness Act protects the rights of people accused of crime and ensures equal access to a just pretrial process by:

119%

Increase in the number of people released without cash bail under Cook County reform

  • Requiring the issuing of tickets in lieu of custodial arrest. In some cases—such as traffic offenses, Class B and C misdemeanors, and petty or business crimes, where there is no concern for the safety of the individual or the community—police are required to issue tickets for someone to appear in court rather than arrest and take someone into custody.33
  • Creating expedited and clear pretrial procedures. Anyone taken into custody must appear in front of a judge within 48 hours of arrest to ensure they do not spend unnecessary time in jail.
  • Ending harmful practices that lead to wealth extraction. In the first four months without cash bonds, Illinois families saved an estimated $46 million in cash bail costs.34
  • Expanding access to counsel. The Pretrial Fairness Act ensures the right to counsel at first appearance, where decisions related to detention or release conditions are made. Prior to the passage of the Pretrial Fairness Act, many Illinoisans did not have access to counsel at this critical stage, particularly residents from rural counties.35 Access to counsel has been shown to reduce racial disparities in pretrial incarceration.36
  • Reducing the number of innocent people who face pretrial incarceration. By restricting the use of pretrial incarceration to cases that meet specified requirements based on charge, flight risk, and other safety factors, fewer innocent people whose cases are ultimately dropped or who are found not guilty will be jailed before trial.
  • Providing opportunities to review cases of people incarcerated pretrial. Since the Pretrial Fairness Act applies only to new cases, no one held on cash bail before its implementation has been automatically released.37 Instead, the act allows those currently awaiting trial in jail because they couldn’t afford their bail to request a review of their case.38 This review process will allow the court to make individualized release decisions based on a more informed understanding of the public safety considerations in each case. This could also allow judges to review decisions that may have been informed by an incomplete consideration of individual circumstances or by racial bias. Moving forward, people will also be able to appeal overly restrictive release conditions.39 If someone is assigned electronic monitoring or home confinement as conditions of release, the court must determine every 60 days whether the requirements are necessary or whether to order them removed.40

Conclusion

Although it will take time for the Pretrial Fairness Act to take full effect across Illinois, the early returns are promising. Multiple counties have experienced a decrease in the number of jail bookings and the average daily jail populations.41 In Cook County, the average length of time spent on each case has increased, suggesting a more thorough consideration of safety and equity concerns.42

In the meantime, elected leaders and community members should exercise patience and resist the urge to rush to judgment if implementation faces challenges, crime rates fluctuate, or individual crimes are used to criticize the system as a whole. Causes of crime trends are complex and not well-understood,43 and bail reform is neither able nor intended to end violent crime. But balanced and carefully implemented laws such as the Pretrial Fairness Act can improve both safety and justice by ensuring that the pretrial process appropriately assesses safety concerns in every case and reduces pretrial incarceration while protecting the rights of victims and people accused of crimes alike.

Some of the most meaningful impacts of this legislation will be impossible to quantify. No statistic can fully capture the stabilizing impact of a parent remaining home with their children, but avoiding job loss or the financial desperation caused by pretrial incarceration can have tangible and intangible benefits on long-term safety. These outcomes will undoubtedly make Illinois families and communities safer.

Now that the Pretrial Fairness Act is in effect, attention must shift to ensuring that this law is fully implemented and protected against unnecessary and harmful rollbacks that further undermine the safety and equity of the pretrial process.

Endnotes

  1. The Civic Federation, “Pretrial Provisions of SAFE-T Act Took Effect This Week,” September 22, 2023, available at https://www.civicfed.org/node/4154.
  2. Safety, Accountability, Fairness, and Equity Today Act of 2021, H.B. 3653, Illinois General Assembly (February 22, 2021), available at https://www.ilga.gov/legislation/publicacts/101/PDF/101-0652.pdf; Ibid.
  3. Emily Hamer and Shelia Cohen, “Poor Stay In Jail While Rich Go Free: Rethinking Cash Bail In Wisconsin,” Wisconsin Public Radio, January 21, 2019, available at https://www.wpr.org/justice/poor-stay-jail-while-rich-go-free-rethinking-cash-bail-wisconsin.
  4. Jennifer Williams, “Stop Assuming Money Bail is an Effective Tool for Criminal Justice,” American Bar Association, February 18, 2020, available at https://www.americanbar.org/groups/judicial/publications/appellate_issues/2020/winter/stop-assuming-money-bail-is-an-effective-tool-for-criminal-justice/.
  5. Lily Shen, “Illinois justice system begins to see impacts four months after eliminating cash bail,” The Daily Northwestern, January 18, 2024, available at https://dailynorthwestern.com/2024/01/18/city/illinois-justice-system-begins-to-see-impacts-four-months-after-eliminating-cash-bail/.
  6. Madeline Behr and Amanda Pyron, “Guest opinion: Why the end of cash bail is good for Illinois survivors,” The State Journal-Register, April 24, 2021, available at https://www.sj-r.com/story/opinion/columns/guest/2021/04/24/opinion-end-cash-bail-good-illinois-survivors/7343437002/.
  7. Coalition to End Money Bond, “What is the Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice?”, available at https://endmoneybond.org/illinois-network-for-pretrial-justice/ (last accessed January 2024).
  8. Allie Preston, “5 Ways Cash Bail Systems Undermine Community Safety” (Washington: Center for American Progress, 2022), available at https://www.americanprogress.org/article/5-ways-cash-bail-systems-undermine-community-safety/#:~:text=This%20issue%20brief%20highlights%20five,relationships%2C%20and%205)%20housing.
  9. Christopher Lowenkamp, “The Hidden Costs of Pretrial Detention Revisited” (Houston: Arnold Ventures, 2022), available at https://craftmediabucket.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/HiddenCosts.pdf.
  10. Erica Bryant, “Children Suffer When Parents Are Imprisoned,” Vera Institute of Justice, May 11, 2023, available at https://www.vera.org/news/children-suffer-when-parents-are-imprisoned.
  11. Thea Johnson, “Plea Bargain Task Force Report” (Chicago: American Bar Association, 2023), available at https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publications/criminaljustice/plea-bargain-tf-report.pdf.
  12. American Bar Association, “2023 Plea Bargain Task Force Report urges fairer, more transparent justice system,” February 22, 2023, available at https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2023/02/plea-bargain-task-force/#:~:text=22%2C%202023)%20%E2%80%93%20Plea%20bargaining,currently%20coming%20from%20guilty%20pleas.
  13. National Inventory of Collateral Consequences of Conviction, “What are collateral consequences?”, available at https://niccc.nationalreentryresourcecenter.org/#:~:text=Collateral%20consequences%20are%20legal%20and,%2C%20education%2C%20and%20other%20opportunities (last accessed January 2024).
  14. Wendy R. Calaway, “Probable Cause Reform as Bail Reform,” Saint Louis University Law Journal 67 (2) (2023): 295–330, available at https://scholarship.law.slu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2331&context=lj.
  15. Wendy Sawyer, “How race impacts who is detained pretrial,” Prison Policy Initiative, October 9, 2019, available at https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2019/10/09/pretrial_race/; Indiana University Public Policy Institute, “Marion County Bail System (2022)” (Indianapolis: 2022), available at https://policyinstitute.iu.edu/doc/bail-bond-brief.pdf; Prison Policy Initiative, “Summary of research studies related to racial disparities in pretrial detention,” available at https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pretrial_racial_disparities_sources.html (last accessed January 2024).
  16. David Arnold, Will Dobbie, and Crystal S. Yang, “Racial Bias in Bail Decisions,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 133 (4) (2018): 1885–1932, available at https://www.law.nyu.edu/sites/default/files/upload_documents/Yang%20paper%20DEC%206%20ADY_RacialBias.pdf; Sawyer, “How race impacts who is detained pretrial.”
  17. Mariame Kaba, “For Mother’s Day, Activists Are Bailing Black Mamas Out of Jail,” Vice, May 10, 2017, available at https://www.vice.com/en/article/paegbb/for-mothers-day-activists-are-bailing-black-mamas-out-of-jail; Randi Richardson, “‘Paying ransom for freedom’: How cash bail is keeping Black mothers stuck in prison,” NBC News, February 13, 2022, available at https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/paying-ransom-freedom-cash-bail-keeping-black-mothers-stuck-prisons-rcna15408; Rachel Anspach, “Pregnant Mom Jailed for Three Weeks for Driving with a Suspended License,” Vice, September 1, 2017, available at https://www.vice.com/en/article/neeyqk/pregnant-mom-jailed-for-three-weeks-for-driving-with-a-suspended-license.
  18. Kaba, “For Mother’s Day, Activists Are Bailing Black Mamas Out of Jail.”
  19. Ibid.
  20. Allie Preston, “The Case for Cash Bail Reform,” Center for American Progress, August 9, 2023, available at https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-case-for-cash-bail-reform/.
  21. ACLU Michigan, “Stories from a broken bail system,” available at https://www.aclumich.org/en/stories-broken-bail-system (last accessed March 2024).
  22. Don Stemen and David Olson, “Looking Deeper at The First Four Months of Illinois’ Bail Reform,” MacArthur Safety and Justice Challenge, January 18, 2024, available at https://safetyandjusticechallenge.org/blog/looking-deeper-at-the-first-four-months-of-illinois-bail-reform/.
  23. Under the Pretrial Fairness Act, charges may be considered detainable based on a public safety or willful flight standard. Under these standards, people charged with nonprobational forcible felonies, weapons offenses, domestic violence offenses or violations of orders of protection, or Class 3 felonies or higher, are eligible for pretrial detention if other legislative criteria are met. Don Stemen and Branden DuPont, “The Volume & Characteristics of Arrests Eligible for Detention,” Loyola Chicago Center for Criminal Justice, April 6, 2022, available at https://loyolaccj.org/pfa/blog/estimate-pfa-act.
  24. Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation, “IL Supreme Court’s Decision on Money Bond Supports Survivors,” available at https://www.caase.org/il-supreme-courts-decision-on-money-bond-supports-survivors/ (last accessed January 2024).
  25. Tayler Mathews, “The Pretrial Fairness Act is a Win for Survivors and Communities,” Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation, November 4, 2022, available at https://www.caase.org/pretrial-fairness-act-win-for-survivors/.
  26. Stephanie Agnew, “Communities Successfully Defend the Pretrial Fairness Act: Updates and Next Steps for the Abolition of Money Bond on January 1,” Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts, December 19, 2022, available at https://www.chicagoappleseed.org/2022/12/19/updates-and-next-steps-for-the-abolition-of-money-bond-in-january/.
  27. Safety, Accountability, Fairness, and Equity Today Act of 2021, H.B. 3653.
  28. Sarah Staudt, “Releasing people pretrial doesn’t harm public safety,” Prison Policy Initiative, July 6, 2023, available at https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2023/07/06/bail-reform/.
  29. René Ropac and Michael Rempel, “Does New York’s Bail Reform Law Impact Recidivism? A Quasi-Experimental Test in New York City” (New York: Data Collaborative for Justice at John Jay College, 2023), available at https://datacollaborativeforjustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/RecidivismReport-4.pdf.
  30. Don Stemen and David Olson, “Is Bail Reform Causing an Increase in Crime?” (New York: Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, 2023), available at https://www.hfg.org/hfg_reports/bail-reform-2023/.
  31. Ibid.
  32. Ibid.
  33. The Civic Federation, “Correcting Misinformation about Illinois Pretrial Reforms: What the Pretrial Fairness Act Does and Does Not Do,” September 16, 2022, available at https://www.civicfed.org/civic-federation/blog/correcting-misinformation-about-illinois-pretrial-reforms-what-pretrial#:~:text=Citation%20in%20lieu%20of%20custodial,who%20have%20no%20medical%20or.
  34. Stemen and Olson, “Looking Deeper at The First Four Months of Illinois’ Bail Reform.”
  35. Ibid.
  36. Allie Preston and Rachael Eisenberg, “Cash Bail Reform Is Not a Threat to Public Safety” (Washington: Center for American Progress, 2022), available at https://www.americanprogress.org/article/cash-bail-reform-is-not-a-threat-to-public-safety/#:~:text=The%20evidence%20is%20clear%3A%20Cash,outside%20of%20simply%20reducing%20crime.
  37. The Civic Federation, “Correcting Misinformation about Illinois Pretrial Reforms: What the Pretrial Fairness Act Does and Does Not Do.”
  38. Theodora Koulouvaris, “SAFE-T Act lays out guidelines for transition to no-cash bail system,” WCIA News, July 21, 2023, available at https://www.wcia.com/news/capitol-news/safe-t-act-lays-out-guidelines-for-people-currently-behind-bars-pre-trial-to-transition-to-no-cash-bail-system/.
  39. Coalition to End Money Bond, “Communities Successfully Protect the Pretrial Fairness Act, Illinois Will End Money Bond January 1st,” available at https://endmoneybond.org/2022/12/01/communities-successfully-protect-the-pretrial-fairness-act-illinois-will-end-money-bond-january-1st/ (last accessed January 2024).
  40. The Civic Federation, “Summary of Provisions in Illinois House Bill 3653: Criminal Justice Omnibus Bill,” February 15, 2021, available at https://www.civicfed.org/iifs/blog/summary-provisions-illinois-house-bill-3653-criminal-justice-omnibus-bill.
  41. David Olson and Don Stemen, “Short-Term Trends in Jail Bookings & Populations After the Pretrial Fairness Act,” Loyola Chicago Center for Criminal Justice, March 10, 2024, available at https://loyolaccj.org/blog/the-short-term-impact-of-the-pretrial-fairness-act-on-jail-bookings-populations; Shen, “Illinois justice system begins to see impacts four months after eliminating cash bail.”
  42. Civic Federation and League of Women Voters of Cook County, “Evaluation of the Pretrial Fairness Act’s Implementation in Cook County” (Chicago: 2024), available at https://civicfed.org/sites/default/files/2024-03/PFAImplementationCookCounty.pdf.
  43. Kelly Drane, “Surging Gun Violence: Where We Are, How We Got Here, and Where We Go Next” (San Francisco: Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 2022), available at https://giffords.org/lawcenter/report/surging-gun-violence-where-we-are-how-we-got-here-and-where-we-go/.

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Author

Allie Preston

Senior Policy Analyst, Criminal Justice Reform

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