On July 5, 2019, Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson held a press conference to announce CPD’s new “Gun Offender Dashboard.” After weeks of putting forward a false narrative that people being released on bond are responsible for Chicago’s gun violence, this dashboard is CPD’s first attempt to back up their myth with “data.” Unfortunately, this dashboard only further obscures the facts and muddles the conversation about the impact bond reform has had in Cook County. 

Below are some clarifications about the data released by CPD this week:

• The release status information provided is fundamentally flawed and contains significant inaccuracies. The “release” column has just two possible statuses: “bonded” and “in custody.” The “in custody” designation is assigned only to people who are detained no-bail (denied pretrial release) on the specific case listed in the dashboard. Thus, there are many people listed as “bonded” who are, in fact,  incarcerated in Cook County Jail.
  • There are no people marked “in custody” for whom a money bond was set, regardless of whether the money bond has been paid or not. As a result, people who are in jail, effectively detained via unaffordable money bonds, are listed as “bonded” in CPD’s dashboard, even if they never secure release and remain in jail for months or years.
  • The dashboard also inaccurately lists people as “bonded” who are being detained no-bail in Cook County Jail on those other cases or other issues such as a violation of probation or parole.
  • There is no differentiation between people who are truly released and people who are “released” onto Sheriff’s Electronic Monitoring (EM), a form of 24/7 house arrest that is so restrictive, it qualifies for credit towards any future sentence. All individuals on EM are, in fact, in the Sheriff’s custody. The conflation of this house arrest with release is deeply misleading.
  • The dashboard lists at least one person as “bonded” who is deceased.

• The Dashboard serves to obscure the specifics of each allegation by including people arrested for mere possession of a weapon alongside people accused of murder. Fully 99% of the “gun offenders” listed in CPD’s dashboard are accused of simple possession of a gun and not use of a weapon in the commission of a crime. Illegal gun possession (confusingly named “unlawful use of a weapon” under Illinois state law) simply means that the arrested person is alleged to have possessed a gun without the legal documentation necessary to have it legally. People arrested under allegations that they used the gun in commission of a crime or injured someone are charged with other crimes.

• The Dashboard contains only a few people listed as being arrested for murder, armed robbery, and aggravated battery with a firearm—violent offenses where a person actually used a gun to hurt or kill someone or take someone’s property. Although it is not clear from the data exactly how many people were arrested for violent gun crimes between May 2019 and today, in the same period in 2018 charges were initiated against 271 people for murders, armed robberies, and shootings. It seems highly unlikely that the dashboard contains a full count of people who were arrested for truly “violent” crimes involving a gun. Because people with those charges are more frequently denied bond, excluding them from the dashboard artificially decreases the percentage of people shown to be denied release.

• The dashboard contains no information about the many ways individuals may be monitored in the community if and when they are released pretrial. Gun possession arrestees are disproportionately released onto the electronic home confinement and electronic monitoring programs operated by Pretrial Services and the Sheriff’s Office, respectively. Under these programs, they cannot leave their homes without specific permission from a judge or the supervising authority. If they break the rules of the program, they may be charged with a new class 3 felony. Other forms of pretrial supervision may also be ordered, though none are included in the Dashboard.

Below are some facts about the arrest rates of people previously released pretrial either on their own recognizance (I-Bond) or after paying a money bond. This analysis was produced using data released by the Office of the Chief Judge. This retrospective analysis is important because it shows that people released pretrial are not rearrested on allegations involving gun violence at significant rates; in fact, quite the opposite is true.

• After General Order 18.8A went into effect in September 2017, there were 7,369 people arrested on “violent or weapons charges.” Of those people, 925 were released on I-Bonds. Of those 925 people, 12.6% (129 people) were re-arrested, but only 15 people (1.6%) were rearrested for a new violent charge.

• Since General Order 18.8A went into effect in September 2017, there have been 4,302 weapons cases that have received bond decisions. Of those, only about 13% of accused people (575 people) received a risk assessment score of 5 or 6 (the highest possible scores indicated the highest levels of “risk,” which still represents a greater chance of success than failure). Of those 575 people, 47.6% were detained pretrial (either held no bail on this case, on a VOP/VOBB, or due to an unpaid money bond). That leaves 52.4% (301 people) released pretrial. Of those 301 people, only one has been re-arrested on a violent charge since September 2017.
• In the post-General Order 18.8A period of January-June 2018, violent crimes reported in Chicago declined by almost 8% compared to the same period in 2017. Citation, p. 1. The number of people in Cook County Jail declined 42% between 2014 and the end of 2018 (10,064 compared to 5,799) while the number of shootings has been declining consistently since 2016.