Money bond does not keep people safe. 

To that end, the Coalition to End Money Bond is committed to advocating for legislation that takes the money out of the equation when it comes to deciding who remains jailed between their arrest and trial. We have seen all too often that relying on money to make the decision keeps poor people in jail while also not providing any safety benefits to the larger community.

Money bond extracts resources from the most vulnerable people in our state. Jailing more people because they can’t afford ransom money won’t make us immune from the violence that has impacted communities not only in Illinois but also across the country.

Requiring payment of money doesn’t make people more likely to show up for court, and it won’t give communities the things we need to be safer. The use of money bond does, on the other hand, drive the courts’ overreliance on pretrial incarceration that destroys any semblance of justice in pretrial policy. Simply put, money bond is one of the main engines driving the racial and economic injustice of the criminal legal system.

We reject attempts to blame past or future gun violence in Chicago on the operations of bond court. Such a simplistic explanation is both factually inaccurate and reflects a basic misunderstanding of why community violence exists at all. If our elected officials refuse to be honest about the systemic drivers of violence, our most vulnerable communities will continue to suffer.

Studies show that Black people are more likely to be ordered to pay higher bonds and less likely to be able to bond out. People in jail are more likely to plead guilty under the duress of incarceration, and as a result, they serve longer sentences than people awaiting trial in the community. It is past time that we end the practice of allowing skin color and the size of someone’s pocketbook—two things already deeply related in the United States—to dictate the outcome of someone’s criminal case.

It is an uncomfortable truth that the solutions we need to keep our communities safer are more likely found in the halls of the Illinois General Assembly, Chicago City Council, Cook County Board of Commissioners, and even the U.S Congress than in individual courtrooms. Violence in our communities can be reduced with increased investment in our communities: more jobs, better schools, affordable and high-quality housing—but not by jailing more people because they are poor.

Over the past three months, millions of people across the United States and the world took to the streets advocating for significant changes in the way this country polices our neighborhoods, the way we deal with people facing criminal prosecution, and the way people re-enter society after incarceration. Sadly, those calls for change remain mostly unanswered as of now.  

Luckily, there are leaders that have committed to answering that call in Illinois. We invite them to stand with us in this fight. Ending money bond is an essential part of the calls by millions of people to make Black lives matter. The time is now!

To learn more about how to join the movement in Illinois, join us for a teach-in next week on Thursday, August 20th from 6-7:30pm CDT! Register here!