Yesterday, Mayor Lightfoot held a press conference about gun violence in Chicago and again called for people to be jailed pretrial based solely on the accusations they face in court. This harmful and false rhetoric hurts our communities: Mayor Lightfoot knows that there is no evidence that pretrial release practices have anything to do with the recent increase in homicides. During her remarks, the mayor called on Chief Judge Timothy Evans to place a moratorium on house arrest with electronic monitoring for people facing a number of charges. This would lead to hundreds more Chicagoans being incarcerated in the jail pretrial. While the proposal itself is unconstitutional, it more simply ignores that people who are awaiting trial are presumed innocent, regardless of the charge they face. 

In a 1984 Supreme Court Ruling, Justice William Rehnquist wrote that “In our society, liberty is the norm, and detention prior to trial or without trial is the carefully limited exception.” Pretrial jailing is meant to be a last resort and not a toll to punish people based only on what the police say that they have done. In every instance where a person is released pretrial, whether they are on EM or not, a judge has made an individualized determination that they are safe to rejoin the community. 

As many news outlets have reported, the allegation that releasing people pretrial (with or without electronic monitoring) is driving violence in our communities has simply not been proven and in fact, the data has shown otherwise. 

• In July 2019, emails from the Mayor’s staff revealed that they knew there was no correlation between electronic monitoring and gun violence but they continued to push them.
• Of the more than 30,000 people released pretrial between October 2017 and March 2019, only 70 people were charged with a new gun-related violent crime.  99.8% of people released while awaiting trial on felony charges are not rearrested in relation to new gun-related violent crime while their case is pending. 
• A study from Loyola University showed Cook County was able to dramatically reduce pretrial incarceration without increasing crime rates. 
• Another study from the JFA Institute showed that an overall decrease in the percentage of people rearrested while on pretrial release compared to before reforms, including a decrease in percent of people rearrested on charges involving allegations of violence. Instead of condemning pretrial justice reforms in Cook County, the Mayor should be celebrating them. 
• Mayor Lightfoot has consistently tried to claim that most people on electronic monitoring are facing violent charges but a recent report from our partners at Chicago Appleseed showed that most people on pretrial electronic monitoring, over 75%, are facing non-violent or low-level allegations.

For years, impacted communities and advocates have called on Cook County to reduce its use of house arrest with electronic monitoring, not because they want to see more people in brick and mortar jails, but because electronic monitoring is actually an incredibly severe restriction on people’s liberty. During her speech, Mayor Lightfoot painted a picture of people on electronic monitoring freely roaming the streets of Chicago, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Simply stepping outside a person’s home sets their monitor off and they are taken back to Cook County Jail, sometimes with a new felony charge. At a recent event hosted by the Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice, the Cook County Public Defender’s Office shared that more than half of the people on electronic monitoring in Cook County can not leave their house for any amount of time, that includes not being able to go to the grocery store, the doctor’s office or even to work. These policies turn people’s homes into jail cells and are why the Network worked to include reforms to electronic monitoring in the Pretrial Fairness Act.

Mayor Lightfoot’s narratives about pretrial justice reforms aren’t just false, they’re dangerous. We all want safe communities, but safety does not come from violating the rights of our neighbors. Pretrial jailing actually increases violence in our communities by destabilizing them. In Cook County, people facing felony charges are often caged for a year to two years while awaiting trial; during that time they are likely to lose their jobs, housing, connections to their community and anything else they had going for them. Studies have shown that the destabilization caused by pretrial incarceration actually increases the likelihood someone will be arrested again in the future. It is also important to note that this destabilization is most frequently occuring in the communities most impacted by gun violence. Over 74% of those on electronic monitoring (and in jail) are Black, even though only 23% of Cook County’s population is Black. Ignoring that people have the right to be presumed innocent while awaiting trial makes our communities less safe. 

Real community safety comes from prioritizing our schools, health centers, job training programs and other essential services for our communities. It does not come from jailing people who have not been convicted of any wrongdoing.