This morning, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart presented to the Cook County Board of Commissioners’ Finance Committee. During his remarks, Sheriff Dart brought up the Pretrial Fairness provisions of the SAFE-T Act that expand the rights of people on electronic monitoring. Sheriff Dart shared multiple factual inaccuracies regarding these reforms, which were enacted to address years of human rights abuses. We are unfortunately not surprised to hear Sheriff Dart lying about pretrial justice reforms; in fact, we documented his long history of spreading misinformation in our recent report Obscuring the Truth: How Misinformation is Skewing the Conversation about Pretrial Justice.

During his remarks, Sheriff Dart falsely claimed that the Pretrial Fairness Act prohibits him from tracking people on electronic monitoring while they’re using essential movement. There is nothing in the law preventing him from doing this; in fact, the Sheriff’s Office is currently tracking everyone’s location during essential movement using GPS technology. 

Additionally, Sheriff Dart stated that he was giving people movement prior to the implementation of the electronic monitoring provisions of the Pretrial Fairness Act. Again, this is quite simply false. For years, the Cook County Sheriff’s Office denied people on electronic monitoring the ability to go to the grocery store and laundromat or even take out their garbage. These measures did nothing to protect community safety. In fact, this Sheriff’s Office policy endangered people on electronic monitoring by preventing them from doing life-affirming tasks and even accessing healthcare. The electronic monitoring reforms in the Pretrial Fairness Act are designed intentionally to correct that exact reality. By lying about the Pretrial Fairness Act, Sheriff Tom Dart is engaging in the same racist fear-mongering tactics being used by MAGA conservatives like Dan Proft and Jeanne Ives. This behavior is shameful and puts the health and well-being of people on electronic monitoring at risk. In the first four months after the essential movement provisions of the Pretrial Fairness Act went into effect, there was an over 99% success rate. Removing these provisions would be a human rights violation by returning to a system that locks people in their homes with no way to get food or other necessities.

The Facts on the Pretrial Fairness Act and Electronic Monitoring in Cook County

The Pretrial Fairness Act allows people to have movement twice a week to take care of basic needs such as buying food and doing laundry. Each electronic monitoring program in the state can choose how to implement that requirement. The Cook County Sheriff’s Office chose to implement this law by allowing each person two, eight-hour periods of time per week to take care of their basic needs.

• Between January and March 2022, less than 1% of people were re-arrested while on essential movement time. 99% of people utilized this movement without any issues.
• Nothing in the SAFE-T Act or any other law requires the CCSO not to track people during the time they are on essential movement. Every person on CCSO EM is on a GPS ankle monitor, and those GPS monitors continue to record people’s exact location the entire time they are outside of their home. You can read the provision of the SAFE-T Act that authorizes essential movement at 730 ILCS 5/5-8A-4(A-1). 
• Before these reforms were implemented, the lack of movement caused immense harm to people on CCSO electronic monitoring, as detailed in the recent report submitted to the Cook County board by CGL Industries and Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts. (See page 47 here for discussion of harms of lack of movement.)

Most people on electronic monitoring are accused of non-violent offenses.

• 75% of people on electronic monitoring are accused of charges that do not allege harm or threat of harm to another person. 

There is no connection between people on electronic monitoring and violence.

• 91% of people on electronic monitoring in Chicago were not re-arrested for any crime. Only 1.75% of people were re-arrested for a serious felony (Class 2 or higher).
• The University of Chicago Crime Lab found that in 2021, there were just three arrests of individuals on electronic monitoring for allegedly committing a homicide or shootings—out of almost 4,500 homicides and shootings that year.