After years of community pressure, Cook County will begin the process of sunsetting the Sheriff’s electronic monitoring program. Today, the Cook County Board of Commissioners passed a budget amendment that will reduce funding for the Sheriff’s electronic monitoring program and increase funding for the Office of the Chief Judge in preparation for unifying the county’s duplicative pretrial electronic monitoring programs. The Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice celebrates this historic announcement. For years, our coalition has called for the dismantling of the Sheriff’s electronic monitoring program, which expanded mass incarceration and harmed tens of thousands of people subjected to pretrial surveillance as well as their families. 

For nearly two decades, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart has overseen one of the nation’s largest and most restrictive pretrial electronic monitoring programs. The arbitrary restrictions placed on people’s liberty by Sheriff Dart created a human rights crisis and made our communities less safe. Thousands of people subjected to electronic monitoring were prevented from leaving their homes to perform essential tasks such as grocery shopping, seeking medical attention, going to work, picking their kids up from school, and even doing things as simple as taking out the garbage or picking up their mail. These severe restrictions replicated many of the most significant harms caused by incarceration in brick-and-mortar jails. Electronic monitoring also shifts the responsibility and cost of incarceration from the state onto monitored people and their loved ones, who have to come up with rent or mortgage money while often being prevented from working. It is also important to note that the Sheriff’s electronic monitoring program disproportionately impacts Black residents of Cook County. Less than 25% of Cook County residents are Black, while nearly 75% of the people on electronic monitoring are Black.

Sheriff Dart’s draconian policies made our communities less safe and informed the drafting of protections for people subjected to electronic monitoring in the Pretrial Fairness Act. Implemented in 2022, the electronic monitoring provisions of the law ensured that people on electronic monitoring are guaranteed movement to perform essential tasks and receive regular reviews to determine whether they must remain monitored.

Historically, Sheriff Dart arrested people for even the slightest alleged violations, often resulting in new felony charges, and reincarcerated them for minor rule infractions and false violations caused by the technology’s inaccuracy. The Pretrial Fairness Act put protections in place to ensure that people were only charged with “escape” from electronic monitoring if they are in intentional violation of their monitoring rules. 

It would be a grave injustice if the end of the harmful Sheriff’s electronic monitoring program were to lead to an increase in the number of people incarcerated in Cook County Jail. The vast majority of people on the program appear at all of their court dates, and less than 1% are rearrested for allegations of violence. These high rates of success prove that people currently being ordered to electronic monitoring could be safely released without such restrictive conditions.

Over the last several years, Cook County has dramatically reduced pretrial jailing through the implementation of General Order 18.8A in 2017 and the Pretrial Fairness Act in 2023. Data evaluating both these reforms has shown that we can safely increase the number of people returning to the community while awaiting trial—including people facing serious charges—without seeing an increase in rearrests or missed court dates. In 2022, there were nearly nine times as many people on pretrial electronic monitoring in Cook County as there were in the entire state of New Jersey, which has dramatically reduced its use of pretrial incarceration without seeing an increase in missed court dates or rearrests. New Jersey’s experience shows that reducing pretrial incarceration can be safely achieved without relying on electronic monitoring.

As Cook County ends the Sheriff’s electronic monitoring program, we have the opportunity to show the country a pathway out of mass incarceration. Research has repeatedly shown that there is little to no evidence that electronic monitoring improves key pretrial outcomes like court appearance or community safety. Court stakeholders must work together to ensure this important transition away from electronic monitoring does not increase pretrial jailing and that the funds once used for the Sheriff’s electronic monitoring program are redirected towards affordable housing, job training programs, and mental health and substance use treatment services.