Defending the Rights of People on Electronic Monitoring & Stopping HB5058
In January 2022, the Pretrial Fairness Act expanded the rights of people incarcerated in their homes on electronic monitoring to reduce the harm they experience under this alternative form of incarceration. Unfortunately, some members of the Illinois’ legislature are trying to roll back these reforms with HB5058. This bill would create a new felony charge for knowingly removing, tampering with, or interfering with the signal of an electronic monitor. HB5058 is ripe for misapplication due to technological deficiencies of electronic monitoring devices. It also needlessly enhances penalties for issues addressed in existing law and would increase unnecessary and unjust incarceration.
For the last few weeks, we’ve been circulating calls for supporters to file witness slips in opposition to HB5058. Hundreds of people have raised their voices in defense of people subjected to electronic monitoring. Today, the Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice and 55 community, faith and legal organizations wrote the House Judiciary-Criminal Law Committee calling on them to oppose this bill. We also shared a new fact sheet with key findings about electronic monitoring in Cook County with House Judiciary-Criminal Law Committee members.
Read Our Letter to the House Judiciary Committee Here.
The Pretrial Fairness provisions of the SAFE-T Act require people to be in violation for 48 hours before they can be charged with felony escape. This reform/change is intended to prevent people from facing extreme charges for short-term, unsubstantiated allegations of a violation. HB5058 would recreate this problem and provide no corresponding benefit to our communities. This measure would make our communities less safe by subjecting community members to unjust incarceration and wasting law enforcement’s time, forcing them to check on individuals whose alleged violations were likely caused by equipment malfunctions.
Take action to stop HB5058 by filing witness slips for BOTH hearings this week.
To file a slip: enter your information, enter “self” for organization, click “opponent” for position and “record of appearance only,” then submit!
File a slip for the Tuesday Hearing
File a slip for the Thursday Hearing
Electronic monitoring technology is unreliable and results in frequent false accusations of violations.
A recent WTTW story highlighted severe technological issues with electronic monitoring devices in Illinois. The devices use GPS technology to report incorrect locations and struggle to track people indoors. As a result, law enforcement officials believe people have left their homes when they have not. Cassie Follett, DePaul University’s geographic information systems coordinator, says that there are not technologies mature enough for indoor tracking for legal use.
Michael Matthews, the accused man featured in the WTTW story, took painstaking measures to protect himself from these false accusations by installing a camera in the house where he was staying. Despite evidence directly contradicting the allegations that he violated electronic monitoring, Mr. Matthews spent three months in jail before the State’s Attorney’s office dropped the violation allegations. Mr. Matthews’ situation is not exceptional. We frequently work with people who experience similar unfair allegations of violations because of malfunctioning technology.
Even when these false violations don’t cause reincarceration, they lead to severe stress. Jeremy Johnson has documented the several calls he receives each week from the Cook County Sheriff’s Office requesting proof that he is within bounds of his conditions, even though he is asleep in bed or sitting on his couch. These frequent false alerts traumatize people, causing them to live in constant fear of being reincarcerated. Sometimes, a false alert leads law enforcement to go to a person’s home and handcuff them while assessing the situation. This process is even more dehumanizing and upsetting when children are home.
Increasing penalties for electronic monitoring violations endangers survivors.
The Women’s Justice Institute (WJI) recently supported a survivor of domestic violence charged with escape and reincarcerated for five weeks after her ex-husband forcibly used a hammer to beat her electronic monitoring device on her ankle. WJI has also supported survivors who were charged with escape for fleeing abuse to protect themselves or their children while on electronic monitoring. Electronic monitoring prevents survivors from leaving their homes without prior approval, which sometimes takes days to secure. Low thresholds for charging monitored people with new crimes harm people experiencing domestic violence or other threats to their safety by forcing them to choose between staying in an unsafe environment or risking a new felony charge.
Existing laws already provide for immediate response and harsh punishments for violations.
These situations show the existing extreme punishments imposed in response to alleged violations of electronic monitoring. People are already quickly incarcerated based on these allegations, often unfairly. HB5058 would only exacerbate this issue by creating a new felony charge and virtually ensuring incarceration for allegations of even insignificant violations. Under current law, any violation of electronic monitoring can be charged as a violation of bail bond, which usually results in immediate reincarceration. If a person has escaped from house arrest, law enforcement has the power to charge them with felony escape, which can cause 2-5 years of incarceration or 2.5 years of probation.
Significant violations of electronic monitoring are statistically rare.
Law enforcement does not rearrest most people released on electronic monitoring while awaiting trial, and they return to court at the same rates as people released without monitoring. A 2021 report on electronic monitoring in Cook County released by Chicago Appleseed found that between 2016 and 2020, there were about 18,229 people in Chicago who spent some period on EM through the Sheriff’s Office, and over 90% of these people were not rearrested while on electronic monitoring. The Cook County Public Defender’s Office found that in 2021, 99% of the over 8600 people on the Sheriff’s electronic monitoring were not accused of a new violent offense against another person.
There is no evidence that electronic monitoring enhances community safety, motivates court appearances after release, or reduces rearrests. Electronic monitoring likely increases the risk of further incarceration by making it difficult for people to access resources that support their success, such as employment or education. Electronic monitoring replicates many of the most devastating impacts of pretrial incarceration in jails by severely restricting people’s movement.
