Today, the Illinois House of Representatives and Senate passed House Bill 1095 Senate Amendment 2, a SAFE-T Act trailer bill that amends portions of the Pretrial Fairness Act. The passage of HB1095 SA2 is a testament to the fact communities across Illinois have stood by this legislation even as right-wing operatives sought to mislead them through a multi-million dollar misinformation campaign rooted in racism and outright lies. 

After nearly two full years of intense struggle led by communities across Illinois, we have successfully defended the Pretrial Fairness Act from being rolled back or repealed. On January 1, 2023, Illinois will become the first state in the nation to completely eliminate the jailing of people who are awaiting trial simply because they’re poor—a practice that has devastated Black, Brown, and poor communities across our state for decades. 

From the moment the Pretrial Fairness Act was first passed in January 2021, conservatives and some members of law enforcement have engaged in bad faith arguments and spread outright lies about how the law was developed and passed and the impact it would have on our communities. During this year’s election cycle, right-wing operatives spent tens of millions of dollars spreading anti-Black fearmongering and sending fake newspapers to homes throughout Illinois, attempting to turn- Illinoisans against the elected leaders who fought to make Illinois criminal courts fairer. Those attempts to preserve the money bond system—one of the primary drivers of mass incarceration—have failed.

In addition to protecting the law, the trailer bill passed today includes some significant wins for our movement. Over the last two years, the Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice has worked with stakeholders from every branch of state government to prepare for the successful implementation of this historic law. During that time, we identified clarifications that we believe were needed in order to effectively implement the Pretrial Fairness Act and protect the rights of accused people in the new system. While we took a neutral stance on the legislation as a whole due to some provisions that our Network did not fully support, we are pleased to see the following measures included in HB1095 SA2:

• Requires that people who are arrested have an initial appearance in front of a judge within 48 hours. This addresses a significant problem throughout the state where some people spend as long as three or more days in custody before seeing a judge.
• Clarifies that anyone ordered released pretrial who remains in custody is entitled to a rehearing as to why they were not released within 48 hours. There was previously no strict deadline on this review.
• Codifies the right to appeal conditions of pretrial release, which can be extremely significant and last for years. This ensures accused people subject to significant restraints on their pretrial liberty such as no use of the internet or no contact with their children will have an opportunity for those conditions to be reviewed by an appellate court. 
• Specifies that a public defender or other court-appointed lawyer must be appointed sufficiently in advance to do their job well, have the opportunity to confer with their client in advance of the hearing, and also must be given access to the same information relied on by the prosecution and presented to the court.
• Restores an erroneously deleted credit towards fines for the time people spend incarcerated while awaiting trial. This will reduce financial penalties against convicted people.
• Updates the statute addressing standards for releasing or detaining pregnant people pretrial and provides additional movement for pregnant and recently post-partum people on electronic monitoring so that they have ample movement for medical appointments.
• Ensures that judges have discretion to impose concurrent sentences for charges brought while someone is awaiting trial instead of requiring all such sentences be served consecutively. This removes conflicting language that was accidentally left in the Pretrial Fairness Act making consecutive sentencing mandatory.
• Clarifies and corrects technical language that will help clear up conflicting language or just ensure the original intent of the law is clear. We support these changes, which include amendments to the process for transfer of people between counties and how alleged violations of conditions of pretrial release are handled.

These amendments to the Pretrial Fairness Act are in line with the law’s original intent to lessen racial disparities and decrease pretrial jailing in our state. In addition to these changes, there were also some changes made to the safety and willful flight standards of the law, as well as making some charges previously only detainable under the willful flight standard also detainable under the safety standard. The trailer bill also allows for detention hearings to occur over video in some instances. While we do not support these changes, we do not believe they were significant enough to oppose this bill or delay the implementation of the Pretrial Fairness Act. 

You can learn more about the changes to the Pretrial Fairness Act at this public education event on Monday, December 5th at 6pm CST, register here.

For the last six years, the Coalition to End Money Bond and Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice have worked with people of all walks of life across our state to secure this monumental improvement to our criminal legal system. We want to take a moment to thank each and every one of you who took action with us and made this vision a reality. This transformation of our pretrial justice system is only possible because of the thousands of people who worked to educate and advocate with their friends, neighbors, and elected officials. 

We so deeply appreciate the work of our champions in the Illinois House and Senate that have worked so hard to ensure that our efforts were not in vain. We thank the chief bill sponsors Representative Justin Slaughter and Senators Elgie Sims and Robert Peters, working group leader Representative Jehan Gordon Booth, and Governor JB Pritzker and his staff, whose actions will positively impact the lives of millions of Illinoisans for years to come. We want to especially recognize the hard work and contributions of the legislative staff who shepherded this effort forward: Office of the Senate President Deputy Chief of Staff Ashley Jenkins-Jordan and Chief Counsel to the Speaker of the House of Representatives James Hartmann.

In this moment, it is important that we remember this change became possible because of the national Black Lives Matter movement in response to police murders of Black people across our country. In 2020, millions of people throughout the United States and the world demanded that governments begin the essential work of addressing the systemic racism that permeates every aspect of our society. Pretrial jailing and unaffordable money bonds became a focal point of that movement following the earlier deaths of Kalief Browder and Sandra Bland. In Illinois, the 2020 COVID-19 spring deaths of Nickolas Lee, Jeffrey Pendelton, Karl Battiste and others awaiting trial in Cook County Jail exposed the potentially deadly consequences of pretrial jailing and increased the pressure to end money bond.

While we celebrate this moment, we must remember that our fight is not over. In the coming weeks and months, our work must continue to ensure the law is implemented as intended. You can continue your support for the Pretrial Fairness Act by:

• Registering to participate in Pretrial Fairness Act Community Court Watching in Cook, DuPage, Kane, McLean, Peoria, Sangamon, and Winnebago counties. Register here!
• Donating to support our collaboration with Chicago Community Jail Support. Over the next month, we’ll be collecting donations to purchase winter coats, gift cards for groceries, and other essential items, and to provide rides home for people released from Cook County Jail due to this historic reform. Donate here!

We are honored to be in this fight with all of you and look forward to working together to implement this law and continuing the fight to protect our communities!