Later this week, the Cook County Board of Commissioners will vote on President Preckwinkle’s $10.1 billion budget proposal for fiscal year 2026. While we commend the County Board for rejecting State’s Attorney Burke’s reported request for nearly 400 new staff positions, we believe that the included budget increases for both that office and the Sheriff’s Office are unwarranted and harmful. We remain steadfast in our belief that the most responsible action for the Board to take is to freeze law enforcement spending, which is already far above levels set when the Cook County Department of Corrections and State’s Attorney’s Office had higher utilization. 

Due to the actions of the Trump administration, Cook County will be forced to address gaps in social service programs that were gutted or eliminated. Additionally, Trump’s economic decisions will continue to destabilize our most marginalized communities. Freezing law enforcement spending would allow Cook County to prioritize essential services like violence prevention, behavioral health, and community investment to reduce intra-community violence. 

Over the last several years, Cook County has seen a dramatic decrease in crime, due in part to a $350 million investment in violence prevention from the county, city, and state since 2020. Simultaneously, the number of people incarcerated in Cook County Jail was reduced by 40% over the last decade. However, the budgets of both the Cook County Sheriff and State’s Attorney have continuously increased; since 2016, the Sheriff’s budget has grown by $300 million and the State’s Attorney’s budget has doubled. Meanwhile, the responsibilities of both offices have significantly decreased.  It is clear that this practice of annually increasing investments in these offices must stop and their budgets should be reduced.

Crime has been on a downward trajectory for several years and 2025 saw some of the biggest decrease in crime in decades. Less crime means less prosecutions. State’s Attorney Burke’s assertion that more money is needed to hire additional investigators and scientists is not only unjustified given the declining crime rate, it also ignores the reality that, unlike the Public Defender, her office has access to the investigators; scientists; and analysts in, and the tremendous resources of, various law enforcement agencies, including the Illinois State Police Crime Lab and the Chicago Police. Similarly, while Burke has asserted that the Pretrial Fairness Act has increased the workload of her line attorneys this does not reflect reality: one only needs to watch a detention hearing, where prosecutors rely exclusively on police reports and criminal records to make their case for detention. 

The State’s Attorney’s claim that her office needs more attorneys is also belied by the fact that her office has more than 100 existing positions they haven’t been able to fill and the fact that she has instituted policies that reduce the amount of time prosecutors spend on individual cases. Earlier this year, Burke instituted a policy that allows police to bypass the felony review process—under which police normally have to get prosecutorial approval for gun charges—in two police districts, notably predominantly Black neighborhoods; this means that felony review  prosecutors have less demand on their time. The same holds true for attorneys in the pretrial division, who are no longer tasked with making individualized assessments of whether to request detention due to State’s Attorney Burke’s directive that prosecutors seek detention in all cases where a person is accused of specific crimes, regardless of that person’s individual circumstances and characteristics. Effectively, prosecutors are spending less, not more, time in engaging in investigation and analysis. This directive may also be a driver in the recent rise in the number of people incarcerated in Cook County Jail. These actions not only increase costs to the county, they also result in the unnecessary detention of mostly Black and brown people who do not pose a danger. This causes people to lose jobs, housing, and benefits. These harms ripple out and impact entire families, making us all less safe. 

As President Preckwinkle pointed out in her budget address, Cook County faces instability as the federal government threatens cuts in healthcare and infrastructure, not to mention the suspension of critical grants in key areas such as violence prevention efforts. It is essential that the County focus spending on programs aimed at helping our community members and reducing crime by addressing root causes. 

Budgets are moral documents that show us what government officials truly value. Continuing to pour money into our already bloated law enforcement is an immoral decision that will make our communities less safe as they continue to bear the brunt of Trump’s attacks on our most marginalized people.