Our hearts go out to Bethany MaGee and her family, who experienced an unimaginable horror. Her recovery will be long, and we know the pain and fear of what happened will live with her forever. 

If we are to respect victims and survivors when tragedies happen, we should tell the truth, look to see if and when our system failed, and try to correct it. If we followed this course every time, rather than playing politics to score points for our favorite causes, we might actually live in healthier, safer communities. Unfortunately, we almost never have honest conversations that lead to sustainable long-term solutions, and this case is, so far,  no different.

Predictably, some are blaming the Pretrial Fairness Act for what happened in Chicago. Here is what they have gotten wrong:

• Under the old pretrial system that relied on money bond, it would not have been possible for the prosecutor to seek Mr. Reed’s pretrial detention in the aggravated battery case that was pending in state court. The judge would have had no power to deny his release. That means if we had retained the old system that Donald Trump and many lawmakers are praising, Mr. Reed would likely have been ordered to pay a money bond and could still have been released—exactly as had happened roughly 70 times in his past.

• In this case, the Pretrial Fairness Act actually allowed the prosecutor the option to seek detention and for the judge to consider detaining Mr. Reed while he awaited trial. It’s hard to see how one could conclude that this tragedy is evidence that we should return to the old money bond system. 

• The new system also needs to be understood in perspective. Most people on pretrial release are succeeding. In the two years since the Pretrial Fairness Act took effect, 94% of the more than 128,000 people released pretrial have not been charged with new offenses against a person.

• A study from Loyola University found that:
  • Since the Pretrial Fairness Act went into effect, judges are receiving more information and spending more time on decisions regarding pretrial detention. The median length of a detention hearing is now between 10-30 minutes, up from a short 3-4 minutes under the money bond system.
  • Judicial decisionmaking is now more transparent. Prior to the Pretrial Fairness Act, judges often set money bonds without explaining their reasoning. Now judges are putting their reasoning for releasing or detaining a person on the record.

• Many elected officials are implying that Mr. Reed has been released 72 times under the Pretrial Fairness Act. Mr. Reed is 50 years old. He has been arrested 72 times since he was 18 years old. Illinois ended money bond in 2023. Mr. Reed’s prior arrests and releases almost all occurred under the money bond system. That should demonstrate that the old system—not the new one—didn’t work.

The sad reality is that we have always had terrible tragedies in this country, in places that have money bond and now also in places that don’t. Each incident says more about our failure as a society to deal with extremely difficult problems of mental illness and its intersection with substance use and other seemingly intractable social problems than about the type of pretrial system in place at any given time or in any given location.

But there are indications that ending money bond and replacing it with a system tied to decisions about public safety, where survivors get a voice about detention decisions and notice about what is likely to happen in those hearings, has increased safety. Under the new system, crime continues to steadily decrease. Before, for example, people charged with domestic violence could buy their way out of jail. Survivors had no notice, no opportunity to be heard, and no opportunity to find new places to live if they needed to. That is no longer the case. Before, judges set money bonds without meaningful hearings. In the vast majority of cases, prosecutors had no chance to argue for denial of release and detention. The Pretrial Fairness Act fixed those problems.

And while the Pretrial Fairness Act has been in effect, crime rates have been dramatically falling. Despite the same opponents of reform who predicted the “end of days” in 2022 now attempting the blame the law for Mr. Reed’s actions, the data tell a different story.

• Beginning in 2023, murders in Chicago began to decline, and in April 2025 Chicago had the fewest murders recorded in that month since 1962.
• Since July 2024, Chicago has experienced a significant decrease in robberies. The first three months of 2025 had the fewest robberies of any quarter in decades.
• Through mid-June, Chicago has seen a 40% decrease in shootings year-to-date compared to the same period in 2024.

We should not have to correct the record about the Pretrial Fairness Act each time there is a tragedy, but that seems to be what is required every time. Something obviously went wrong in our systems—the crisis intervention, behavioral health, human services, and criminal court systems—for a man who was arrested 72 times starting at age 18 to end up where he did without an effective intervention. If we all agree we want to prevent something like this from ever happening again, we must be honest about the way all those arrests and criminal cases failed to prevent this and what other responses could have accomplished. That is the only way we will ever get the healthy, safe communities every Chicagoan deserves.