It has been three years since Illinois made history by implementing the Pretrial Fairness Act and becoming the first state in the country to completely end the use of money bond. Overall, the picture remains positive. Statewide, pretrial jailing has decreased since 2023 levels, judges are spending more time on each individual case, and tens of millions of dollars previously taken as bond payments are now staying in our state’s most marginalized communities. Notwithstanding opportunistic claims to the contrary, the Pretrial Fairness Act has had no negative impact on public safety. In fact, we’ve seen a dramatic decrease in crime since the law went into effect.

It’s not all sunshine and roses, however. Under the Pretrial Fairness Act, two state agencies are supposed to collect and release data that will reveal how implementation is going so that we know the outcomes in courtrooms across the state and who is, and is not, following the law. But that is not happening, and the MacArthur Justice Center has sued to force implementation of the data provision. In our state’s largest court system, Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke has made it her personal mission to try and drive up pretrial jailing even as crime continues to fall. And opponents have continued to jump on any tragedy to attack the Pretrial Fairness Act, and they often do so by lying about what the law does and does not do. Having comprehensive statewide data will help community members and stakeholders better understand implementation issues that need to be addressed as well as helping put misinformation about the law to rest.

Ending money bail did not lead to an increase in crime.

• Since implementing the Pretrial Fairness Act, violent crime and property crime have both declined in Illinois.
• In the two years since the Pretrial Fairness Act took effect, 94% of the more than 177,000 people released pretrial in Cook County have not been charged with new offenses against a person.
• When you look at individual cities or counties, we see the same results. In 2019, East Saint Louis recorded 36 murders. By 2025, that number dropped to 15—the fewest homicides in 45 years. This past summer, Chicago experienced its fewest murders since 1965.
• That data is consistent with studies of pretrial reform everywhere: Contrary to the messaging of opponents, studies consistently show that there is no link between bail reform and increased crime. In other words, crime does not increase when there is less use of cash bail.

The Pretrial Fairness Act has also kept money in the communities that earned it.

• Before the implementation of the Pretrial Fairness Act, the state collected more than $140 million in money bonds each year.
• Now, that money remains in people’s pockets, where they can use it for groceries, childcare, rent or mortgage payments, health care—all essentials that people used to have to go without if someone they loved needed bond paid. 
• Over time, this will help stabilize members of some of our state’s poorest communities who were previously forced to choose between paying the rent or paying a ransom to bring their loved one home while they awaited trial.

Not everything is perfect—there is a lot we don’t know.

• As noted above, the Better Government Association and Radical Hospitality Ministries recently filed a lawsuit demanding data transparency on the Pretrial Fairness Act. Under the law, the Pretrial Practices Data Oversight Board (PPDOB) and the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts (AOIC) are supposed to collect data from criminal legal system agencies and then publish reports. 
• They have not done so, leaving the public and policy-makers largely in the dark about pretrial jail populations, rearrests, electronic monitoring, and court appearances. 
• That lack of data leaves the Pretrial Fairness Act vulnerable to bad-faith attacks claiming it’s not working based on individual cases.

And there are still plenty of people actively trying to harm the Pretrial Fairness Act.

• Even though crime has been falling to levels not seen in decades, the Cook County State’s Attorney is putting in overtime to drive up pretrial incarceration. 
• As several reports show, her policy of automatically filing detention motions on certain charges despite the strength of the evidence or the person’s own circumstances is the main factor increasing pretrial jailing in Cook County. And her policies effectively target Black and brown community members. A report from the Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice showed that 96% of people prosecutors sought detention on were Black or Latine. Over two-thirds of petitions were filed against people accused of possessing but not using a gun.
  • That same report found that judges granted 74% of prosecutors’ petitions to detain. One court-watcher noted, “It seems as though the default decision is to detain—the burden of proof seems to be on the defense rather than the prosecutor.” (The law places the burden on the prosecution). This is especially concerning given that approximately half of the detention-eligible cases filed result in dismissal or acquittal.
• And to achieve political gain, politicians who opposed the Pretrial Fairness Act regularly lie about its requirements, often pretending that judges must automatically release people when that is not true or pretending that the old money system automatically detained dangerous people when it did not. 
• But advocates continue to push back. Most recently, in response to State’s Attorney Burke’s public condemnation of electronic monitoring and her criticism of judges making those decisions, Cook County Public Defender Sharone R. Mitchell, Jr. explained why Burke’s perspective eliminates the nuance required of a fair justice system. 

Advocates have nonetheless helped achieve enormous gains, despite attempts to defang the efficacy of reforms.

• In 2024, the legislature passed the Pretrial Success Act and followed it up with more funding in 2025.
• We’ve also improved the public defense system, which is critical for the Pretrial Fairness Act to succeed. Individualized pretrial decision making is not possible without effective advocates, and Illinois needed more structure, oversight, and funding to make that happen.

Obviously, there is more work to do. But as pretrial reform remains under attack across the country—especially as we near the mid-terms—it’s important to remember that in Illinois, things are working. We must not deviate from our path.