Cook County Chief Judge Releases New Report on Bond Reform Showing Overwhelming Success
Late last week, Cook County Chief Judge Timothy Evans released a new report about bond reform and its impact in Cook County. Notably, the court also released case-level data for the first time, which will allow independent analysis by people outside the court system. The central conclusion from the new report is simple: fewer people are being incarcerated in Cook County Jail and increased pretrial releases “did not increase the threat to public safety in Cook County.”
What this truly means is that releasing more people pretrial in recent years has, in fact, increased public safety. In addition to the fact that reforms have not been shown to increase already low re-arrest rates, jailing fewer people will ultimately reduce crime because pretrial incarceration increases recidivism. The changes have also meant that, on any given day in Cook County, thousands of people who are members of the public are spared the inherent harms—physical, economic, emotional, legal—that necessarily occur in jail.
The report analyzes data about tens of thousands of bond decisions made in Cook County in 2016 and 2018, both before and after the implementation of General Order 18.8A, the local court rule requiring judges to set money bonds only in amounts people can afford to pay. According to the report, the Order has had clear positive effects: money bonds have been used less frequently overall, the median money bond amount has dropped significantly (from $5,000 to $1,000), and the average daily number of people in Cook County Jail has declined from 10,064 in January 2014 to 5,799 in December 2018. Despite the Order’s stated goal of ensuring “no [one] is held in custody prior to trial solely because [they] cannot afford to post bail,” however, approximately 2,000 people were locked up in Cook County Jail for just that reason on the day of the report’s release.
As this tremendous increase in pretrial release took place over the last year and a half, there was also no increase in crime or re-arrest rates. In fact, FBI statistics show violent crime decreased in Chicago after the new rule was implemented. Evaluating the more than 20,000 people released since the order took effect, it is clear that people released pretrial are just not that risky. It is incredibly rare for a person released pretrial to be arrested and accused (much less convicted) of a new crime considered “violent” while they are out on bond. After the reforms were implemented, just about one half of one percent (0.6%) of all people released pretrial on felony charges were accused of a new offense considered “violent.”
The report gives us reason to hope: the court and members of the public are seeing proof that reducing the use of money bond and pretrial incarceration are good for public safety. But this new report also simply reinforces what impacted communities and the Coalition to End Money Bond have known all along: people succeed when given the chance. Cook County has successfully reduced the use of money bonds by more than 50% since 2016 and prevented thousands of people from being admitted to Cook County Jail. We can and should release many more people pretrial without worrying about risks to public safety.
Despite the cause for celebration, concerns remain about both the metrics and current pretrial processes in place in Cook County. For example, simply looking at rates of court appearance and re-arrest often obscure what is actually going on and whether or not we as members of the community would be concerned by it. For example, many re-arrests, such as drug possession by people with addiction, trespass by people experiencing homelessness, etc., are more a reflection of mass criminalization than individual failure by the person arrested. Furthermore, the high chance of re-arrest in those situations certainly doesn’t warrant incarcerating someone pretrial. Court appearance rates are similarly unable to distinguish between people who forgot about their court date and eventually returned to court and people who fled prosecution by leaving the state.
Finally, we maintain deep concerns about the current detention hearing procedures in Cook County, including bond hearings that still last only a few minutes. People who will be denied release pending trial must have the right to robust adversarial hearings with adequate due process protections. In addition, the court system continues to rely on an oversimplified narrative about charges, which is evident in this report. Specifically, charge alone cannot be the basis for denying someone pretrial release. The standard for detention is not and must not just be charge, and we must remember that many people—including people with serious charges—will have their cases dismissed or be found not guilty. Overreliance on the type of charge alone gives police and prosecutors undue power to control bond decisions and threatens to deny thousands of people their basic rights. As reforms progress, we must necessarily shift resources toward the small number of people at risk of losing their liberty while presumed innocent and be unabashed in holding the state to a high standard in that process.
See press coverage of the report, featuring commentary from Coalition member Sharlyn Grace, here:
