We are calling on the Cook County Board of Commissioners to protect funding for essential services like violence prevention, behavioral health, and community investment to reduce intra-community violence. Cook County can support these services by freezing law enforcement spending, which is already far above levels set when the jail and state’s attorney’s office had higher utilization.

This year, communities across the country have been forced to make difficult budgetary decisions due to federal funding withheld by the Trump administration. Jurisdictions are also being forced to address gaps in social service programs that were gutted or eliminated by the administration. Among many other things, these reckless actions have forced the Illinois Departments of Public Health and of Human Services to cut back on mental health and substance use treatment services, and several essential violence prevention programs have also had to scale back. This exacerbates the use of prison to respond to mental health issues rather than the more targeted, cost-effective, and humane systems that behavioral health services provide. 

Over the last several years, Cook County has made incredible progress reducing harm and violence in our communities while also reducing the number of people incarcerated awaiting trial. The overall decrease in crime has been astonishing. 

• 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.

• Beginning in 2023, murders in Chicago began to decline, and in April 2025 Chicago had the fewest murders recorded in that month since 1962.

• Through mid-June, Chicago has seen a 40% decrease in shootings year-to-date compared to the same period in 2024.

Over the last decade, we have also seen the number of people incarcerated in the Cook County Jail decrease by nearly 40%. That reduction has helped ensure that thousands of people were able to keep their jobs, homes, and social connections while awaiting trial. Allowing people to maintain stability in their personal lives while awaiting trial makes all of us and our communities safer.

Despite this dramatic decrease in the number of people incarcerated in the jail, the Cook County Department of Corrections budget has not seen a reduction that coincides with that change in responsibility. Similarly, the budget for the State’s Attorney’s Office grew tremendously over the last decade, even as both the number of case filings and crime rates continued to decrease. Rather than investing even more money in prosecution and incarceration, we urge Cook County to freeze law enforcement spending and increase investments in social services aimed at reducing intra-community violence. It is important to note that while the federal government has cut hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for essential social services, law enforcement spending has gone untouched and in some cases even increased. 

The strides made toward reducing intra-community violence have been made possible by many of the budget decisions made by the Cook County Board of Commissioners. By prioritizing violence prevention programs, expanding the social safety net and behavioral health care, and funding more youth and recreational services, the county has been able to help stop violence before it happens. These investments have paid off, but the Trump administration’s actions now threaten the budgets of many essential services and violence prevention programs. 

Cook County can continue to lead the country on reducing community violence and pretrial jailing, but in order to do so, we must continue to prioritize investment in communities. We are calling on all members of the Cook County Board of Commissioners to freeze law enforcement spending to ensure that we can protect essential health and human services at a time when the federal government has abandoned them. By doing so, Cook County can continue to move forward with the incredible progress we’ve made in simultaneously reducing intra-community violence and pretrial jailing.