Welcome to know this live I'm Zinhle Essamuah. This week,
Illinois became the first state in the country to eliminate cash bail for jail
release when someone is waiting for their case to be heard.
The practice has been called a poor people's tax by critics and has left some
people who are unable to afford bail detained for weeks as they await trial.
The practice also disproportionately affects people of color.
Joining me today is Illinois Justice Project director Sharone Mitchell, Jr.
Sharone works on criminal justice reform and has advocated for bringing an end
to cash bail. Thank you so much for joining me.
Thank you so much for having me today.
Of course. And I want to jump in first.
Can you just explain for us sort of in plain terms,
what this bill that governor J.B. Pritzker signed does in practice?
Yeah, let me, let me try to do it in plain terms.
And sometimes it's tough for us to do it, but I will give it my best try. Um,
when a person goes before a judge-when a person is arrested,
they go before a judge and the judge needs to make a decision about what will
happen to them during the pendency of their case.
Judges now have basically three options.
A judge can decide to release that person. The case still goes on.
They're still responsible for bringing them back to bring themselves back to
court. And if found guilty,
they could face whatever penalties are allowed under the statute.
That's option number one. Option number two,
a judge could hold someone basically saying that the person will be detained
until the outcome of the case. And option number three is a cash bond,
which is kind of a mesh of the two.
It's basically saying that the person is eligible for release,
but that person will not be released until they're able to pay a certain money
amount. So what the bill does is that it does kind of three things.
It ends that first practice, that third practice, it ends the use of cash bond.
Money would no longer be the main determining factor and whether somebody will
be in or out of jail,
but it also reforms the decision-making process so that courts can more
clearly make decisions about who should be in and who should be out.
It also addresses some data collection so that we know in our 102 counties
what's going on when it comes to pre-trial and address some of the issues
around pre-trial policy, including electronic monitoring, uh,
pre-trial risk assessments, and warrants.
And I think in my conversations about ending cash bail, there,
there can be confusion.
So does this mean anyone arrested for a crime will essentially be able to walk
free regardless of the crime committed until their case is heard?
I think it's best to think about this policy as how we make decisions.
So currently in the status quo,
we allow money to make decisions about who should be in or who should be out.
So a person can be accused of a crime.
They can go before a judge and the judge says, 'Hey,
you need to pay X amount of dollars and you'll be released.' Uh,
what we're saying with this policy is money shouldn't be the main factor.
So we're it to the judges to make the decision about who should be in and who
should be out. And we're creating the whole legal structure that allows,
that allows for better decision-making.
I think too often people think about this as just kind of like a release, uh,
just about release that, you know, everybody will be released. Uh,
I think we believe that there'll be more folks that will be released,
but we also feel like we'll make better decisions on who should be and who
shouldn't be. The current,
the current situation allows money to make that decision,
and I think the consensus is that that's a bad
way of determining, uh, incarceration.
And it would be helpful to hear some examples.
I know that prior to being a part of the Illinois Justice Project,
you were a public defender in Chicago for years.
Can you tell me some instances that maybe are examples of why it's so-this
legislation is so important.
Well,
you talked about it before in your intro where you talked about people can wait
weeks to trial. Actually it's more like months, sometimes years,
sometimes multiple years. So we know that people are stuck in jail,
they are innocent. Uh, there hasn't been any evidence proven, uh,
presented against them, and by
being in jail they're more likely to plead guilty,
they're more likely to serve longer sentences than those who have the
same background,
similar charges who have the opportunity to get out.
So, you know, my experience as a Cook County public defender really, uh,
illustrated that there are really two justice systems, you know,
one justice system for folks that are out that actually get the opportunity to
participate in their offense and another justice system,
which incentivizes people to plead guilty, not because, uh,
they believe that they've done something wrong,
but because they just want to get out of jail,
and they are in a worse bargaining position than someone
that can actually, um, you know,
use the rights given to them by the constitution.
Yeah.
And you've presented a strong case for why people are very much in favor of
this. At the same time, we know that many groups are critical,
including the Illinois Law Enforcement Coalition. It's a group of police unions.
They've criticized the move to end cash bail saying that it puts the
public at risk. They even wrote that it will 'handcuff
officers.' What's your response to these critiques?
Well, you know, I think the first thing to talk,
there are two things to talk about. I think that first is important to look at,
you know, our past. These are the same groups that said that the blood,
the streets would run red with blood when we legalized medical marijuana.
They said that police dogs would be euthanized
if we made adult use cannabis legal.
They talked about, uh,
cartels taking over our cities if we
were to make simple reform moves. So,
I think it's important to think that there's a little bit of a boy that cried
Wolf scenario going on with many of these groups.
I think the second thing it's important to think about is what the bill actually
does.
You see a lot of fear-mongering and that fear monitoring is based upon not
actually looking at what the bill does. And we talked about it before.
I think many people hear cash bond and they think, 'Oh,
everybody will be released.' And they're not looking at the 300 pages of
statute that reform how that decision making process is going to go.
So while I respect our friends in law enforcement, uh,
they certainly have a difficult job,
I think it's important to look at what this bill actually does and not rely on
conceptions based upon who knows what.
And you mentioned and talked about what the bill actually does.
The bill itself is called the Pre-trial Fairness Act. And in the package,
it includes expanding training for officers,
making it easier to reprimand officers that commit misconduct.
What do you ultimately hope that this will accomplish?
Well, the Pre-trial Fairness Act was a part of a larger piece of legislation.
And you are right. It talked about policing issues,
sentencing issues, um, you know, custodial conditions.
I think the goal here,
and I think everybody has the same goal to make a safer communities,
uh, with police that are more accountable. For the policing aspects
of this bill are really relatively simple asks.
Things like you can't, you can't, you know,
whistleblowers are protected,
that officers have a duty or to intervene if they see illegal
actions going on. They have a duty to render aid.
If they're convicted of certain misdemeanors or felonies,
they can't work in the state.
I think the asks on the policing side are very simple. Let's have, uh,
law enforcement, you know, do the right thing.
Let's work on the system,
let's work on the systematic processes that can produce better results.
Let's not just look at the fact that, 'Oh,
there may be bad apples.' Let's look at how the system produces the things that
we don't like. They are very, very, very moderate ask.
And our hope is that this along with the pre-trial sections of the bill
will create a better justice system,
that will provide more safety and more safely,
more fairness for all people of our great state.
And the reason we're talking about this is because Illinois is the first state
to mandate the end of cash bail,
but it's noteworthy that this has been studied before.
I know a 2017 study out of New Jersey showed that actually sending fewer people
to jail is not only saving taxpayers money,
but also creates safer communities, which can be a little counter-intuitive.
So maybe, can you walk us through that? How does that actually work? Yeah.
I think too often people think of jails and prisons as basically
the way,
and the only way we can kind of create safety and that there are bad people in
the world and that you put them in jail and prisons, they can't do bad things.
Actually,
what the data and what studies tell us is that when you put somebody in
jail, especially in a short-term period,
that you're actually increasing the criminogenic factors that exist in their
life. For example, I saw the public defender all the time.
When somebody would go to jail for a few weeks,
they will lose their job if they had a job. They would- if they had to pay rent,
they would get behind rent. If they had anything going on in terms of education,
that would be lost. So you do that short-term jailing,
that person comes back out and they're in a worse place than they were before.
Remember, most people,
the vast majority of people who touch the criminal justice system will come out.
They will have to operate in our society. And too often,
we put them in worse positions. So the studies are clear.
Short-term detention actually makes it more likely that a person will be
rearrested. So New Jersey is a great example.
They're a state that affectively ended cash bond.
There are only a couple-a handful of cash bonds passed out through the entire
state.
And we have other jurisdictions like the federal system and juvenile systems
that rarely use money to make these determinations.
So while we are the first state to do it completely, this is not an experiment.
This is something that has been done before.
And we hope to-and we believe that if we implement this thing, right,
we'll have a lower jail population that will be more effective at making
decisions around detention.
And we'll better be in a better position to address any safety concerns.
And while Illinois is not alone in the push for ending cash bail,
it's also been clear that other States have tried to make this change,
but have been unsuccessful.
And so knowing that why was Illinois able to do this?
And what should other States be thinking about to learn from the progress the
state has made?
Well, the nationwide movement has been vibrant.
I think it's often thought of that it's failed in other States.
Most notably New York tried to do kind of a portion of what we did,
and it was curtailed very quickly,
not because the data came out that it was a wrong way to
go,
but because fear-mongering the media kind of elevated these stories
and people got political cold feed.
California was another state had, has moved down that path but, you know,
put out a statute that was not favored by both
law enforcement and justice advocates.
So it did not go forward.
I believe that Illinois will be a little bit different because we do have a
strong advocacy community,
but we're also relying on the recommendations of our state supreme court.
They put out a- they put out a set of recommendations,
about 53 I think in March of sometime
last year, and many of the reforms in the Pre-trial Fairness Act are
recommendations that were given by our court. So there is, I think more buy-in.
We've given ourselves a long transition period,
two years to get things figured out. So I think we're on the right track.
And we hope that other States who are moving along this path get here with us.
Well, we'll definitely be watching how the impacts of this legislation unfolds.
So thank you, Sharone, for giving us the context today.
And thank you so much for having me. You have a great day.
You too, and thank you to everyone for watching.
Please be sure to follow all of our NowThis pages. I'm Zinhle Essamuah.