Few concepts are more common sense than a bad act requiring an immediate response and, importantly, an immediate consequence. All parents know this. But what happens when there is perpetual uncertainty instead? In Chicago’s case, you get a stunningly high number of shootings and homicides and seemingly endless, numbing tragedy in our communities.
Experts largely agree that most violent acts that are not domestic in nature are committed by an incredibly small number of people. What happens when their acts of violence neither receive a response (arrest) nor an immediate consequence (appropriate punishment)? What you get is a small group of violent people emboldened by inaction that continues terrorizing entire communities with a sense of impunity.
Welcome to Cook County, where the very system designed to stop violence actually contributes to the bloodshed.
As the Tribune has so brilliantly laid out in its “Stalled Justice” series, for decades, our justice system has neglected its most basic function: fairly administering justice.
The time it takes Cook County courts to complete most murder cases is now a staggering four years. That is about twice as long as the county’s own internal goal and four times as long as what advocates say the benchmark should be. The delays are worse than in any other large court system that experts have studied. This has been a known problem here since at least the 1960s.
I was once a prosecutor, and there were one or two cases that required extensive discovery dates and hearings, but not hundreds, of course.
While the Tribune analyzed murder cases, we know the situation is likely not much better when it comes to other violent crimes. At Cook County Jail, which I oversee, nearly 2,000 people have been in custody awaiting trial for more than a year, with 232 in custody pretrial for more than five years.
There is no conceivable way this structural dysfunction is not intimately connected to our city’s outrageous violence and national reputation. The countless delays in administering justice in Cook County mean that:
* Guilty parties go free as once-strong cases fall apart when witnesses die or disappear and memories fade.
* The mental health of survivors is further harmed by the uncertainty of delayed cases, not to mention the weeks taken off work to attend useless, albeit painful, hearings.
* Those wrongfully accused are held in custody for years away from their families and jobs, embittering an untold number of people against our justice system.
* Tens of millions of taxpayer dollars are wasted housing and feeding people in jail longer than would be necessary if their cases didn’t unnecessarily drag on.
* The longer someone is in custody at the jail, the more potential for negative incidents with security or medical staff, including assaults.
One of the greatest frustrations with this problem is that it is almost entirely preventable. Countless expensive studies have laid out the pathway forward. Still, those solutions are ignored.
In the most critical analysis, this cannot ever be viewed as merely just another slow and plodding government bureaucracy — a fixture in our social landscape of little real consequence. No, this dysfunction is among the primary causes of the unending violence in our communities.
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When violent actors are not met with immediate action and decisive consequences, they become encouraged and emboldened. When survivors don’t trust the justice system, they stop reporting crimes or take justice into their own hands. This has been the intolerable reality for decades.
We must prioritize drastically improving the function of our court system as a key plank of any plan to end the violence in this county. We must dust off the long-shelved reforms — from effective judicial case management to better systems to share evidence — drop the complacency that has kept them shelved and hold the justice system accountable if it fails to make these reforms stick. Don’t be mistaken — lives are at stake.
Thomas Dart has been Cook County sheriff since 2006.
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