Ahead of the implementation of large-scale pretrial criminal justice reforms, state and county officials on Thursday offered a first look at specifics of how the complex Cook County bond court system will change when cash bail is abolished later this month.
The historic reforms will take effect Sept. 18 across the state, marking a major change in the way decisions will be made around whether a defendant will be released from jail while awaiting trial. Though other jurisdictions have moved to eliminate or reduce money as a factor, Illinois was the first to pass it in the form of statewide legislation.
Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, Public Defender Sharone Mitchell, state Sen. Robert Peters and other officials spoke during a media event at Loyola University’s Water Tower campus, highlighting changes coming to the statewide court systems and ongoing preparations for the reforms, which became a flashpoint for controversy in recent years and were put on hold after Illinois prosecutors filed a lawsuit seeking to block the measure, passed as part of the SAFE-T Act, the sweeping criminal justice reform measure signed into law in 2021, from taking effect.
“We have had a humanitarian crisis in that jail for decades,” Foxx said, noting that efforts to reform the bond system and reduce the jail population have been in progress for years.
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Instead of using a monetary bond, judges will have the option to detain someone pretrial if they meet conditions that indicate they would be a flight risk or a danger to the public or release them on conditions meant to ensure compliance while facing criminal charges.
The law also dictates a change in how the courts handle pretrial proceedings. In place of traditionally fast and chaotic bond court calls, prosecutors seeking to detain someone must make their case in a lengthier hearing, with defendants allowed more of a chance to make a case for mitigation.
Since Cook County courts have already reduced the use of money bail, the more in-depth detention hearings are likely to be among the most visible changes here as the reforms take effect, with court calls added to accommodate the detention hearings.
Speaking during the event, Cook County Judge Mary Marubio, who heads the county’s pretrial division, outlined changes ahead of an expected order from Chief Judge Tim Evans.
“It’s not so different from how we release people now, it’s just that money will no longer will be a condition of release,” Marubio said.
The county will have a midday “initial appearance call” for defendants who will be released with conditions, along with a morning and afternoon court call for the longer detention hearings.
Officials expect that domestic violence cases will make up a large portion of cases in which prosecutors will seek to keep people detained pretrial, and have estimated overall potentially 10 detention hearings per day on weekdays and 20 on weekends, Marubio said.
The bond reform measure outlines which criminal offenses for which prosecutors can seek detention.
Peters, who pushed for the law in the statehouse, said Cook, DuPage and Kane counties appear ready to implement the changes. He noted that there has been significant resistance from some officials in other counties.
“Every county needs to make sure they follow the law,” he said.
The reforms are being implemented nine months later than intended due to an effort by opponents who have argued that the law violated the Illinois constitution.
Given the time county officials needed to prepare for the changes, the SAFE-T Act, though signed in 2021, mandated that the bond reform measures would take effect two years later on Jan. 1 of this year. But the Illinois Supreme Court halted implementation just hours before it would take effect.
The stay followed a decision from a Kankakee County judge who ruled in favor of prosecutors challenging the law, finding that, among other things, it stepped on judicial authority and violated the constitution’s separation of powers clause.
The Illinois high court in July ruled 5-2 in favor of keeping the legislation, rejecting those arguments. It built in time for counties to again pivot back to preparing to implement the changes brought by the law.
Asked at the event about the bail reform controversies and narratives that pin blame for violent crime on “progressive prosecutors,” Foxx, who has supported bail reform measures since she took office, called it a “lazy narrative not rooted in fact.”
“It is a frustration when you’re sitting and having to spend more time debunking misinformation than informing people about the actual processes of the criminal system and how bail is actually supposed to work.”
Mitchell, the county’s public defender, called the money bond system “a broken model.”
“The hardest thing I’ve had to do is have conversations with mothers, sisters, church members … about how to pull money together to pull their person out of jail.”