SAFE-T Act Year 1: Fewer Cook County defendants detained, downstate Illinois adjusts

Sept. 18 marks Illinois’ first anniversary of being the first state to end cash bail. The predicted disaster was averted. Cook County saw significant improvements. Still, changes to the SAFE-T Act could improve public safety, remain fair to defendants.

Last year Illinois became the first state to fully eliminate cash bail, a move intended to stop people from staying locked up just because they didn’t have cash for bail. It created fears violent criminals would be unleashed on the community.

So, a year into the Safety, Accountability, Fairness and Equity-Today Act experiment, how is it going?

Pretty good for Cook County. A little rougher on the rest of Illinois.

While Cook County had something of a head start after the county’s circuit court issued an order in 2017 that minimized the use of cash bail, the SAFE-T Act’s controversial mandate to operate without it was new in downstate Illinois. Completely restructuring how the pretrial detention system works in most of the state has resulted in fewer people being detained because of their lack of ability to pay and an increased burden on prosecutors and judges, especially downstate.

More people released also means an increased opportunity for those out on pretrial release to commit more crimes, but it could also mean fewer later re-offenses by those who lost jobs and had their lives disrupted by pretrial detention. Cash bail was intended to ensure defendants appeared for court – not to prevent defendants from committing more crimes.

But crime is a major issue regardless of the impact of cashless bail, especially in Chicago. According to the 2024 Lincoln Poll commissioned by the Illinois Policy Institute, 58% of Chicagoans rate crime as the biggest issue facing the city. Issues such as an understaffed police force, a 33% drop in arrest rates for violent crimes since 2013 and a Cook County states attorney who prosecuted fewer felonies drive those concerns. These are major issues that need to be addressed, but cannot be fixed by the type of bail system. If criminals are not caught or prosecuted in the first place, it does not matter whether they have to pay bail.

The experiment can be improved. The Pretrial Fairness Act portion of the SAFE-T Act can be amended to mitigate the likelihood of harm caused by those out on release without reinstating cash bail.

Cook County

While downstate Illinois judges and prosecutors had to completely change the way they did business, Cook County had already worked to minimize cash bail as of 2017 – collecting data on release, court appearance and re-offense rates throughout the process.

When comparing the numbers in the year before the SAFE-T Act went into effect to the year after, Cook County saw an increase in the rate of court appearance and a decrease in the rate of crimes committed by those defendants on pretrial release, including violent crimes tracked under the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports.

The overall rate of non-domestic violence defendants charged with a new crime while on pretrial release declined by 1.1 percentage points compared to the 12 months before the SAFE-T Act. The reoffense rates increasing for property crimes and crimes against people.

While only 76.5% of nondomestic violence defendants were let out on pretrial release after their Cook County Model Bond Court appearance in the year leading up to the end of cash bail, over 87% of them were released through the end of the following August, analysis of court data found.

Comparing the bond court release rates from the year leading up to the end of cash bail, an estimated 2,176 more nondomestic violence defendants were released after first appearance than would have been otherwise released at bond court. Even when taking the increased rate of pretrial release after a first hearing into account and assuming similar reoffense rates, Cook County saw an estimated 152 fewer crimes overall and 96 fewer UCR violent offenses than it would have under the rates in the year before the Pretrial Fairness Act was implemented. This does not consider any difference in the rate of defendants released by citation rather than arrested, which likely increased with the pretrial reforms.

Data from the City of Chicago, which represents more than half of the Cook County population, shows total and violent crimes also declined alongside arrest rates for violent crime during the past 12 months.

Not all the SAFE-T Act changes were positive. Cook County saw an estimated 587 more property crimes and 245 more crimes against people – offenses such as assault, battery, child neglect and other miscellaneous offenses – than it otherwise would have.

Notably, only 15% of felony offenses in Cook County resulted in an individual being held for detention before trial compared to 23% in the year before no cash bail. Nearly 1-in-5 felony cases filed during this time were against individuals already on pretrial release, according to CWB Chicago.

Downstate Illinois

Downstate Illinois has reported more of a struggle to adjust to the new system, with fewer resources to manage the increase in petition filings and sudden rise of appeals in the circuit courts.

Most downstate counties have not released defendants at the same rate as Cook County.

According to the Circuit Court of Cook County, Cook County prosecutors filed petitions for detention for just 19% of the crimes considered “detainable,” compared to 60% across all counties reporting data, including Kane and McHenry.

Among Illinois counties tracking SAFE-T Act data, Kane County in the 16th Judicial Circuit had the largest percentage of individuals on pretrial release, with only 5% of cases resulting in a detention.

The Kane County dashboard shows domestic violence charges were the most common detainable crime, consisting of about half of all cases reported since the SAFE-T Act took effect. About 88% of these offenses did not result in a detention.

Crimes without petitions for detention include aggravated battery of the police, seniors, the handicapped and children younger than 13, domestic strangulation, violations of protection orders by individuals convicted of prior violations of protection orders and the predatory criminal sexual assault of children younger than 13.

Domestic battery was also the most common detainable crime reported in McHenry County since the Pretrial Fairness Act went into effect, making up more than one-third of cases. Only about 1-in-4 of these domestic violence offenses resulted in a detention.

Conclusion

As proponents predicted, the end of cash bail has led to a decrease in the prison population statewide and modest reductions in the detention and reoffense rates in Cook County. But releasing more defendants means more opportunity for those defendants to commit crimes in the short term. In the long term, research suggests that pretrial detention can itself lead to higher reoffense rates because of loss of job opportunities, among other ill social effects.

The Pretrial Fairness Act has some room for improvement. To mitigate the risks associated with ending the unfair system of cash bail while making sure no one is held in prison simply because the person cannot afford to pay, Illinois should consider amending the current law to give prosecutors and courts more authority to detain repeat offenders and add currently non-detainable offenses such as misdemeanor battery. The state should also ensure courts and prosecutors in downstate Illinois have enough resources so defendants who should be detained aren’t back on the street.

But those changes will not address the major issues plaguing Chicago. More important than any reforms to the Pretrial Fairness Act, the city needs to properly staff its police department and increase arrest rates. When the new Cook County state’s attorney takes office, the prosecutor should be more aggressive in targeting felonies and repeat offenders.

Cashless bail may not be the disaster critics predicted, but crime remains a major issue that is not going away.