Roughly one year after Illinois eliminated cash bail, the state has reported far fewer arrests, and violent and property crime rates are trending down.
One year ago, the state began opting for judges to decide if someone should remain in or out of jail while awaiting their trial in a push for criminal justice reform. Those originally against the Pretrial Fairness Act argued it would increase crime. However, new data from Loyola University Chicago’s Center for Criminal Justice are stemming some of those initial fears, though the findings are preliminary.
Loyola Chicago’s study is a multi-year study that examines the law. David Olson, co-director of Loyola University Chicago’s Center for Criminal Justice Research, said the results will become clearer over time. He said some metrics would require a longer period of time for findings, noting, in particular, the rates at which a defendant released from jail commits any new crimes while awaiting pretrial.
“We’re not saying the Pretrial Fairness Act reduced crime, and we’re also not saying the drop in crime might not have been larger had the law not been in effect,” he said. “But this is at least to put out there that crime has not gone up.”
The report revealed that reported instances of violent and property crime have dropped by 12% in Illinois in the first year since the law was implemented. Failure to appear rates also dropped from 17% to 15% in the state.
Cities underreporting crime to the FBI has interfered with tracking year-over-year crime statistics. However, Illinois’s figures between 2023 and 2024, thus far, use the same National Incident-Based Reporting System-certified data, unlike statistics reported between 2019 and 2022.
“The sky did not fall,” Cook County Judge Mary Marubio said. “People are coming to court, and communities are keeping more money within the community, which was a reason for the reform.”
The study found that daily jail populations have also decreased as defendants now spend far less time in jail awaiting trial. Pretrial jail populations fell by around 14% in Cook County, where Chicago is located, and other urban counties. In rural counties, pretrial jail populations fell by about 25%.
“For months [we saw] racist propaganda that was not checked by those in positions of power and journalism to call a thing a thing,” Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx said Wednesday when the report was released. “So when people say to me, ‘Wow, it’s really surprising that this law worked,’ [I ask] ‘surprising to whom?’”
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“I just feel compelled, in my time left in office, to say truths that need to be spoken. It was racist. It was racist,” Foxx added.
Some Republicans still aren’t convinced by the findings or the law. Former Democratic Alder Bob Fioretti, who is running as a Republican for Cook County state’s attorney to replace Foxx as she is retiring, told Axios, “Ask families of murder victims if they think it’s a big success.”