Last night I had the great experience of representing Chicago Appleseed on the PBS’ Chicago Tonight program, discussing recent attempts by Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and the Illinois Supreme Court’s to control the Cook County Jail Population and improve out pre-trial process. The link to the video is here..
President Preckwinkle’s proposal is an admirable step toward more evidence-based assessment as to who is the jail and why. However, to create lasting change and to save on the redoubling of administrative resources, we as a County must move past treating symptoms and work on reforming the Bond Court and the Pre-Trial Services department.
What we need is an audit of Bond Court outcomes so we can diagnose the underlying problems and emulate the reforms of proven systems throughout the country.
As we’ve mentioned previously on this blog, Bond Court hearings take twenty to thirty seconds per defendant, and monetary bonds are the rule rather than the exception – flying in the face of the bond statute, which strongly discourages monetary bonds, declaring that they should be used only when “no other conditions of release will reasonably assure the defendant’s appearance in court.” Moreover, similarly situated defendants receive vastly different bond amounts due solely to which judge happens to be on the bench. Our over-reliance on monetary bonds cruelly transforms the bond hearing from a reasonable inquiry into flight risk and public safety into a hearing that is too often only about the financial means of defendants. This results in bizarre injustice where defendants who are charged with retail theft amounting to $8 sit in jail because they can’t put up the required $2,500 bail amount, while defendants who have gun convictions in their records and have been arrested for fighting with police are out on the street because they can afford $6,000.
But it is not only the behavior of our bond court judges that needs to change to bring our system into alignment. Many players share the blame. Our Pre-trial Services Department, for example, only assesses the flight risk and the risk to public safety of 15% of the defendants that are admitted into the jail, they rarely verify any of this information, and, consequently, bond court judges hardly ever rely on their reports. Additionally, public defenders often have little time to speak with the defendants before hearings start and they offer very little unique mitigating information to the court.
The result is that a defendant is saddled with a de facto unreviewable result of a thirty second hearing wherein no effort was made to put forth evidence on his behalf or defend against evidence introduced by the prosecution.
For more information on our pre-trial process and ways to improve it, please read our recent report on Pre-Trial Delays and the Length of Stay in Cook County Jail and our policy brief on Early Assessment in Other Urban Jurisdictions.
