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A Policy Statement from Chicago Appleseed and the Chicago Council of Lawyers

The Data is Out: Bond reform in Cook County has been a tremendous success

By Sarah Staudt, Senior Policy Analyst and Staff Attorney

Bond reform has freed thousands of people from pre-trial incarceration, avoided the wealth-based discrimination that money bonds cost, and reduced the racial disparity in pre-trial incarceration. It has done this without creating any appreciable threat to public safety in Chicago.

A report issued by the Chief Judge’s Office on May 9th provides a comprehensive summary of the results of the first 15 months since General Order 18.8A was issued in September 2017. That order required that judges immediately cease the practice of setting unaffordable money bonds as a means of keeping people accused of crimes in jail pre-trial, and effectively initiated bond reform in Cook County. The report compares the outcomes of bond court decisions since 18.8A to the 15-month period preceding the adoption of the General Order. All in all, it encompasses bail decisions for over 58,000 cases. The effect has been a massive natural experiment to test whether major reductions in pre-trial incarceration can happen without hurting public safety or increasing failure to appear rates. The verdict is clear: Bond reform in Cook County has been an overwhelming success.

The goal of Order 18.8A was to end the practice of setting monetary bonds as the primary way to decide who would get released from jail pre-trial and who did not. The money bond system essentially created a wealth-based determination of who would get released from custody: if an arrestee or their family had money to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars, they were released. If they were too poor to afford the bond, they stayed in jail. This was the primary factor in dictating who was and was not released before trial. Wealth, of course, is not a good predictor of how dangerous someone might be to a community or how likely they are to appear in court. At the urging of activists, Chief Judge Evans implemented 18.8A to change the way Cook County makes pre-trial release decisions.

Instead of relying on wealth to determine who was and was not released, Judges would use risk assessments and individualized hearings to determine flight risk and any possible risk to public safety and would only set bonds at levels that each defendant could afford. All in all, this led to a major reduction in the total number of people held in the Cook County jail pre-trial. By December 2018, the jail population has declined 26% since 2017, and is down 42% since January of 2014.

The work of bond reform is not finished—there are still many people in Cook County jail being held on unaffordable money bonds, and hearings in Cook County Bond Court are still often hasty and mechanical. But these numbers show that Bond Reform has had tremendous success. Some of the highlights of the data include:

• There has been a huge drop in overall pre-trial incarceration. The portion of people receiving recognizance bonds has doubled since September 2017, and the percentage of people ordered to the Sheriff’s office restrictive Electronic Home Detention program fell by 14 percentage points. Reduction in pre-trial incarceration gives the accused better opportunity to participate in their defense; to retain their jobs; or continue to contribute to their households in other ways pre-trial.
• Bond Reform has Helped Close the Racial Gap in Pre-Trial Detention Decisions The beneficiaries of bond reform were primarily people of color—there was a 117% increase in the number of black defendants receiving I-Bonds and a 80.2% increase in the number of Hispanic defendants receiving them.
• Bond Reform has not led to a spate of accused people missing court; in fact, court appearance rates are slightly better after bond reform. Rates of court appearance actually slightly increased after bail reform. 83.2% of defendants now make all of their court appearances, up from 82% prior to September 2017.
• Bond Reform has not led to a higher rate of arrests for people who are released pretrial What Chief Judge Evans calls the “community safety rate”—the percentage of pre-trial defendants who are not charged with any new offense while released—has also increased under bail reform. 83.2% of people released pre-trial since September 2017 have not been charged with a new crime.
• Only an extremely small percentage of people pretrial under bond reform have been arrested for a new violent crime. Only 0.6%, or a total of 147 of the 25,504 people released pretrial between September 2017 and December 2018 were charged with a new violent offense while released pre-trial. That percentage is approximately the same as the percentage of people being arrested for new violent offenses before bond reform.

Amazingly, despite these numbers, some opponents are still claiming publicly that bond reform is dangerous and are suggesting to the public that there is a wave of crime committed by people released pre-trial. But the facts are clear: bond reform critics were and are wrong. Reforms simply haven’t had the harmful effects opponents predicted. Opponents of bail reform who still state that bond reform is dangerous should be consistently asked to defend their opposition to bond reform in light of what this data shows us. Jailing more people pre-trial was not keeping Chicago safe; it was likely making it more dangerous in the long term. We know that in the long run, people jailed pre-trial have a higher recidivism rate than those who are released. The idea that “dangerous” individuals have been freed and are committing crimes is a myth.

Thousands upon thousand of Chicagoans have benefitted from bond reform. They have been able to stay in their communities while they resolve their criminal cases, remaining a part of their children and family’s lives, keeping their jobs, and staying in school. We know that allowing people to stay connected to their families and communities while they are resolving a criminal case helps increase community safety in the long run and decreases the harms mass incarceration has brought to communities of color. And perhaps most importantly, the beneficiaries of bond reform maintain a truer presumption of innocence and are not under pressure to plead guilty to a case just to be able to go home to their families. Release allows people to exercise their rights, work with their attorneys, and make sure that our courts give every person due process under the law.