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This morning, the Chicago Tribune published an attack on bail reform in Cook County. Today’s article attacked two respected organizations, the Chicago Community Bond Fund and The Bail Project, a national bond fund. As leaders in bail reform efforts, Chicago Appleseed and the Chicago Council of Lawyers have and will continue to stand side-by-side with Chicago Community Bond Fund and all of our Coalition to End Money Bond partners as we collectively fight for pretrial justice. 

Money bond is one of the key barriers to an equitable pretrial justice system in Illinois. It is unequivocally unjust and unfair to jail someone simply because they cannot afford to pay a few thousand dollars. The Tribune article criticizes organizations and public figures that champion pretrial fairness. It is not only an attack on the missions of these two organizations, but on the principles of pretrial justice in general. 

The Chicago Tribune wrongly conflates pretrial arrests, missed court dates, criminal history, and post-conviction arrests into their opinion about whether individuals should be bonded out – all without any consideration of the simple fact that a judge sets a bond amount with the intention it be paid. A few misleading examples of supposedly “dangerous” outcomes have nothing to do with the necessity to radically change a system by which people are deprived of liberty before a conviction. Using anecdotes about arrests as “evidence” of problems with bail reform is irresponsible journalism.

According to the State’s Attorney’s publicly-available data, about a third of people charged with felonies in Cook County ultimately are found not guilty or have their cases dismissed. An arrest is not a conviction. An allegation is not proof. Most importantly, no person should be defined solely by their relationship to the criminal justice system.

The “if we don’t lock them up, the violence will increase” argument has been continually disproven. The “war on drugs” forced society to acknowledge that imprisoning huge numbers of Black, brown, and poor people does nothing to reduce violence, drug use, or addiction problems. Why are we approaching bond reform with the exact same mentality—except for with people who are only accused, not even convicted? This logic is rooted in the racist policies of the 1990s, only applied to another class of crimes in a different context.

Bail reform efforts, including the elimination of money bond, are highly popular across the country and have had impressive success in Cook County over the last decade. Working with local organizations, including CCBF, and the Office of the Chief Judge, we have helped reduce the Cook County Jail population by thousands—saving millions of dollars in taxpayer money and reuniting families and communities after arrests. We expect statewide legislative action soon to make Illinois a leader in pretrial fairness; meanwhile, crime in Cook County continues to decrease and the use of expensive, ineffective long-term prison sentences is dramatically dwindling. 

In an era where facts and evidence are increasingly discounted in public discourse, it is deeply disappointing to see the well-respected Chicago Tribune engaged in unsupported fear-mongering. Chicago Appleseed and the Chicago Council of Lawyers fully support the elimination of money bonds as an evidence-based, common sense approach to fight mass incarceration. We stand in solidarity with the Chicago Community Bond Fund as they fight to reduce harm for communities overwhelmingly impacted by racist, unjust criminal policies.