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On Monday, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot held a press conference in response to the rising gun violence in Chicago, calling for an increase in pretrial jailing through a “moratorium” on pretrial electronic monitoring and doubling down on antiquated economic punishments, like civil asset forfeiture for “gang members.” Not only was the Mayor’s speech misguided in its recommendations, but it was fraught with untrue statements about the causes and consequences of community violence. 

Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts condemns the Mayor’s unconstitutional proposals and disproven anecdotal claims. We urge the Mayor to base her policies on evidence, not fear. Chicago deserves the promise of real community safety through investment in community services.  

The main focus of the Mayor’s press conference was a proven red herring: blaming the increase in violence on judges who have appropriately followed statute and administrative orders to not impose unaffordable money bonds. Again and again, Mayor Lightfoot has repeated her position that pretrial reform is the cause of community violence and has called for people to be jailed based solely on the accusations they face in court. Again and again, the Mayor has proposed reactive policing policies and regressive economic punishments for the poorest Chicago communities — and again and again, these initiatives have not worked to improve public safety.

During her remarks, the Mayor called on the Cook County Chief Judge Timothy Evans to place a moratorium on house arrest with electronic monitoring (EM) for people facing a number of charges. This would lead to hundreds more Chicagoans being incarcerated in the jail pretrial. This proposal is unconstitutional and intentionally ignores that people awaiting trial are presumed innocent, regardless of the accusations they face. In a 1984 Supreme Court ruling, Justice William Rehnquist wrote: “In our society, liberty is the norm, and detention prior to trial or without trial is the carefully limited exception.”

Pretrial jailing is meant to be a last resort to protect public safety and not used to punish people based only on what the police allege they have done. 

In every instance where a person is released pretrial, whether they are on EM or not, a judge has made an individualized determination that they are safe to rejoin the community. Still, the Mayor claims that pretrial house arrest “defies common sense…is not safe, and…must be stopped immediately,” stating: “we have taken stock, analyzed the data and will be making the necessary changes going into the new year.” Unfortunately, the “data” Chicago’s Mayor cited throughout her speech to support her theory is simply nonexistent. As the Chicago Sun-Times outlines, Mayor Lightfoot made several false claims throughout Monday’s press conference. The Mayor touted a 48% murder solve rate in the City, but according the Chicago’s data portal, there were only 169 arrests make for over 770 homicides in 2020 — a 22% clearance rate. The Mayor also claimed that “‘almost 3,400…violent, dangerous criminals” are currently on pretrial electronic monitoring, up from “around 1,200” before COVID-19, when in reality “as of Monday, the Sheriff’s Office had 2,706” people on EM, “up from 2,417 before the pandemic.”

Even more unfortunate is that Mayor Lightfoot knows that the allegation that pretrial release (with or without electronic monitoring) drives violence is simply false. In July 2019, emails from the Mayor’s staff revealed they were aware no correlation between electronic monitoring and gun violence existed, but they continued to push the lie anyway. In September, Chicago Appleseed and the Chicago Council of Lawyers released a report cataloging facts about the Cook County Sheriff’s pretrial electronic monitoring program and found that most people on EM, over 75%, are facing non-violent or low-level allegations. We also found — contrary to the Mayor’s statements — that between 2016 and 2020, over 90% of the 18,229 people in Chicago who spent some period of time on EM through the Sheriff’s Office were not rearrested. According to Chief Judge Evans, 99.8% of people accused of felonies “released on bail do not receive charges of new gun-related violent crime while their cases are pending.” A very well-publicized report from Loyola University Chicago found that bail reform “increased the number of people released pretrial and was not associated with any significant change in new criminal activity, violent or otherwise, and was not associated with any change in the amount of crime in Chicago after 2017.” 

Mayor Lightfoot’s narratives about pretrial justice reform are false and dangerous. Pretrial jailing increases instability, joblessness, housing insecurity, and violence in our communities. Real community safety comes from prioritizing our schools, public health, job training, and other essential services for our communities — not arrest, punishment, and incarceration. 

The Mayor is doing a disservice to Chicagoans by continuing to push false narratives instead of approaches that center real safety.