NEW REPORT: $tate of Injustice – Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice Statewide Bond Court-Watching
The Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice (INPJ) has released its report, $tate of Injustice: A Community Review of Bond Courts in Illinois, a statewide court-watching project aimed to document the human cost of the current money bond system in Illinois and demonstrate the necessity of the Pretrial Fairness Act.
The Pretrial Fairness Act, which will abolish the money bond system in Illinois, was adopted in February 2021 with the passage of the SAFE-T Act (Public Act 101-0652) and will take effect starting in January of 2023. In order to understand how the state’s bond courts function before the implementation of the Pretrial Fairness Act, the Network observed bond court in seven courthouses around the state (Champaign, DuPage, Kane, McLean, Peoria, Sangamon, and Winnebago Counties) from June and September of 2022.
The sites for court-watching were selected based on the locations where INPJ member organizations could recruit court-watching volunteers. The recruiting organizations include the ACLU of Champaign County, Champaign County Bailout Coalition, Faith Coalition for the Common Good (Sangamon County), Rockford Urban Ministries (Winnebago County), Black Lives Matter Bloomington-Normal (McLean County), and The People’s Lobby (DuPage and Kane Counties). Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts helped train court-watchers and oversaw the data collection and analyses for the report.
In total, 56 court-watchers observed 1,026 cases where a bond was discussed: 208 cases in Champaign County on 15 days; 125 cases in DuPage County on 13 days; 138 cases in Kane County on 15 days; 209 cases in McLean County on 20 days; 20 cases in Peoria County on 3 days; 89 cases in Sangamon County on 9 days; and 244 cases in Winnebago County on 13 days.
Our findings make clear that criminal courts are intimidating environments where efficiency and procedure are prioritized over wellbeing and that people in bond court fight desperately for their freedom while struggling to convey their humanity to a system that is often indifferent to their suffering.
Every week in Illinois—and at bond hearings across the country—you can expect to find mostly White court actors – judges, state’s attorneys, and defense lawyers – preparing for another day of bond court while mostly Black, Brown, and poor people in handcuffs are shuffled toward the front of the courtroom (or appear via video conference while still in jail) to have their freedom adjudicated.
Despite the demonstrated harms caused by the money bond system, certain legislators and special interest groups have fought to perpetuate these injustices by threatening the proper implementation of the Pretrial Fairness Act. Click here to tell your legislator and Governor Pritzker to see the Pretrial Fairness Act through proper implementation.
You can read the full report and the fact sheet here.