Kane County Sheriff Ron Hain
ST. CHARLES, ILLINOIS - The sheriff of one of Illinois' largest counties says controversial criminal justice reforms, which supporters said were needed to reduce the number of people - and particularly, black and Latino people - in Illinois county jails as they await trial has produced the opposite result.
The reason, said Kane County Sheriff Ron Hain said, is because the county is jailing more people for repeatedly skipping mandatory court dates as they await trial, under Illinois' new more lenient system installed after Illinois controversially eliminated cash bail.
This week, Kane County Sheriff Ron Hain released a statement concerning the county’s jail population and budget issues in Kane County, as the county in Chicago's western suburbs continues to adjust to the new reality created by the adoption of the state's so-called Pre-Trial Fairness Act.
The law was enacted as part of the criminal justice reform package commonly known as the SAFE-T Act, a controversial series of laws rammed through, often over the objections of most of the state's law enforcement community, by Illinois' Democratic governing supermajority and Gov. JB Pritzker in the months following the riots and other societal unrest following the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in 2020.
The Pre-Trial Fairness Act specifically was the vehicle used by progressives and championed by racial justice activists to eliminate cash bail in Illinois and switch to a system in which most defendants charged with felonies are simply released back into the community as they await trial, rather than being forced to show why they shouldn't be made to post bond to remain free during the months and years that may fall between their arrest and their trial and possible conviction and sentencing.
Among the controversial measures, the reform law replaced the traditional arraignment and bail bond system with a system under which judges are required to issue "notice to appear" postcards to those charged with crimes that the law says aren't dangerous enough to warrant holding them in jail, or that a judge determines don't pose enough of a threat to public safety to keep in custody until their trial.
The postcards include instructions directing the defendant to appear in court at a future date and time. If defendants ignore the notice to appear, judges can issue formal summons to the defendants to appear within 48 hours or face arrest. If they appear within 48 hours, the initial failure to appear is wiped away and cannot be used by prosecutors to argue that the defendant is defiant or a flight risk.
Illinois Democrats, notably including Gov. Pritzker and outgoing Cook County Chief Judge Tim Evans, have crowed about the supposed success of the reforms, asserting Illinois is now both safer and fairer because of the reforms.
They assert failure to appear rates have actually declined under the new system.
Other government officials, however, have said real-world data has increasingly told a different story.
In his latest statement, Hain, who is also a Democrat, said the law's effects, as measured by the number of inmates in custody at the Kane County Jail, have resulted in an outcome different than the law's architects and supporters had likely desired.
Since 2022, Hain said, the Kane County Jail population has increased significantly, rising from 229 per day to 401 today.
And the reason, Hain said, is not necessarily tied to an increase in crime, but rather to the behavior of those charged with crimes amid the reformed pre-trial rules.
"Most of the uptick is caused by people simply not appearing in court under the new parameters and having failure to appear warrants issued for them," Hain said.
Further, Hain said the majority of those jailed continue to be people who are black or Latino.
Hain said, if anything, the pre-trial legal reforms have undone much of the progress Hain said his administration had accomplished at reducing the county's jail population from 2018-2022.
In his statement, Hain said his office had implemented "innovative programming," including "vocational training, substance abuse treatment, and job placement," along with greater cooperation with prosecutors and judges, to "reduce the jail population, recidivism and local crime.
According to Hain, the jail population fell from more than 550 per day in 2018 to 229 per day at the end of 2022. And recidivism - meaning, the rate at which people who are jailed go on to commit more crimes and reenter the criminal justice system - fell from 49% to 18% during that time.
Hain said the increase in the jail population that has come since the enactment of the SAFE-T Act and Pre-Trial Fairness Act in 2023 has placed a "dramatic impact" on Kane County's budget "at a time when Kane County is already facing financial concerns."
"Many legislators continue to get their intent wrong just by reading headlines and taking action without consulting those that do the job on a daily basis," Hain said in the statement.
Hain's report comes as the latest data point and public claim by government officials running contrary to the narrative pushed by Pritzker and other prominent Democrats in Chicago and elsewhere concerning the effectiveness of the criminal justice reforms.
A year ago, for instance, then-outgoing Cook County Circuit Court Clerk Iris Martinez wrote a letter to Evans and other prominent Cook County Democratic leaders, warning government agencies were significantly undercounting the number of criminal defendants simply skipping court.
In that letter, Martinez warned that as many as three-quarters of all criminal defendants in Cook County may have failed to appear at required court hearings in the 12 months following the enactment of the Pre-Trial Fairness Act.
And at about the same time, outgoing McHenry County State's Attorney Patrick Kenneally in Chicago's northwest suburbs similarly warned that the reforms had resulted in a 30% increase in crime by those on pre-trial release, a 280% increase in failures to appear, and an increase in the county's jail population.
Kenneally said the numbers showed the reforms have been an “abject failure.”
At the time, supporters of the reforms had claimed Kenneally and Martinez were misunderstanding the new system and improperly inflating the numbers to exaggerate the problem.
Kane County ranks as Illinois' fifth largest county, with a population of more than 516,000 residents, as recorded in the 2020 U.S. Census.
