(The Center Square) – Cook County officials are taking another step in reform efforts which they say led to the elimination of cash bond in Illinois.
County government leaders unveiled a new criminal justice dashboard with data from 2018 to the present on crime, arrests, criminal case filings and dispositions, sentences, jail populations, probation populations, and prison and parole populations.
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle said the county began working on the project with the MacArthur Foundation more than a decade ago, when the Cook County Jail had more than 10,000 inmates.
Preckwinkle said African Americans comprised more than 70% of the jail population but only 24% of the county’s general population at the time.
“Together we developed a range of strategies to reduce the jail population and tackle the racial disparities in our system,” Preckwinkle said.
Preckwinkle credited those strategies to provisions in the SAFE-T Act, which eliminated cash bail in Illinois.
“That progress laid the foundation for Cook County’s bond reform and the implementation of the Pretrial Fairness Act. I think it’s fair to say the good work we did in Cook County laid the foundation for a PFA,” Preckwinkle said.
The Pretrial Fairness Act was part of the SAFE-T Act, which passed during the Illinois General Assembly’s lame-duck session in January of 2021 and took effect in September of 2023.
Timothy Evans, chief judge of the Circuit Court of Cook County, said he believes the rest of the country will follow the lead of Illinois and Cook County by eliminating cash bail.
“I know that this is just the start of this dashboard process and we would expect that data will be updated. My office will continue to cooperate in every possible way,” Evans said.
Citing cases of alleged killers being allowed to walk freely before trial, Republican lawmakers around the state have repeatedly called for the SAFE-T Act’s repeal.
Earlier this month, state Rep. Patrick Sheehan, R-Homer Glen, pointed to a case where a Homer Glen couple is charged with the murder of their 2-year-old girl. After making a court appearance, the couple was released before trial under conditions of the SAFE-T Act.
Gianno Caldwell founded the Caldwell Institute of Public Safety after his brother was murdered in Chicago on June 24, 2022.
“The SAFE-T Act has been an absolute disaster, the creation of it, ending cash bail, recognizing that we have individuals who should be in jail and not released, and that’s the truth of it,” Caldwell told The Center Square.
Caldwell said Cook County’s criminal justice reform only provided justice for the criminal. His book, “The Day My Brother Was Murdered” was released this week.
Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke, who was elected last year and took office Dec. 1, 2024, said she hopes the criminal justice dashboard builds trust.
“It will help residents see in a concrete way where the system works, and at times where it doesn’t,” O’Neill Burke said.
Several county officials discussed the importance of transparency and accountability, but Caldwell said many municipalities don’t report their data.
“You can play with the numbers. You can manipulate the numbers. You can make the numbers say almost any particular picture you want if you’re not actually registering crimes,” Caldwell explained.
Caldwell said studies proved that many Chicago residents don’t report criminal acts, thanks in part to a lack of police resources.
Cook County dashboard data is updated quarterly and covers the period from 2018 to the present.
The Illinois Uniform Crime Reporting (I-UCR) Program serves as the state repository for the collection of crime statistics. Before 2023, ISP published the Annual Uniform Crime Report which documented reported crimes in the state.
Law enforcement agencies are required by state law to submit monthly and annual crime reports to Illinois’ UCR program. Of the over 1,000 law enforcement agencies in Illinois, 767 agencies reported 2024 statistics as compared to the 641 agencies who reported 2023 statistics.
In January, the Illinois Department of Public Health launched a new dashboard with information about violent deaths and firearm injury rates.
Greg Bishop and Kevin Bessler contributed to this story.
