(The Center Square) – Loyola University of Chicago Center for Criminal Justice Professor David Olson said he’s not surprised that after a year of being on the books the Pretrial Fairness Act leading to the elimination of the cash bail system hasn’t come close to leading to the rise in crime many critics feared it would.
“We did research before the law went into effect and found out that most of the people that were eligible for detention were being released pre-trial,” Olson told The Center Square. “Before the law, they were posting money to be released and after the law, they’re not being required to. The overall number of people locked up hasn’t changed that much, and if the number of people locked up hasn’t changed that much we wouldn’t expect crime to really change that much.”
Since the bill officially became law of the land, authorities report both violent and property crimes across the state are down. In further arguing that the law has had its intended effect, Olson points out that detention court hearings are now noticeably longer with judges making use of the added time by more thoroughly explaining the decisions that are leading to less jail time.
“It’s a much more deliberative process,” he added. “They’re covering a lot more information and evidence about the case. I think any time you’re going to take away somebody’s freedom you want to make that decision very deliberately.”
Olson said he’s even convinced many of the laws biggest critics would now have to admit it’s come nowhere near being the scrounge they predicted it would be.
“I think that some people thought that it was going to be extremely difficult to detain people that were a threat to public safety,” he said. “The research that we found is that the people that are being detained are the ones that are charged with more serious crimes. Prosecutors are seeking detention in the cases that they think it’s appropriate and in most instances the judge is granting detention.”
Over the last 12 months and of the nearly 9,000 detention-eligible cases across the state that were studied, researchers found 36% of defendants were detained and in more than two out of every five of those cases (43%) prosecutors never sought such action.
