VICTORY: Illinois Just Passed the Pretrial Fairness Act and Ended Money Bail

Collaboration for Justice

After years of advocacy by the Coalition to End Money Bond – including Chicago Appleseed and the Chicago Council of Lawyers – and thousands of other organizers across the state, the Illinois Legislature just became the first in the nation to abolish money bail by passing HB 3653 SFA2. Once Governor Pritzker signs the bill into law, this victory will do more than end wealth-based incarceration – it will create a fairer pretrial system overall.

HB 3653, sponsored by Senator Elgie Sims, Senator Robert Peters, and Representative Justin Slaughter was part of a sweeping criminal justice reform package presented by the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus; the Pretrial Fairness Act (HB 3653 SFA2) is a piece of that legislation. Among the many provisions in the 764 page bill, in addition to abolishing cash bond, the law will:

  1. Create a Statewide System of Pretrial Data Collection: The Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts will convene a Pretrial Practices Data Oversight Board to “oversee the collection and analysis of data regarding pretrial practices in circuit court systems.”
  2. Establish a Domestic Violence Pretrial Practices Working Group: The group will ensure that people most impacted by interpersonal violence will help guide implementation, and will include “Domestic Violence victims’ advocates, formerly incarcerated victims of violence, legal practitioners, and other entities that possess knowledge of evidence-based practices surrounding domestic violence and current pretrial practices in Illinois.”
  3. Allow for Citations in lieu of Arrests: Law enforcement officials will now have the ability to issue citations in lieu of arrest for people accused of “traffic and Class B and C criminal misdemeanor offenses, or of petty and business offenses, who pose no obvious threat to the community or any person, or who have no obvious medical or mental health issues that pose a risk to their own safety.”
  4. Gives People Arrested Access to a Phone within Three Hours of Arrest – No Exceptions: Anyone arrested in Illinois now has a right to access and use a telephone (via land line or cell) to make three phone calls within three hours of arrest, no matter what, with the only exception being when someone is unconscious or otherwise incapacitated. People will also have the right to retrieve phone numbers from their cellphone, prior to the phone being confiscated by police. If the jurisdiction has a court-appointed public defender or other attorney available to represent arrested people, the police are mandated also to provide that information.

This piece of legislation is monumental in terms of reforming the Illinois criminal justice system, improving various aspects of our pretrial process, and ending money bail – and includes numerous other exciting provisions not all possibly listed here. Check back with us in the next few weeks as we wait for the Governor to sign the bill and for implementation to begin.

It is presumed that a defendant is entitled to release on personal recognizance on the condition that the defendant attend all required court proceedings and the defendant does not commit any criminal offense, and complies with all terms of pretrial release…

Detention only shall be imposed when it is determined that the defendant poses a specific, real and present threat to a person, or has a high likelihood of willful flight.

ILLINOIS HOUSE BILL 3653, SECTION 110-2: PARTS (A) THROUGH (C)