{"id":2671,"date":"2018-03-01T16:34:26","date_gmt":"2018-03-01T16:34:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chicagocouncil.org\/?p=2671"},"modified":"2018-03-01T16:34:26","modified_gmt":"2018-03-01T16:34:26","slug":"letter-to-the-chicago-daily-law-bulletin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chicagocouncil.org\/staging\/1601\/letter-to-the-chicago-daily-law-bulletin\/","title":{"rendered":"Letter to the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin: We won\u2019t know if bail reform is working until the public has the necessary data"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>This op-ed appeared in the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin on March 1, 2018.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Last summer, Cook County Circuit Court Chief Judge Timothy Evans\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.chicagoappleseed.org\/chief-judge-order-on-monetary-bond\/\">issued an order<\/a>\u00a0directing judges to set monetary bonds only in amounts that people can pay. The order was designed to bring judicial practice in line with state law and constitutional requirements. \u00a0By December, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chicagotribune.com\/news\/local\/breaking\/ct-met-cook-county-jail-under-6000-inmates-20171221-story.html\">the number of people in Cook County Jail dropped below 6,000<\/a> for the first time since 1989.\u00a0 This saves substantial money, as it costs $126 per person per day to jail a defendant. Since the new order took effect, the use of monetary bonds has decreased by half, and more people who have not been convicted of any crime are being released pretrial.<\/p>\n<p>This progress is cause for celebration, but beyond the most basic information about the number of people in jail, it remains difficult to evaluate the impact of Evans\u2019 order and other reforms. Cook County simply <a href=\"https:\/\/www.civicfed.org\/PublicSafety2017Release\">doesn\u2019t have sufficient publicly available data<\/a> to assess the effects and benefits of bond reform.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>This lack of data drove the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chicagoappleseed.org\/coalition-to-end-money-bond\/\">Coalition to End Money Bond<\/a>, a collection of community-based and policy organizations including Chicago Appleseed and Chicago Council of Lawyers, to train more than 100 volunteers to observe bond court last summer. These community members devoted hundreds of hours to watching thousands of bond court hearings. This week, they released <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chicagoappleseed.org\/courtwatchingreport2018\/\">a comprehensive report<\/a> on their observations and analysis. This community effort has produced the most robust publicly-available dataset about bail and jail in Cook County.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The report shows a decrease in the use of money bond, but reveals the need for further reform and additional information. Among its findings are that the rate personal recognizance bonds increased from 25% to 51% after the order was issued, and the rate of money bonds decreased from 48% to 23%. \u00a0Still, nearly half of all the money bonds issued were unaffordable \u2013 and therefore unconstitutional. \u00a0Even more disturbing, bond court decisions varied extremely widely between individual judges.\u00a0 Two out of six bond court judges largely ignored the Chief Judge\u2019s order.\u00a0 The report thus demonstrates that while considerable strides have been made in ensuring defendants are not put in the Cook County Jail simply as a consequence of poverty, there is much progress yet to be made.<\/p>\n<p>Furthermore, since the initial jail population decrease in December, the number of people in Cook County Jail has actually risen and remained steady at around 6,100 for the last two months. There is no explanation for this plateau, especially when approximately 3,000 people are still incarcerated only because they cannot afford to pay a bond.<\/p>\n<p>We need answers to a number of questions:\u00a0 Why is anyone still in jail for inability to pay a bond?\u00a0 What charges are these people detained for, and what are their risk scores and criminal histories?\u00a0 For various categories of charges, what amounts of money bond are being set compared to the amounts defendants are able to afford? Of those released without bond, what percentage fail to appear for court dates, and what percentage commit new crimes?\u00a0 What are the comparable statistics for those released on money bond?\u00a0 For those on electronic monitoring?<\/p>\n<p>Evaluating what is happening in our criminal justice system shouldn\u2019t be this hard. \u00a0It shouldn\u2019t be up to community volunteers. \u00a0Cook County residents deserve increased transparency regarding bail practices and the jail population to evaluate if reform efforts are working. Chicago Appleseed and Chicago Council of Lawyers join the Civic Federation in calling for open data on pretrial practices that will allow us to effectively chart our path forward.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>David Baltmanis,<\/p>\n<p>Chicago Council of Lawyers<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Alexandra Block,<\/p>\n<p>Co-chair, Criminal Justice Committee of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chicagoappleseed.org\">Chicago Appleseed<\/a> and the Chicago Council of Lawyers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This op-ed appeared in the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin on  [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[45,46,47,48],"class_list":["post-2671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-press-and-media-coverage","tag-bail-reform","tag-bond-court","tag-chicago-daily-law-bulletin","tag-coalition-to-end-money-bond"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - 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