(McHenry County): The SAFE-T Act in McHenry County (IL) has been an abject failure. Not only has it failed to deliver on what its proponents promised, the court system has experienced the exact problems predicted by critics.
Despite this, proponents continue to obfuscate behind “lack of data,” “reduced costs to criminal defendants” (no mention is made of the increased cost to non-criminal taxpayers), and “no major increase in crime generally” (a mostly irrelevant factor in evaluating the SAFE-T Act).
In McHenry County, however, the numbers are in. After the implementation of the SAFE-T Act, McHenry County has experienced:
– A 30% Increase in Crime by Those on Pre-Trial Release Compared With Those on Cash Bail.
– An Increase in the Jail Population.
– A 280% Increase in Failures to Appear (FTA).
– A 35% Reduction in Restitution Paid to Crime Victims.
How is it possible for the jail population to increase along with the number of crimes being committed by those on pretrial release? Simply put, we are incarcerating the wrong people.
The SAFE-T Act was passed based on the repetition of the lie that cash bail regularly resulted in the unjust incarceration of those without the means to pay.
That was never true in McHenry County. Rather, prior to the SAFE-T Act, 97% of those charged with crimes had been released pretrial. This incredibly high release rate occurred under the entirely reasonable cash bail system that required judges to take into consideration the ability of a defendant to pay when setting bail. Accordingly, different bail amounts were set for different defendants, all based on their financial means. Low-risk defendants who could not afford any bail, were routinely released on their own recognizance.
The problem with the SAFE-T Act, written by public defenders and advocates for criminals, is that it denies county judges, elected by the communities affected by the alleged crimes, the discretion to detain defendants charged with most crimes, no matter how high-risk. Rather, in most cases, a judge has no discretion and must release the defendant.
One need not be a professor of criminology to understand that mandating judges in all circumstances to release high-risk defendants pretrial is a misguided and unreasonable policy. A policy that proceeded from the ideology of a privileged group of advocates who dictate criminal justice legislation in Illinois overcoming common sense.