The McHenry County state’s attorney called the SAFE-T Act, which ended cash bail in Illinois, an “abject failure” and released data showing a 280% increase in defendants failing to appear in court.
McHenry County State’s Attorney Patrick Kenneally said in a statement that the SAFE-T Act “has been an abject failure” in McHenry County.
“Not only has it failed to deliver on what its proponents promised, the court system has experienced the exact problems predicted by critics,” Kenneally said.
“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),” he said.
The state’s attorney’s office said data showed a 30% increase in crime by those on pre-trial release compared with those on cash bail, an increase in jail population, a 280% increase in failures to appear in court and 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,” Kenneally said.
The state’s attorney said that between March 17, 2023, and September 17, 2023, the court issued 1,055 failure-to-appear warrants and 1,433 failure-to-appear summonses.
Between September 18, 2023, and March 18, 2024, the court issued 616 failure-to-appear warrants and 8,845 failure-to-appear summons.
“This dramatic increase is a significant cost to the court system. Not only has the court expended resources needlessly gathering and preparing for the court appearances of no-show defendants, it must also expend resources finding the defendant, notifying them of the failure to appear, and (in some cases) detaining them,” Kenneally said.
Following Kenneally’s comments, the Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice issued a statement calling his remarks “misleading” but “unsurprising.”
The Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice said the 30% increase in crime statistic from Kenneally is “misleading” because he used percentages instead of actual figures.
“Kenneally’s claim that the jail population has increased suffers from the same defect, because the rise is minimal– just 12 people, representing an increase of 5.5%,” the organization said.
The Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice said a 280% increase in failures to appear in court “sounds alarming — if it were true.”
“In reality, Failure to Appear Warrants have actually decreased by 42% in McHenry County, dropping from 1,055 to 616. Warrants can be issued when the judge decides it is necessary to bring someone into court because they will not return voluntarily. Instead of acknowledging this significant reduction in FTA warrants, Kenneally attempts to conflate two different things: warrants and summonses,” the Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice said.
Kenneally said he believes the problem with the SAFE-T Act, which he said was written by public defenders and advocates for criminals, is that it denies judges 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,” Kenneally said.
The Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice said the SAFE-T Act represents a shift towards a “more just and equitable pretrial system, one that no longer ties freedom to financial status.”
Kenneally argued the passage of the SAFE-T Act was based on the “lie that cash bail regularly resulted in the unjust incarceration of those without the means to pay.”
The state’s attorney said that was not true in McHenry County, where 97% of those charged with crimes had been released pre-trial.
“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,” Kenneally said.