The Illinois Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that a section of the newly enacted SAFE-T Act that eliminated cash bail in the state was legal under the state’s constitution.
Chief Justice Mary Jane Theis, writing for the majority, stated:
The Illinois Constitution of 1970 does not mandate that monetary bail is the only means to ensure criminal defendants appear for trials or the only means to protect the public. Our constitution creates a balance between the individual rights of defendants and the individual rights of crime victims. The Act’s pretrial release provisions set forth procedures commensurate with that balance.
Justice Mary O’Brien concurred, arguing that the court should have ruled that the plaintiffs did not have standing, as they did not sufficiently prove injury as a result of the law. And Justice David Overstreet dissented, writing:
The people of Illinois exercised their ultimate sovereign power in 2014 when they vested crime victims with constitutionally protected rights. They did so by amending the bill of rights in our state constitution, setting out specific enumerated rights to be enjoyed by all crime victims in this state. Those enumerated rights include the explicitly defined right to have their safety and the safety of their families considered by the courts in “denying or fixing the amount of bail.”
The Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives Emanuel Welch celebrated the ruling, saying, “Today, the Supreme Court upheld our smart on crime approach. They agree that violent offenders should not be able to buy their way out of jail, while non-violent offenders are detained.” The Kankakee County State’s Attorney Jim Rowe, one of the plaintiffs who challenged the law, shared his disappointment with the ruling, saying, “While this ruling is disappointing and the Act terribly detrimental to public safety, we must abide by the decision and will continue to do our best to serve the people of Kankakee County.”
The SAFE-T Act was originally passed in 2021. It ended cash bail while still allowing for the denial of pretrial release in exigent circumstances. The act also made it misconduct for police to lie or turn off body cameras, banned chokeholds by police and standardized the reporting process for the police to report when someone dies in custody. However, a lower court struck down the portion of the act ending cash bail as unconstitutional in 2022, mere hours before the law was set to come into effect. The Illinois Supreme Court’s Tuesday ruling overturned the lower court ruling, meaning the law will go into effect immediately.
Cash bail has been a topic of controversy in the US for some time. Pre-trial incarceration has increased significantly since 1970 according to experts. However, data has shown that pre-trial incarceration has not only not decreased crime rates but may in some cases increase them. A study from the University of Chicago Law School found that cash bail is associated with a six to nine percent increase in recidivism. These concerns are compounded by racial inequities within traditional cash bail systems. The US Commission on Civil Rights found that Black and Latinx individuals are more likely to be detained pre-trial and be charged higher bail. The same study found that 60 percent of defendants are detained pre-trial, mainly due to the inability to pay exorbitant bail amounts. The study also concluded that those who are detained pretrial are more likely to face issues such as housing insecurity and unemployment.
