* Following a CBS 2 report that basically just took everything Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart told them as gospel (it’s really quite something, so click here), I reached out to the Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice for a response…

Sheriff Dart Lies Again About Pretrial Fairness Act Electronic Monitoring Provisions

We are incredibly disappointed and angry to see Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart once again exploiting community safety concerns to spread misinformation about the electronic monitoring provisions of the Pretrial Fairness Act.

The Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice continues to keep Bethany Magee and her family in our hearts as she works to recover and heal. But we cannot remain silent as the Sheriff continues to weaponize the harm Bethany and her family experienced to achieve his policy goals of incarcerating people who are presumed innocent while they await trial.

It is incredibly irresponsible and self-serving to utilize isolated incidents to change the law governing tens of thousands of people’s rights while awaiting trial—all while ignoring data that shows the vast majority of people on electronic monitoring return to court and are not rearrested while awaiting trial. These cynical attempts to blame pretrial reforms are only a distraction from effective evidence-based efforts to reduce violence.

The Pretrial Fairness Act requires that people subject to house arrest under electronic monitoring be given permission to leave their homes to take care of basic needs such as buying food and doing laundry. Each electronic monitoring program in the state can choose how to implement that requirement. The Cook County Sheriff’s Office chose to implement this law by creating a default schedule that allows each person two, eight-hour periods of time per week to take care of their essential needs. Judges must order that movement and can choose to order different and shorter or longer periods of movement for essential activities.

There is nothing in Illinois law requiring the Sheriff to stop tracking individuals during this time, a fallacy that Sheriff Dart has repeated for years, most recently in a CBS Chicago interview. In the past, he has told this lie at a county budget address and during a radio interview. We documented his long history of spreading misinformation in our recent report, Obscuring the Truth: How Misinformation is Skewing the Conversation about Pretrial Justice.

For years, the Cook County Sheriff’s Office created a human rights crisis by denying people on electronic monitoring the ability to contribute to their households, perform life-affirming tasks, and even access healthcare. The electronic monitoring reforms in the Pretrial Fairness Act are intentionally designed to correct that history. Even now, current Sheriff’s Office policy prevents people in apartment buildings from doing laundry or checking their mail in common areas of the building without the kind of movement permission the Sheriff is once again attacking.

Since taking effect in 2022, the electronic monitoring provisions of the Pretrial Fairness Act have been incredibly successful. Ensuring people on electronic monitoring are able to go grocery shopping, attend doctor’s appointments, pick their children up from school, and apply for jobs increases community safety. Removing these provisions would violate basic human rights principles by returning to a system that locked people in their homes with no way to access food or other necessities—and made them less likely to succeed.

Facts on Pretrial Fairness Act’s Electronic Monitoring Provisions

• Nothing in the Pretrial Fairness Act or any other law requires the Cook County Sheriff’s Office not to track people during the time they are on essential movement. Every person on Sheriff’s EM is on a GPS ankle monitor, and those GPS monitors continue to record people’s exact location the entire time they are outside of their home. You can read the provision of the Pretrial Fairness Act that authorizes essential movement at 730 ILCS 5/5-8A-4(A-1).

• Before these reforms were implemented, the lack of movement caused immense harm to people on Cook County Sheriff’s electronic monitoring, as detailed in a report submitted to the Cook County board by CGL Industries and Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts. (See page 47 here for discussion of harms of lack of movement.) The trauma that young people suffered while on Sheriff’s Dart’s EM program was unnecessarily cruel and ineffective, and had real life effects such as the ones described here.

• Between January 2016 and June 2020, 91% of people on electronic monitoring in Chicago were not re-arrested for any crime. Only 1.75% of people were re-arrested for a serious felony (Class 2 or higher).

Again, click here to see Sheriff Dart’s comments.

Thoughts?