The Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice (INPJ) protested today in Dupage and Will Counties outside of the local state’s attorneys’ offices calling the state’s attorneys’ SAFE-T Act trailer bill (SB4228) unconstitutional and a violation of people’s rights. The group penned an open letter signed by more than 120 organizations calling on the Illinois General Assembly to protect the Pretrial Fairness provisions of the SAFE-T Act and oppose the State’s Attorneys proposal for gutting this historic legislation.
“It is absolutely essential that any future amendments to the Pretrial Fairness Act are made in the same spirit in which it was written.” said Katrina Baugh of The People’s Lobby. “Using this historic legislation as a vehicle for incarcerating more Black and brown people would be a slap in the face to the communities that have suffered under the injustices of the money bond system for decades.”
“The State’s Attorneys Association has not productively engaged in implementation conversations to ensure the safe and effective implementation of the Pretrial Fairness Act,” said Reverend Marilyn Pagán-Banks of A Just Harvest. “Following the lead of right-wing operatives like Dan Proft, Jeanne Ives, and Dick Uihlein who’ve funded racist misinformation campaigns, the State’s Attorneys Association is exploiting this moment immediately before an election and attempting to use SB4228 to increase their power to jail vulnerable Illinoisans.”
The result of the State’s Attorneys Association’s political machinations is power-grab that would make the criminal legal system worse, not better.
“SB4228 is unconstitutional because it creates a presumption of detention in some cases, requiring the accused person to prove they deserve pretrial release,” said Em Gonzalez of Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice. “The Illinois Constitution grants a presumption of release to legally innocent people, and requires that the prosecution prove jailing a person pretrial is necessary and that that burden not be placed on a legally innocent person.”
Protestors also pointed out that SB4288 extends the timeframe a person must be brought to trial to 120 days from 90 days, making the right to a speedy trial even further out of reach and prolonging pretrial incarceration.
Worse still, that SB4228 would allow prosecutors to use evidence in their arguments for detention that would not have to be shared with the defense prior to a hearing. This would mean that accused people would have no way to challenge the evidence being used against them.
“The Constitution protects the presumption of innocence,” said David Cannon of West Suburban DSA. “Now these prosecutors don’t even want people to be able to properly defend themselves. It’s outrageous.”
If passed, the state’s attorneys’ bill would cause the number of people jailed while awaiting trial to skyrocket and exacerbate racial disparities in Illinois jails–the exact opposite of what the Pretrial Fairness Act was intended to achieve. Meanwhile, state’s attorneys representing counties that make up 50% of Illinois’ population support the Pretrial Fairness Act, and State’s Attorneys representing 60% of Illinois’ population support eliminating money bond. By contrast, many of the State’s Attorneys leading opposition to the Pretrial Fairness Act represent counties where Black residents make up at most 14% of the population, but up to half of the people admitted to their jails. Specifically:
“Illinois is currently jailing thousands of people simply because they’re too poor to pay a bond, not because they pose a danger to anyone,” said James Baugh, a resident of DuPage County. “While the current system limits who can be denied bond, SB4228 would allow prosecutors to ask that anyone be jailed indefinitely, far beyond the authority they had prior to the passage of the SAFE-T Act. We must protect the Pretrial Fairness Act”
The Chatham event was the focus of Madonia’s AM Springfield show this morning. Naturally the usual crew of Law and Order repressed downstate white males called in to express their outrage about the uncivil way the meeting was disrupted.
Many of those same callers have been defending the January 6th events as being not that big a deal so there’s that.
Comment by Give Me A Break Thursday, Oct 20, 22 @ 12:06 pm
Typical entitled liberal response to any opposing view. No desire to have a rational, civil discussion, just scream at the top of your lungs and don’t let the event proceed.
Comment by Captain Obvious Thursday, Oct 20, 22 @ 12:23 pm
–extends the timeframe a person must be brought to trial to 120 days from 90 days–
The SA’s seem intent to make the situation even worse than it was before. But what’s the motivation? Is it really nothing more than career avarice?
Glasgow, for example, loves to brag about a local program he runs to rehabilitate people. The local patch editor ran a fluff piece on this just the other day. In the piece it is glossed over the only way to get into this program is to enter a guilty plea. With a longer timeframe of incarceration prior to trial, as the 120 extension would provide to the SAs, that only increases the pressure of those detained prior to trial to take such an option just to be released, even if they are innocent.
There was little if any analysis in the story of the effectiveness of the program from a data standpoint. There was no mention at all if the participants were still in custody when they took the agreement.
I have tried hard to see this from the point of view of the SAs who are most vocal, but all I have been able to see is they will lose some of the machinations that benefit their ‘metrics’ for convictions and monies collected. Looking at their current behavior in this year makes me doubt even more this has anything at all to do with public safety.
Comment by TheInvisibleMan Thursday, Oct 20, 22 @ 12:33 pm
Is the full text for SB4228 online somewhere? I did the usual searching but the only thing that comes up with that number seems to be totally unrelated.
Comment by The Velvet Frog Thursday, Oct 20, 22 @ 12:40 pm
Captain, if they were smearing bodily fluids and kicking feet up on desks after breaking and entering, would that make it a more palatable form of political discourse to you?
To the story: I hope we see further protests like these. That trailer bill is a joke.
Comment by Fixer Thursday, Oct 20, 22 @ 12:45 pm
“admitted to the county jail.”
I think they could find a stronger word.
Comment by Michelle Flaherty Thursday, Oct 20, 22 @ 12:48 pm
I can’t tell if Captain Obvious is serious or joking.
Comment by The Velvet Frog Thursday, Oct 20, 22 @ 12:49 pm
===Typical entitled liberal response to any opposing view.===
… and yet the school board meetings by hate groups where the protesters are likely not from the town exist, and you’ve not commented on those. Why is that? Political bias?
===No desire to have a rational, civil discussion, just scream at the top of your lungs and don’t let the event proceed.===
I dunno how much you are following the intimidation used by the Cult types, if you were you’d likely stop with the liberal aspect.
You’d also think pre-trial confinement would be something you’d be against, innocent until proven guilty, but the opportunity for bail is still up to the discretion of judges and SAs
Comment by Oswego Willy Thursday, Oct 20, 22 @ 12:52 pm
Mel… I mean @The Velvet Frog.
I was able to find the trailer bill at the link below. Note it is not an official legislative bill. It is a document written up by a group of SAs that has not yet been introduced as a bill from what I can see. Perhaps the ilga site is slow to update though.
https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/news-gazette.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/a8/1a8cef22-2d1c-5838-84aa-f8f93a42aab1/6333bfbec6bca.pdf.pdf
Comment by TheInvisibleMan Thursday, Oct 20, 22 @ 12:56 pm
===I can’t tell===
Look for the hyperventilating partisan
:)
Comment by Oswego Willy Thursday, Oct 20, 22 @ 12:58 pm
==No desire to have a rational, civil discussion, just scream at the top of your lungs and don’t let the event proceed.==
Interesting take. I wasn’t able to fully hear who was yelling, but it didn’t sound like the advocates. It sounded like the people who were mad about the existence of the SAFE-T Act were the ones yelling at the advocates to sit down.
Regardless, not allowing an event to proceed, if the intention or impact of the event is to spread disinformation and stoke racist fires, seems to me a fine goal.
It’s hard to understand how state’s attorneys could be viewed by anyone as good-faith participants in any SAFE-T Act revision conversations given the months-long disinformation campaign they’ve engaged in.
Comment by Who else Thursday, Oct 20, 22 @ 1:01 pm
There are many valid reasons to oppose changes to the bill, but the jail population stats vs.percentage of residents and race issue is not one of them. take one crime, murder, and map it across Chicago. the overwhelming number of murder victims are Black males from neighborhoods that are by population Black. that means is is highly likely, from studies across time, that the offender is someone close to them, in other words, like them. the mass we should be worried about is mass victimization. THAT is what leads to mass incarceration.
Comment by Amalia Thursday, Oct 20, 22 @ 1:04 pm
=Typical entitled liberal response to any opposing view. No desire to have a rational, civil discussion, just scream at the top of your lungs and don’t let the event proceed.=
So you are telling me that all the people that came and yelled at my school board and me, that threatened us on facebook, constantly FOIA’d us… They were “liberals”?
Man, that is a revelation, because they kept quoting the bible and talking about conservative values.
These labels are so confusing./s
You are such the snowflake private obvious (yes, I demoted you).
Comment by JS Mill Thursday, Oct 20, 22 @ 1:10 pm
==Typical entitled liberal response to any opposing view. No desire to have a rational, civil discussion, just scream at the top of your lungs==
Lol. Let me know when your side wants to be rational.
Comment by Demoralized Thursday, Oct 20, 22 @ 1:11 pm
Invisible, thanks for the link. That’s a big help.
Comment by The Velvet Frog Thursday, Oct 20, 22 @ 1:14 pm
That’s some high quality earned media in the closing stretch of a race.
Comment by Newman Thursday, Oct 20, 22 @ 5:06 pm