In a huge win for racial justice, the state of Illinois is on the verge of becoming the first state to end wealth-based pre-trial detention.
For those being accused of a crime in the US, the general rule is that you are innocent until proven guilty. Despite this, courtrooms across the US operate a cash bail system, in which the court determines an amount of money that a person has to pay in order to secure their release from detention before their trial.
As described by The Guardian, the problem with this system is that it creates dual systems of justice—one for the wealthy who can pay their way out of pre-trial incarceration and another for those who can’t afford it. For those who cannot afford bail and remain in jail, the consequences can be dire: you might have to wait years for a court date, which causes many people to plead guilty instead of waiting for a trial, even if they are not guilty at all. On top of this, research has shown that people who cannot afford bail often wind up receiving harsher sentences than those who can.
At its core, wealth-based detention is a racial justice issue as Black, Latino, and indigenous people are detained pre-trial at far higher rates than people of other ethnicities, and research has found that Black people receive significantly higher bail than all other ethnic and racial groups. The need to abolish this inhumane practice is clear.
The good news is that the Illinois legislature recently voted to end cash bail with the passing of the Pre-trial Fairness Act. Under the law, no one arrested for a misdemeanor, with the exception of domestic violence, can be jailed pre-trial.
New Jersey has drastically limited the use of cash bail and California nearly ended the practice last year through a statewide referendum, but Illinois is set to become the first state in America to completely eradicate the cash bail system. All the bill requires to become law is a signature by Illinois governor JB Pritzker, who has long expressed support. Once it is signed, the bill will be implemented over the course of two years.
According to Sharlyn Grace, a member of the Coalition with the Chicago Community Bond Fund, years of building coalition support and getting community input was crucial in helping the bill pass as thousands of supporters flooded the legislature with letters of support.
“We were able to pull most of the best things from other policy changes and other states but also set the bar really, really high,” said Grace. “This is the most progressive pre-trial reform in the country.”
This isn’t the first time we’ve talked about the issue of pre-trial detention. In December, we wrote about the new Los Angeles district attorney George Gascón, whose office will no longer seek cash bail for any misdemeanor or non-violent, non-serious felony offenses in LA county.
