Loyola Researchers Assess Impact of Cash Bail Law on Justice System

Following Illinois’ implementation of the Pretrial Fairness Act last year, researchers from Loyola’s Center for Criminal Justice are evaluating the impacts of the reform, looking at how the new provisions may impact bond court outcomes, jail populations and the lengths and costs of pretrial detention.

The Illinois General Assembly passed the PFA in January 2021 as a part of a larger crime bill called the Safety, Accountability, Fairness and Equity Act,  according to the Loyola Center for Criminal Justice. The reforms outlined in the PFA took effect Sept. 18, 2023. 

The PFA prevents the use of pretrial detentions for most defendants, requires a new pretrial hearing process, limits the conditions placed on defendants released pretrial and abolishes the cash bail system altogether, according to the Illinois General Assembly.

Since the law’s implementation, the research team has published several research briefs with support from Arnold Ventures, the MacArthur Foundation and the National Institute for Justice in partnership with criminal justice agencies across Illinois, according to the center’s website.

The site said these briefs examine data from before the PFA with the goal of estimating how the law could impact future pretrial decisions. 

A recent report from the center concluded significantly fewer people are being held pretrial. The research indicates pretrial jail populations fell after the PFA went into effect, down 14% in Cook County, 14% in other urban counties and 25% in rural counties. 

Dr. David Olsen, co-director of Loyola’s Center for Criminal Justice and a member of the Illinois Pretrial Practices Data Oversight Board, said he has spent the past two years tracking the PFA.  

“In Cook County, they’ve been actually implementing reforms to the pretrial system for close to a decade,” Olsen said. “It’s had a much more substantial change in places outside of Cook County, where they haven’t been engaged in pretrial reform.”

While Olsen said the project’s findings vary depending on factors like county, he said his research team was still able to observe certain changes across the board. 

“Prior to the law, there was about $140 million a year in Illinois that was put up by defendants to secure their pretrial release, and so that money is no longer being taken to secure pretrial release after someone’s convicted,” Olsen said. 

Jack Wolff, a third-year English and criminology double major and contributor to the Center for Criminal Justice’s research, said he spent a semester contributing to the research by observing numerous hearings and documenting different variables of the cases.

Wolff said it’s important to consider the impact bail laws can have on the lives of the defendants and their families. 

“Cash bail is an unfair system,”  Wolff said. “It sounds simple to say out loud, but Illinois is the first state to abolish it. Something like a person’s life and dignity shouldn’t be decided by money.”

A report published by the center Sept. 24 said more time is now spent at hearings discussing the details of the case, creating a more detail-oriented and individualized system.

“Prosecutors are scrutinizing the cases more closely to decide which ones they want to seek detention on, and judges are scrutinizing the cases a lot more,” Olsen said. “The types of things that are being discussed at these hearings are much more substantial, and a lot more information is being considered.”

Olsen said the process of holding someone for pretrial detention is more complicated than before. If the defendant’s offense is one eligible for pretrial detention under the PFA, then the prosecutor must file a petition requesting the defendant be detained, Olsen said. 

Both Olsen and Wolff also emphasized the impact not being held before trial can have on an individual defendant, noting how people can lose jobs or struggle to take care of their families when they are detained. 

“There’s a tax that it takes out of you, if you get detained before your sentencing,” Wolff said. “You could be sitting in a jail cell for a year before you get sentenced.”

According to Olsen, the passage of the PFA also significantly enhanced the public defense resources of Illinois courts, especially in rural counties. The PFA created new provisions requiring every defendant to be represented by an attorney at any decision which could affect their pretrial release or the conditions of their release.

Smaller countries without adequate resources to accommodate for this provision were apportioned a large sum of money to their public defense offices so they could afford to hire more attorneys, according to Olsen. 

“Most of Illinois, most counties are small, and so for a lot of counties, they receive that assistance from the state in order to implement the law and fulfill its mission,” Olsen said.

Olsen and Wolff both said while the research being done by the Center for Criminal Justice on the PFA is substantial, it’s still in its early stages. Through their continued work, the Center hopes to advance conversations about pretrial justice through objective research.

“Our hope and goal is people who are in positions to make legislation or to modify legislation, read the results and use it to guide their discussions,” Olsen said.