First month of cashless bail system in Kane County successful, officials say, but tweaks still needed
The first full month of the state’s cashless bail system in Kane County has been successful, but the system still needs some minor tweaks, Kane County State’s Attorney Jamie Mosser and Kane County Chief Judge Clint Hull said.
The county’s circuit court publishes a portal, showing how many cases police departments have sent to first appearance court and the charges involved. The dashboard, which is updated daily, also shows how many petitions for pretrial detention prosecutors filed and how many petitions have been denied or granted.
Those interested can view the data on the county’s portal by going to kanecourt.org/Safe-T-Act.
“The most important thing is transparency because there were so many questions about the SAFE-T Act and the impact it’ll have,” Hull said. “We felt it was really important to have all that information out there publicly so anyone who wanted to look at it would have real-time access and not speculate about it.”
The state’s new cashless bail system, under the SAFE-T Act, rules criminal defendants no longer have to put up bail money to go free while they await trial. Prosecutors instead have to petition a judge for a person to stay in jail while a case is pending.
Since the system began on Sept. 18, 282 cases have appeared in Kane County court as of Thursday evening with Aurora and Elgin filing the most cases.
Kane County prosecutors filed 73 petitions to detain people, with most of those cases revolving around domestic violence charges.
“What we thought we’d see is what we are seeing on our dashboard with the top offenses being for domestic battery,” Hull said, adding that they are seeing less detention hearings than what he expected.
While the first month went off successfully, Hull said, some questions still remain. It is too soon to tell if the people who were cited and released by police are going to show up for their future court dates and if the people who were released are going to commit more crimes.
“We don’t have enough data on that just yet,” Hull said.
Kane County’s jail population went from an average of between 335 to 360 people a day to 282 people on Thursday, Hull said.
“There’s a significant drop and is really huge for the taxpayers,” Hull said.
Mosser said some issues still remain with the cashless bail system, including what she believes is unclear wording in the legislation that could lead to different judicial interpretations.
For example, some judges are viewing a rule differently on how long a prosecutor has to file a petition to detain people who were out on bond before Sept. 18, she said.
She has spoken with representatives in the General Assembly in Springfield and hopes that by January some action can be taken to correct any vague language.
“We need to fix this and I’m not advocating for it to be overturned or go to cash bail, but there are some significant flaws that we the practitioners see that are making the community unsafe in certain ways,” Mosser said.
She said the cashless bail system has both its pros and cons. For instance, a domestic abuser who had previously continued to beat his wife and just post bail every time is now being detained. But in another case, a woman with significant mental health issues has continued to trespass at a house and there is nothing prosecutors can do to keep her away from the house other than for police to cite and release her, she said.
“There is good and bad in this and the legislators just need to come in and fix the bad,” Mosser said.
Kane County Sheriff Ron Hain, Mosser, the Public Defender’s Office and the Circuit Court clerk are going to meet in late January to decide what, if any, operational changes need to be made after a few months experience with the cashless bail system.
