The data inside Illinois’ pretrial release program

ILLINOIS (WCIA) — It’s been about 10 months since cash bail was eliminated in Illinois. Now, the office overseeing the entire system and transition has released a treasure trove of data about how the cases have been going since.

“I think the big picture story that this data tells is that, despite all the concerns prior to the effective date of this new law, once the law became effective, everyone did their job, and everyone is doing it,” Director of the Office of Statewide Pretrial Services Cara Smith said.

The data shows that there were 17,000 cases across the 75 counties in this data set. Just over 50% of those cases included charges that were listed as detainable in the law. And 61% of petitions to detain from prosecutors were granted in this first 10 months.

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“The Supreme Court devoted an enormous amount of resources through the AOIC to making sure there was ample training and education around all these big changes,” Smith, a former Cook County judge said. “So that once September 18 came, the sky did not in fact, fall.”

The data set comes from 75 counties, with four of the larger counties in the state keeping their own data. The data is expected to be a big resource for lawmakers as they work on tweaking the law going forward.

“The data is what it is,” Smith said. “And while depending on who the viewer is, you might have different takeaways for it, I think it goes a long way towards revealing just how well implementation has gone.”

The dashboard is updated daily, and it will continue to be updated by the office for statewide pretrial services.

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