CHICAGO — In one of the most serious cases on the detention hearing call at the Leighton Criminal Court Building on a day earlier this month, a judge ordered a teen jailed pending trial after he was accused of shooting a woman in the neck during an attempted carjacking.

“It’s difficult for the court to come to the finding that an 18-year-old is so dangerous,” said Cook County Judge William Fahy. “I can’t overlook the nature of this offense and the level of violence involved. … This poor victim was shot twice.”

More than six months into implementation of the law that eliminated cash bail and reformed the state’s pretrial justice systems, counties have settled into new patterns, with longer detention hearings and money no longer a factor in whether someone will be released from jail.

Illinois was the first state in the nation to legislatively outlaw cash bail, ensuring that outcomes here would be watched closely. With half a year past, experts are taking stock of the Pretrial Fairness Act in practice, while advocates push for funding to support measures that they say will set the law up for success, particularly for the state’s underfunded public defense system.

“It’s a sea change in how things were done,” said Carolyn Klarquist, director of the Pretrial Fairness Unit in the Office of the State Appellate Defender, which is overseeing most appeals related to the act.

Newly released data from the Cook County courts also offers the first glimpse of detention outcomes, though experts caution that it’s still early to compare rates of court appearances and reoffending before and after the law.

The Pretrial Fairness Act has already ushered in significant change for county jails, with reductions in population across the state and in Cook County, according to state and county data.

Its implementation has also come with some growing pains. Appeals of judicial detention decisions have soared, straining the state’s high courts and spurring new rules meant to stem the flow. The law, which seeks to give all defendants a robust defense in the pretrial stage, has underscored the dearth of resources for public defense in some mostly rural parts of the state.

Overall, though, new routines have taken hold, with the law mostly “working as intended” in Cook County, according to a recent report from the Civic Federation and League of Women Voters in Cook County.

By the numbers

...continued

©2024 Chicago Tribune. Visit at chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.