The Illinois General Assembly passed a series of amendments during veto session in early December to the SAFE-T (Safety, Accountability, Fairness and Equity – Today) Act, the criminal justice omnibus law enacted in early 2021. The SAFE-T Act (Public Act 101-0652) was originally passed by the Illinois General Assembly in January 2021 and signed by Governor Pritzker in February 2021. For details of the provisions included in the SAFE-T Act, see the Civic Federation’s summary. Two subsequent…
A report recently released by the Civic Federation highlights the current processes in Cook County bond court, including how often judges require payment of money as a condition of bail. The study, conducted in partnership with the League of Women Voters of Cook County, found that despite narratives to the contrary, cash bail is still widely used in Cook County. Another report recently released by the Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice examined the bond court processes of six other Illinois…
Click here to read the full report. Click here to read the press release for this report. Executive Summary Throughout the course of eight weeks during summer 2022, the Civic Federation, in partnership with the League of Women Voters of Cook County, observed felony bond court hearings in Cook County. The purpose of the project was to assess current proceedings and pretrial release decisions in felony bond hearings. This court watching project aimed to answer certain questions about…
Last year, the Civic Federation worked in partnership with the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts (AOIC) and the Illinois Supreme Court’s Pretrial Implementation Task Force to release a report that measures the financial impact that the elimination of cash bail in Illinois will have on counties and circuit court clerks throughout the state. This week, the AOIC and the Task Force released a series of updates to the report, originally released in September 2021. The updates include a…
The City of Chicago introduced the Mayor’s proposed FY2023 budget in early October, and the City Council will vote on a final budget in November. This blog post takes a look at what’s in the FY2023 budget proposal in the area of public safety spending. The Civic Federation is analyzing the budget as a whole and will release our complete analysis later this month. The City of Chicago’s Public Safety departments include the following seven departments: Police Department; Fire Department; Office…
With the increasingly polarized political environment and the November 2022 mid-term election approaching, the debate about pretrial reforms in Illinois has been at the forefront in the news media and on social media. The pretrial reforms, referred to as the Pretrial Fairness Act, were passed via Public Act 101-0652, known as the SAFE-T Act (Safety, Accountability, Fairness and Equity-Today). Much of the information being circulated and even promoted by some government bodies has been…
Cook County has received $1 billion in federal funds from the American Rescue Plan Act State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund (SLFRF) and released its latest 2022 performance report mandated by the United States Department of Treasury this past summer. This blog post is the second in a series looking at local governments’ plans to use these funds and what they’ve spent so far. To read more about how Chicago plans to use its distribution of SLFRF and to read more about ARPA’s general reporting…
The criminal justice system in Illinois is comprised of a multitude of different agencies and systems. This blog post will focus on the departments that make up the key criminal justice system agencies within Chicago and the State of Illinois, including agencies from three levels of government: municipal (City of Chicago), county (Cook County) and state (the State of Illinois). Each agency plays a role in the criminal legal system, although many criminal justice system agencies are…
This blog post provides a high-level overview of personnel within the Chicago Police Department (CPD). The information presented includes both budgeted data based on the City of Chicago’s annual FY2022 budget and active, assigned sworn officer data based on public safety data dashboards available on the Office of Inspector General website. Budgeted CPD Personnel The Chicago Police Department has a total of 14,058 personnel positions budgeted across all funds in FY2022, including both sworn…
Governor JB Pritzker’s proposed FY2023 State Budget directs funding to a number of public safety initiatives, including funding to implement Public Act 101-0652, known as the SAFE-T Act, signed into law by Governor Pritzker in February 2021. The sweeping criminal justice reform bill changes various policies and practices across the entire justice system including the courts, prisons and law enforcement agencies. The Civic Federation plans to release its full analysis of the Governor’s…
