Rock Island County State’s Attorney Dora Villarreal-Nieman, a Democrat, is being urged to join an effort to repeal Illinois’ controversial SAFE-T Act, which retools multiple parts of the criminal justice system, including the elimination of cash bail.
Critics of the reform bill, which takes effect on Jan. 1 of next year, say the measure would hamper law enforcement’s ability to protect the public as more defendants are released from jails once bail is phased out.
“The People Who Play By the Rules (PBR) Political Action Committee is calling on all state’s attorneys in Illinois to call for the repeal of the SAFE-T Act, an abominable piece of legislation that was passed during the unaccountable Springfield Veto Session of early 2021,” Mike Koolidge, the PBR spokesman, said in a statement.
The SAFE-T Act has received criticism from law enforcement, police unions and many Republican state lawmakers. Its reforms would reverberate throughout the justice system, including pre-arrest diversion, pretrial proceedings, sentencing and corrections, according to the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority.
The bill’s cash bail elimination provision indicates that “it is presumed that a defendant is entitled to release on personal recognizance” but may later be detained if defendants violate the updated conditions of Illinois law, the text of the act states.
Among the state attorneys concerned about the effect of the SAFE-T Act is James Glasgow in Will County. If the measure takes effect on Jan. 1, all 640 inmates in the Will County Jail will be eligible for release, including 60 people charged with murder and others who have committed violent offenses, Glasgow said in a July 4 speech in Naperville
“I won’t be able to hold anybody in jail longer than 90 days if they demand trial,” Glasgow said, “and after at the 90th day, they get out, no matter what crime they committed, and then, if they don’t show up for court, I can’t get a warrant. … They’re not going to come back to court. … It’s going to be literally the end of days.”
Trying to establish the need for “continued detention” of a defendant would change substantially once the SAFE-T Act takes effect, according to State Sen. John Curran (R-Downers Grove).
“The prosecutor has to identify, and the judge has to find, that you pose a risk to a particular individual to continue to detain that person,” rather than the current threshold of proving a risk to the general public, Curran said.
