ILLINOIS WILL END CASH BAIL — AND LIMIT USE OF HIGH-TECH INCARCERATION – By Isaac Scher (The Intercept) / January 17 2021
Reformers typically propose predictive algorithms and electronic monitoring as alternatives to money bail. Illinois is different
SOME ORGANIZERS IN Illinois recall getting “laughed out of the room” for supporting the abolition of money bail five years ago. But on January 13, Robert Peters, a longtime advocate for ending cash bail and now a state senator from Chicago, saw his legislative proposal to end money bail pass the General Assembly, along with a comprehensive package of criminal justice reforms written by the state’s Black Caucus. Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker has strongly indicated that he will sign the bill, which will make Illinois the first state in the country to end a detention system that is demonstrably racist and classist.
Labor groups, abolitionists, and local nonprofits formed a coalition to end money bail shortly after powerful state players derided activists who argued against money bail in court and led organizing drives throughout the state. Their four-year campaign, which brought pressure against the state and gifted them a close alliance with the Black Caucus, made sweeping reforms thinkable. It was the movement for Black lives and the 2020 uprising that made them inevitable.
The reforms, which would go into effect in January 2023, will avoid the most dangerous pitfalls of quietly emerging “alternatives” to money bail: algorithms that predict peoples’ “risk” and detain those given higher scores, and surveillance devices that track people who maintain legal freedom before trial. These powerful tools are already used in a vast patchwork of jurisdictions across the country. Both are opaque and profitable and have gained prominence among bail reformers in places like California, where a failed effort to end money bail last autumn would have mandated prediction and increased surveillance.
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