But Illinois is about to overhaul the system that upended Ross’ life. Illinois’ Pretrial Fairness Act, which abolishes cash bail as a condition of pretrial release, will take effect Sept. 18, making Illinois the first state to end cash bail and a testing ground for whether — and how — it works on a large scale.
Judges can still keep people accused of serious crimes behind bars pretrial, but first would have to go through a more rigorous review of each case.
Critics say cash bail policies are especially unfair to Black people and other people of color. A 2022 federal civil rights report on cash bail systems found that courts tend to impose higher pretrial detention penalties on Black and Latino people, citing a study that showed Black men received bail amounts 35% higher than white men, and Latino men received bail amounts 19% higher than white men.
Cash bail is giving the court a lot of money as a pledge that you will show up for your trial. If you show up, you get the money back. The point is that it’s a life-changing amount of money and losing it would be worse than the consequences of being convicted.
Non-cash bail is mostly promising to show up for your court date and not commit any more crimes in the meantime, but there can be restrictions like wearing an ankle monitor and not leaving the state.
Also, if the crime is serious enough, the judge can rule to not release at all. One of the screaming points for conservatives in the state is that rapists and murder suspects are just going to be allowed to go free, which is not true at all. There is a list of serious crimes in the statute that judges are granted heavy discretion over in regards to whether the defendant should actually be released.
ALSO, think of this as a way to combat recidivism. One of the reasons people continue to commit crimes even when they’re incarcerated because they can’t afford bail is because they lose their jobs. They end up in jail for a week or more and don’t show up to work, they lose their job that was likely hard for them to get in the first place. It’s a major part of the prison industrial complex and the Right’s war against the poor. Ending cash bail takes away a major component of that.