Reinvention Through Reinvestment: How Illinois’s Pretrial Success Act Changes the Way We Should Look at Bail Reform

The Sanchez Bail Bonds office in Indio, California. Photo courtesy of Randy Heinitz.

In September 2023, Illinois implemented the highly anticipated Pretrial Fairness Act (PFA), a state bill aimed at the elimination of cash bail and the reduction of rates of pretrial detention. While the law was intended to be highly transformative, it ultimately resembled the ineffective approach of other criminal justice reform bills in that it centered on the penal system. Therefore, in May 2024, Illinois passed the Pretrial Success Act (PSA), a correlate bill to the PFA that seeks to invest in communities and targets the cyclical nature of crime by providing the means for socioeconomic growth. Though the bill will not be implemented until 2025, it may have the power to redress the failings of past bail reform.

Pretrial detention, the practice of jailing individuals prior to a criminal hearing, poses stark risks to those detained. In addition to facing barriers to employment and economic opportunities, individuals held in pretrial detention are 23% more likely to plead guilty, 24% more likely to be convicted, and 35% more likely to face a carceral sentence. Most states maintain a system of bail-based pretrial detention, under which a defendant can be detained until they pay a set amount of money in exchange for their release. Average bail amounts in Illinois ranged from $1,000 to $6,000 depending on the county prior to the passage of the PFA, creating a disparity in release. The nearly 1.5 million Illinoisans living below the poverty line are far less likely to have enough money to pay exorbitant bail costs without making significant sacrifices in comparison with high-income individuals. Pretrial release also contains a racial inequity, as Black and Brown individuals maintain poverty rates of 18.8% and 15.7% respectively in comparison with the national poverty rate of 10.5%. In order to alleviate the disadvantage that bail places on Black and Brown low-income individuals, Illinois passed the PFA, which eliminated the state’s cash bail system and has already decreased jail populations.

The PFA is unique by nature of its total elimination of bail rather than a decrease to the number of bailable offenses, but it is just one of many pieces of bail legislation to focus solely on directly changing the state’s prosecutorial system. In 2017, the Chief Judge of the Cook County Circuit Court issued General Order 18.8A (GO18.8A). This order significantly reduced the number of people held in pretrial detention in the Chicago area through the limitation of bailable offenses and the reduction of required bail costs. When crime rates did not increase as a result of GO18.8A, the policy was touted as a success. 

While it’s great that the release of pretrial didn’t increase crime, shouldn’t the goalpost for successful criminal justice reform be moved past crime rate stagnation? The PFA very well may effectively prevent people from being held in pretrial detention unjustly, but what does it do to reduce the number of people committing jailable offenses in the first place? The power of bail reform is being stifled by its limitation in scope, but if legislators would only take policy one step farther to address the root causes of crime, laws like the PFA could be significantly more impactful. 

The Pretrial Success Act offers $15 million in grant opportunities to community organizations who provide voluntary services to those awaiting trial. The PSA is built upon comprehension of the fact that poverty and poverty-related conditions such as homelessness, substance abuse, and untreated mental health conditions significantly increase a person’s likelihood to commit both violent and non-violent crimes and that Black and Brown people are far more likely to experience poverty. Funds created by PSA grants address wealth disparity head-on, enabling services including addiction counseling, case management, mental health support, childcare, and transportation to hearings for pretrial defendants. 

There is no research on whether or not the PSA will reduce crime rates because it has not yet been implemented, but we do have research on what generally lowers crime rates, and one of the most notable influences is access to care. Community-based substance abuse treatment has a demonstrable impact on both violent and financially motivated crime, and access to cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) through a Chicago-based organization called Becoming a Man (BAM) was proven to reduce local low-income teens’ involvement in crime. The PSA will be more successful than the average piece of bail reform legislation because it provides data-driven care that targets criminal risk factors rather than simply releasing individuals back into a socioeconomic situation that, more likely than not, played a role in them committing the crime in the first place. 

In addition, the PSA funnels money into communities that have historically been disenfranchised, and disrupts aforementioned low-income socioeconomic situations through reinvestment of trust and resources. Rebecca Levin, Vice President of Policy at the Chicago-based nonprofit Treatment Alternatives for Safe Communities, explained that “ending the extraction of wealth from communities through money bonds was an essential first step, but we have to invest in those communities as well.” Bail poses a severe, undue economic barrier, so eliminating it is necessary, but more must be done if we truly want to reduce crime rates and help communities flourish. 

The goal of bail elimination and similar criminal justice reforms should be to improve community safety and prosperity, so it is integral to provide tangible resources that not only allow for freedom, but for re-enfranchisement as well. The Pretrial Success Act does just that. As long as it is executed with fidelity, the PSA has the power to reach beyond the normative restraints of bail reform impact.

Now that the funding has been approved, it is integral for states that have timidly crept toward bail reform to take Illinois’s leap. From New Jersey to Texas, lawmakers have moved with trepidation toward pretrial systems that challenge the prosecutorial status quo, but have yet to take major steps to enmesh criminal justice reform with financial empowerment of low-income communities. Though the PFA is yet to be implemented, the data demonstrated indicates that its methods are capable of truly improving public safety along with economic mobility in Illinois. If adopted beyond the state, PSA-like laws will help create carceral norms that are safer for citizens both in and outside the courtroom. 

Bella Lubelchek (BC ’28) is a Staff Writer at CPR from Oak Park, Illinois who intends to study political science and anthropology.