Bond Reform Measure Signed
“The county should not be using bond being posted by non-convicted individuals as a revenue source. It’s a tax on poor black and brown people primarily,” said Cook County Commissioner John Fritchey, quoted in a WBEZ story on a new law concerning processing fees in the criminal court. The measure caps processing fees associated with posting bond prior to trial at $100. Before this change, Clerk of the Circuit Court kept 10 percent of posted bail, regardless of the outcome of the case or the amount of bond (725 ILCS 5/110-7).
Fritchey proposed the change earlier this year and the Bill was signed this week by Governor Rauner. The change will go into effect January 1, 2016 and is limited to Cook County. Sheriff Tom Dart had previously expressed support for the change to the law.
The change improves the bond system in a straight-forward manner, bringing parity to the imposition of costs associated with processing bond for defendants. It eliminates the punitive nature of a percentage-based system, particularly for defendants who are acquitted or whose cases are dropped altogether. It is hoped that a reduction in the costs associated with posting bond will increase the number of defendants who post bond prior to trial, which in turn reduces the burden on the county of housing defendants prior to trial. It is estimated that roughly 1/5 of persons in jail on any given day are there because they cannot afford bail and the costs associated with bail in amounts less than $6,000.
In the last set of data available (2010 and 2011), more than 20,000 defendants were jailed prior to trial for an average of 25 days, only to have their cases dropped or dismissed. The Chicago Tribune estimates a cost of $143 per day to house someone in the Cook County jail.