Chief Judge Evans Commits to Reform Bond Court and Create Adult Restorative Justice Programs at Reclaim Campaign Public Action
Last Thursday, July 24, the Community Renewal Society held a large public action with 500 congregants and Chief Judge Timothy Evans to call on the Chief Judge to institute specific reforms creating an Adult Restorative Justice diversion program and moving the County away from monetary bonds.
Chicago Appleseed worked with the Community Renewal Society and the Reclaim Campaign as third party policy consultants, helping shape the commitments they wanted from Judge Evans.
(Recently, as part of our collaboration, the Reclaim Campaign advocated for the Chicago Appleseed-developed bill to reduce the time to preliminary hearings from 30 to 10 days. This bill, SB 3007, eventually took the form of a pilot drug field-testing pilot program to reduce the time to preliminary hearing and passed unanimously in the State Senate. More on that here.)
The Event and The Promises Made
Reclaim Campaign public actions take the form of a covenant. The congregation asks a public official if they will support and take certain specific actions. The public official is asked to make direct yes or no statements and then sign the covenant along with community representatives.
At July 24th’s event Chief Judge Evans agreed to the following:
1) Creating a new pilot program for adult offenders with the goal of diverting 100 non-violent or low-level arrestees to approved Restorative Justice Peace Hubs over the court of a year beginning on November 1, 2014.
2) In the plan to reform bond court and pre-trial services which Evans will release in October of this year, the Chief Judge will include goals to:
a. Develop criteria and options to move from reliance on monetary bond to releasing detainees on personal recognizance for non-violent felonies and misdemeanors.
b. Re-institute secondary review of low-level bonds.
c. Train pretrial services to use a validated risk assessment tool and to empower them to make recommendations as to bond amounts and diversion programs.
The community also made a commitment to publicly support new diversion and reform initiatives and to stand behind the leaders and judges who implement them.
You can find more about the Reclaim Campaign here.
We at Chicago Appleseed find this to be a promising action and one that we were happy to participate in and help shape. It has been our privilege to be able to communicate the reform efforts happening at the top levels of government – between the Illinois Supreme Court and the heads of governments agencies here in Cook County – to the communities that are most affected by these efforts. We find it promising that there commitments occurred in both directions, with the community also vowing to publicly support efforts to reform bond court into one that is based more on risk and less on the ability to pay. Much of what has led our jail to be so crowded has been the fear of a public outcry in the event that an ind
ividual commits a crime while out on bond. The recognition by the public and by the government partners that these attitudes have to change in both camps is the key stepping stone on the path to reform.