After months of planning and discussion, the Cook County sheriff’s office starting Tuesday will no longer accept new electronic monitoring participants, marking the beginning of a shift in one way pretrial justice is handled in Cook County.
The county will now run all electronic monitoring through the court system, merging parallel programs that have previously operated separately under the authority of Sheriff Tom Dart and Chief Judge Tim Evans. Often used as something of a middle ground between being released or jailed pretrial, both programs use GPS technology to oversee defendants that judges determine need additional supervision, even though they aren’t ordered to remain in jail.
Officials have discussed merging the electronic monitoring programs for years, but the move became a reality last year when Dart announced he would no longer take new clients. The change was supported by Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, but was initially resisted by Evans…