A suburban county’s sheriff says Illinois’ two-year-old cashless bail system has produced the opposite of what its backers promised, with his jail population nearly doubling since the law took effect. But the increase, Kane County Sheriff Ron Hain said, is not because violent offenders are being kept behind bars pending trial.
Instead, Hain says his jail is filling up with defendants who were released pretrial under the new rules but later landed back behind bars after skipping their court dates and having warrants issued.
“Most of the uptick is caused by people simply not appearing in court under the new parameters and having failure-to-appear warrants issued for them,” the sheriff’s office said this week in a statement marking the law’s second anniversary.
Hain said the law has erased years of work his office and “judicial partners” put into reducing incarceration. He pointed to programs that cut Kane County’s average daily jail population from the “550s” in 2018 to an “all-time low of 229” at the end of 2022. Recidivism during that period fell from “almost 49% to 18%.”…