A full year after the state ended cash bail, a suburban county state attorney says the law has been an “abject failure” for his county.

Illinois ended statewide cash bail in September 2023 after challenges to the law were struck down by the Illinois Supreme Court. The Fairness Before Trial Act is part of the Safety, Accountability, Fairness, and Equity Today Act, or SAFE-T.

McHenry County State’s Attorney Patrick Kenneally said the data from his county do not show what the supporters promised.

“There was a 30 percent increase in crime by those on pretrial release compared to those on cash bail,” Kenneally told The Center Square.

Contrary to supporters of the Pretrial Fairness Act who said the law would reduce the prison population, Kenneally said he found the opposite in his county.

“On the eve of the SAFT-T Act, on September 17, 2023, there were 204 people in the McHenry County Jail, and on September 15, 2024, exactly one leap year, there were 216 people. in the McHenry County Jail,” Kenneally said.

The discoveries did not stop there. Kenneally said there was a 280 percent increase in the number of defendants who failed to appear for hearings. But one area he highlighted with the end of cash bail is the diminished victim compensation fund.

“If people are no longer required to deposit any money, which means that even if you say, ‘hey, you have to pay a victim this amount as restitution’ … a very small amount of that money is paid out.” he said.

The Illinois Network for Pretrial Equity said Kenneally used percentages to inflate the data.

“The actual difference between the number of people charged with new offenses on bail versus those released on bail is 17,” the panel said. “Just because the total number of people charged with new crimes is small, the percentage increase appears large.”

They say Kenneally’s analysis of the prison population “suffers from the same flaw, as the increase is minimal – just 12 people, representing an increase of 5.5%”.

“He also claims that there was a 280% increase in appearance errors, which sounds alarming – if true,” the group said. “In reality, failure to appear warrants actually dropped 42 percent in McHenry County, dropping from 1,055 to 616.”

They say the law allows warrants to be issued when a judge decides it’s necessary to bring someone to court because they won’t return voluntarily.

They indicate information from Center for Criminal Justice they say it shows that Illinois’ system “of basing pretrial release decisions on public safety, not wealth, is working.”

In a press release, Kenneally said the problem with the law ending cash bail is that it “denies county judges, elected by the communities affected by the alleged crimes, the freedom to hold defendants charged with most crimes, no matter how there are risks”.

“You don’t have to be a criminology professor to understand that mandating judges in all circumstances to release high-risk defendants before trial is misguided and unreasonable policy,” Kenneally said. “A policy that started from the ideology of a privileged group of lawyers who dictate criminal justice law in Illinois, overriding common sense.”

The Illinois Pretrial Justice Network countered that.

“People who are believed to be a danger to others or a flight risk can be detained after robust, individualized hearings,” the group said. “Judges preside over these hearings and decide who is detained before trial and who is released.”