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July 18, 2023
For Immediate Release
Contact: Sara Avalos
(224) 374-2376
Savalos@lakecountyil.gov
Lake County State’s Attorney Eric Rinehart Looks Forward to New Pre-Trial Detention System That Will Better Protect Victims and Hold Violent Offenders
(Lake County, IL) Today, the Illinois Supreme Court announced their decision to uphold the SAFE-T Act, which changes Illinois’s pre-trial detention system from a “wealth based” system to one in which judges can order dangerous offenders to be held without access to their cash.
Lake County State’s Attorney Eric Rinehart issued the following statement about the decision:
“The Supreme Court has made our communities safer and our justice system fairer by upholding the SAFE-T Act. Instead of domestic abusers, murderers, and sex offenders using their cash to obtain release, judges can finally hold dangerous individuals prior to trial.
The victim advocates closest to these issues (such as the Illinois Coalition Against Domestic Violence and the Network) support this new law, and they have not been swayed by the months of misleading statements about its contents or its impact.
At the same time, our jail will no longer hold non-violent offenders simply because they do not have money to post bail. We will finally be addressing how a wealth-based system disproportionally jails Black and Brown defendants. We can finally begin to live up to the ideal that access to money should not lead to different justice systems for different defendants.
This safety-based system (as opposed to wealth-based system) has worked for decades in our federal courts and in Illinois’s juvenile courts. This past fall, many individuals were lying to the public by saying that the end of “cash bail” means the end of “pre-trial detention.” These lies failed to turn the public against the authors of the SAFE-T Act. Now, the Supreme Court has affirmed this important reform that has been shaped by law enforcement, prosecutors, victim-rights advocates, and community leaders since the Supreme Court Commission Report of April 2020.”
Let me reiterate this: we will still jail defendants prior to trial, and the defendants we do hold will be the dangerous weapon offenders, drug traffickers, child molesters, murderers, and domestic abusers who will no longer be able to use their own cash (or their accomplice’s cash) as an escape hatch from justice. Our communities will be safer because of today’s ruling.
The Safety, Accountability, Fairness and Equity-Today (SAFE-T Act) is a criminal justice reform that includes the elimination of cash bail as a method of pre-trial release, mandates use of body-worn cameras for all police departments, and calls for the preservation of police misconduct records.
The SAFE-T Act was stayed in late December 2022, prior to its January 1, 2023, effective date. Today’s ruling makes the Act effective September 18, 2023. State’s Attorney Rinehart added, “We were ready in December of 2022, and we will be ready in September of 2023.”
On the effective date, the Lake County State’s Attorney’s Office will file petitions to detain offenders who are arrested after September 18, 2023. Judges will decide whether someone is detained or not detained awaiting trial. If a judge rules for detention, those individuals arrested after the effective date will no longer be able to access cash to gain release.
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Lake County State's Attorney's Office
18 N. County Street
Waukegan, IL 60085
Phone: (847) 377-3000
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