One year after the passage of the Pretrial Fairness Act, state data shows the Sixth Judicial Circuit Court, which includes Champaign, recorded one of the highest numbers of pretrial investigations.

Additionally, caseloads have increased at the Champaign County Public Defender’s Office due to new pretrial processes, which assess whether a defendant can be released while awaiting trial.

“It has caused me to divert a lot of resources in the office to pretrial preparation,” Champaign County Chief Public Defender Elisabeth Pollock said in an interview. “We’ve had to change our schedules around, and I would say that the time commitment has definitely been increased.”

The state legislature passed the Pretrial Fairness Act, part of the larger SAFE-T Act, to lessen the chances of someone staying in jail because they could not pay a cash bond to get released. The law requires an investigation to determine if a defendant can be detained or released. Advocates for the law said many low-income people were being unfairly held in jail while awaiting trial.

The Sixth Circuit Court had 2,885 pretrial investigations, a fact-finding procedure for a civilian grand jury, from Sept. 18, 2023 to Oct. 10, 2024, according to the Office of Statewide Pretrial Services (OSPS) Pretrial Data Dashboard. The Sixth Circuit covers Champaign, Piatt, De Witt, Moultrie, Douglas and Macon counties. Macon County is not reporting data to the dashboard as of publication.

Currently, the data is only provided for 78 of 102 counties in the state.

In Champaign County, the new pretrial process has resulted in 1,317 pretrial investigations, or 52% of total investigations as of Oct. 10, where the accused individual is being held for a detainable offense or their risk of danger to the community and willful flight. 

Of those 1,317 detainable offense investigations, almost half were filed for the consideration of detention by the State’s Attorney’s Office. Regarding these petitions, 61%, or 390 petitions, were granted and the remaining 253 petitions were denied. 

The dashboard, released on the day the Pretrial Fairness Act passed, shows the Sixth Circuit has the second-highest number of pretrial investigations. It sits behind the First Circuit and its nine counties in southern Illinois.

Pollock said the act’s requirement of providing police reports during an initial court appearance requires more time be devoted to case preparation on shorter notice, adding to the county’s workload regarding argument construction for court cases.

“It used to be that we did not even get police reports in a case until 20 days through the initial appearance,” Pollock said. “Now, we’re getting those police reports on the front end, so we have an ability to actually evaluate the case for the strength of the evidence, and that has caused a lot more time to be put into preparing for those hearings.” 

While preparation time has increased for hearings, so has the length of the hearings due to the elimination of cash bail through the Pretrial Fairness Act. The focus after a defendant’s arrest has shifted to detention hearings, a decision stage about whether an individual will be detained or released, where public defenders spend more time advocating for their clients in court, Pollock said.

“It used to be that a bond argument would take maybe 5 to 10 minutes,” she said. “Now, our detention hearings are sometimes 20 minutes, sometimes 30 minutes, or sometimes an hour, depending on how much there is to do.” 

Dashboard data shows high case density in county

The data dashboard shows Champaign has a higher case density than some other counties of similar — and sometimes greater — populations.

Data shows Champaign County conducts more pretrial investigations despite being less populated than both St. Clair County and Will County, which solely make up the Twentieth and Twelfth Circuits, respectively. Champaign County’s 2,514 investigations, as of Oct. 10, are 1,308 and 469 cases more than St. Clair and Will counties, respectively.

Of the 2,514 investigations in Champaign County up to Oct. 10, 1,686, or 67%, include felony charges, while 827, or 33%, consider misdemeanor charges.

Looking closer, Class 2 felonies, punishable with three to seven years of imprisonment, account for the largest portion of the charges with 454 investigations, or 27% of the 1,686 total felony investigations as of Oct. 10. 

Class A misdemeanors, the most serious misdemeanor type with sentences of up to one year of imprisonment in addition to a fine, represent the most significant portion of Champaign County’s total misdemeanor count. Out of 827 misdemeanors, 95% were Class A as of Oct. 10. 

On a statewide scale, Illinois has seen 24,022 pretrial investigations, with 14,626 felony investigations, and 9,343 misdemeanor investigations as of Oct. 10, making up 61% and 39% of the total count respectively. 

Concerning the 2,008 court dates issued in Champaign County up to Oct. 10, 150 defendants, comprising 7% of the total, failed to appear and were subsequently issued a warrant.

Of the state’s 45,963 total court dates, 2,446 defendants, comprising 5% of the total, received a warrant after failing to appear. 

The Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Pretrial Practices Final Report, published in April 2020, said methods of data collection throughout the state were “antiquated.”

“The current Illinois system of pretrial services data collection is antiquated and inefficient,” the Illinois Supreme Court Commission noted in the report. “Data elements are not clearly defined, and pretrial services agencies often report their outcomes based on what is available in existing data systems that vary throughout the state.”

Four years later, the OSPS Pretrial Data Dashboard, Illinois’s largest aggregated pretrial database, only provides information for 78 of 102 counties. Cook, Kane, DuPage, McHenry, and Winnebago counties have their own pretrial databases, but each uses a different presentation system to display the data.

Counties that do submit data only began collecting those figures after the OSPS established pretrial services in their county, which took months or, in the case of Jo Daviess County, a year.

Along with inconsistent data submissions, the “lack of (a) data dictionary offering standard definitions” makes conveying current Illinois pretrial practices more time-consuming, the Illinois Supreme Court commission said in the report.

Pollock adds that while the Illinois Supreme Court provided her with materials on the Pretrial Fairness Act, with a focus on the elimination of cash bail, her clients are not always able to interpret the act and its definitions as easily.

“We have to impart knowledge about the new process to our clients, and this is now different,” Pollock said. “I think a lot of people know that there is no more cash bail, but they’re not entirely sure what that means or how it works.”

The Pretrial Fairness Act enabled these factors to be weighed more heavily, and while the caseload Champaign County faces has increased through it, Pollock said the act is necessary for a fairer legal system.

“The evidence behind the act is a good one, and I’m glad to see it,” she said. “No person’s financial status should dictate whether they’re detained in bail.”