[ACLU-CU ALERT] MONEY BOND ENDING in IL!

[Champaign County ACLU Announcements]

[image: ACLU-CU-LOGO copy.jpg]



Dear ACLU Members and Supporters,

We are happy to announce an important legal VICTORY!
The Illinois Supreme Court, in a very strong ruling, has affirmed the
constitutionality of the *Pretrial Fairness Act*.
As of September 18, 2023, Illinois will be the first state in the nation to
end cash bail by legislative action. We live in a great state!

>From the Illinois Network for Pretrial Fairness, a coalition of groups,
including ACLU, that have worked to make our court system fairer:

*"Every year, Illinois incarcerates a quarter million people in its county
jails. A majority of those people are jailed only because they cannot
afford to pay a money bond. The implementation of the Pretrial Fairness Act
will make Illinois the first state in the country to remove the price tag
from the presumption of innocence. Ending money bond addresses both
economic justice and racial justice issues in the pretrial system. In
communities across Illinois, Black people have been disproportionately
impacted by wealth-based jailing." *

Instead of using a money bond, judges will make individual determinations
to decide whether someone should be detained pretrial because they pose a
safety risk or are likely to flee. This principle led the majority of
legislators to support this policy change more than two years ago as part
of the *SAFE-T Act* – a broad package of policing and criminal legal system
reforms championed by the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus, the Coalition
to End Money Bond, and Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice.

Of course, implementation is key! It won't be easy to change our court
system across the entire state and we will be participating in
*courtwatching* to ensure the new law is implemented fairly in Champaign
County. We will send out another email when we have more specific
information about training for courtwatching, so watch for that if you are
interested in joining us.

THANKS FOR SUPPORTING your local ACLU chapter of activists!







Carol Spindel
she/her
Director of Communications
ACLU of Champaign County
http://www.aclu-cu.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://aclu-cu.org/pipermail/announce_aclu-cu.org/attachments/20230720/12e059b9/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: ACLU-CU-LOGO copy.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 73742 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://aclu-cu.org/pipermail/announce_aclu-cu.org/attachments/20230720/12e059b9/attachment-0001.jpg>