Sheriffs in southern Illinois say they are bracing for more crime and more victims that result from the end of cash bail across the state.
"Folks who live here are extremely concerned," Franklin County Sheriff Kyle Bacon told Fox News. "It's an experiment on the backs of victims of crime. I have serious concerns and so do the people that live here."
On Tuesday, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled in favor of eliminating the state's cash bail system. The ruling takes effect Sept. 18, making Illinois the first state to fully abolish cash bail.
Under the new law, judges across Illinois will not require those charged with a crime to post bail in order to be released from jail while they await trial, unless the judge determines them a threat to the public or a flight risk.
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Sheriff Jeff Bullard of Jefferson County said law enforcement and attorneys will be the ones who bear the brunt of these changes.
"We did our job. We arrested them, incarcerated them," Bullard told Fox News, "and then the state's attorney makes the argument that they should be remanded for trial, and the judge, based on the SAFE-T Act guidelines, says, ‘Now I'm forced to let them go.’"
"That's going to increase crime victim frustration … and we share that frustration with them," he said.
The provision, which is part of the 2021 criminal justice reform bill, the Safety, Accountability, Fairness and Equity-Today (or SAFE-T) Act, was previously set to go into effect on Jan. 1, but it was placed on hold after Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul appealed a ruling by a circuit judge that the pre-trial release and bail reforms in the SAFE-T act were unconstitutional.
"We were preparing for this, but then we just kind of hit the pause button," Bacon told Fox News. "And now the scramble is back on for law enforcement, prosecutors."
"It is discouraging," he said.
In a previous interview, Orland Park Mayor Keith Pekau told Fox News, "When I said that this is the most dangerous law I've ever seen, I believe that."
Bacon said the full effects of the change won’t be known until the law takes effect.
"The flaws of it are going to be revealed even more and trying to fix that issue is going to be a nonstop process," Bacon said.
Both Franklin County and Jefferson County are located in southern Illinois and experience high numbers of drug-related trespassing and burglaries, the sheriffs said.
"There are people here that own hundreds, some thousands, of acres of property – and that at the most basic level is a concern of theirs," Bacon said. "How do we deal with that?"
"We've assured people that we will absolutely do everything we can to serve the victims of crime, but people here are very concerned about it," he added. "It is a rural area, and the people here are not served well by this law."
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Bullard said reforms such as these will have a more noticeable impact in the southern part of the state.
"A lot of things can be lost in the shuffle of a large metropolitan area, like Chicago," he said. "Crime and especially violent crime, in a rural county, a lot of people hear about it, a lot of people are concerned about it and [that] it does not get lost in the shuffle," he said.
Bail reform advocates argue that the current cash bail system bases the freedom of people awaiting trial largely on their ability to pay money and have said it disproportionately affects communities of color.
Bullard, however, said the legislators and judges who passed the reform are responsible for any new victims created as a result of it.
"Any new victim – that's on the system," he said. "That's on the people who allowed that to take place, not recognizing the public safety danger."
Both Bullard and Bacon said their officers will continue to serve and protect their citizens to the best of their ability within the limits of the law, but the outlook of how this change will affect policing remains unclear.
"We have 100 people sitting in jail or requiring cash bond. What happens with that? We have literally hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of arrest warrants that are assigned a cash bond. What happens with that?" Bacon said. "All of these questions exist and, quite honestly, I sit here and have no idea what the answers are."
Bullard said it can "discourage both the police, those in the criminal justice system and the citizens" when more emphasis is put on the rights of defendants over the protection of the public, but "I would tell people to not be discouraged, we're going to continue to push forward."
