According to court data, crime among those on bail/pre-trial release is up over 40% in the first three months of the SAFE-T Act when compared to the same time-period in 2022.
Between Sept. 18, 2022, and Dec. 18, 2022, 36 defendants with a pending felony or non-traffic misdemeanor case in McHenry County were charged with a subsequent felony or non-traffic misdemeanor offense. This constituted 5.6% of all misdemeanor and felony cases filed during that time-period. Four of the 36 offenses were felonies.
Between Sept. 19, 2023, and Dec. 19, 2023, 48 Defendants with a pending felony or non-traffic misdemeanor case in McHenry County were charged with a subsequent non-traffic misdemeanor or felony offense. This constituted 8% of all criminal misdemeanor and felony cases filed during that time-period. Of these 48 cases, 10 were felonies.
Obviously, there are limits to this analysis, not the least of which is a small sample size. So while the data is far too undeveloped and noisy to draw any firm conclusions, we should at least begin to suspect that many of the SAFE-T Act’s critics may soon prove to be correct.
One of the problems with those who seek to “reimagine the criminal justice system” is that they deny the trade-offs that necessarily come with their reforms. For example, if you change the law in some way to reduce wrongful convictions, you are, almost by necessity, increasing the likelihood of wrongful acquittals and the denial of justice to victims. In other words, the reforms rarely expand on the overall amount of justice, but rather relocate justice within the system or make it more likely to benefit certain groups.
The SAFE-T Act, at bottom, was a change in the law that sought to accrue to the benefit of criminal defendants so that they need not suffer the difficulties and disturbances posed by pretrial incarceration. In doing so, however, innocent members of the community will suffer to an increased degree the difficulties and disturbances posed by crime that otherwise would not have occurred. At bottom, my entire point in this whole debate is that, within the limits of a defendant’s due process and all other constitutional rights, the collateral burdens or risks that necessarily remain in an imperfect and imperfectible system should be borne by the criminals who harm others, not the public and not the innocent people who are harmed.
• Patrick Kenneally is McHenry County State’s Attorney