When accused murderers are released on electronic monitoring, something is dangerously wrong

Public safety relies on an array of police, prosecutors, judges, appellate courts and elected officials working smoothly together to ensure the criminal justice system is responsible and fair.

But the gears don’t appear to be meshing properly in Cook County — something is clearly wrong — when it comes to recent bond and electronic monitoring reforms, which are intended as alternatives to keeping suspects locked up in jail while awaiting trial.

Most troubling? Some people charged with murder have been going home on electronic monitoring.

We had better fix this.

Murder, robbery and guns

On Sunday, Frank Main of the Sun-Times reported that the number of suspects freed from jail this year to await trial included more than 1,000 people charged with murder, robbery or illegal possession of guns. On Aug. 9, the county’s electronic monitoring program included 43 people facing murder charges. That’s 40% more than on the same day last year.

We’re guessing that most people who have supported the greater use of electronic monitoring, as opposed to the holding of these suspects in jail, have assumed the beneficiaries would not include a significant number of murder suspects. In a flip-flop that can only be called startling, the most common charge suspects on electronic monitoring faced in 2016-2017 was drug possession. Since 2018, it has been gun possession.

Bail reform measures over the last several years have been justified — and we thought sincerely were intended — as a way to prevent low-level offenders from languishing in jail because they couldn’t come up with a small amount of money for bail. Poverty should not be a factor in who is jailed. And the expansion of electronic monitoring was pursued as a way to alleviate jail overcrowding.

But over time, people charged with more serious offenses have been released from jail.

The quickest way to subvert the promise of de-incarceration — to turn supporters of reform into opponents — is to release on electronic monitoring people who, really and truly, should be held behind bars.

Blame game never helps

We’d feel more confident that this problem will be fixed if our local officials spoke with one voice, explaining how they’re working together to make us safer and the criminal justice system more fair. But, instead, we’ve seen a lot of blame going around.

After the recent looting in Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Police Supt. David Brown made the argument, based on scant evidence, that the problem was fueled in part by too many people going right back onto the streets after being arrested for serious crimes. They put the blame, that is to say, on prosecutors and the courts.

Brown also has said that many of those being set free on electronic monitoring are responsible for the steep rise in killings this year in Chicago. Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, however, disputes this, pointing out that only 26 of the more than 1,800 people arrested for illegal gun possession in the first six months of 2020 were repeat offenders.

The divisions go beyond those among Lightfoot, Brown and Foxx. There’s also a deep lack of trust between Lightfoot and some cops on the street. And the U.S. attorney’s office has started taking gun cases directly from Chicago police, without going through Foxx’s office.

As for Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, who was the first sheriff in the nation to call for the end of cash bail, he was promptly sued when he suggested that judges reconsider some cases in which they had put suspects on electronic monitoring.

It’s easy to look for scapegoats, in Chicago and elsewhere, when crime rates soar. But it gets us nowhere.

A response to COVID-19

The idea behind electronic monitoring is that suspects can stay at home instead of in prison except when they go to work or school. The number of people on monitoring has increased this year partly to keep COVID-19 from spreading.

But electronic monitoring doesn’t necessarily prevent crimes. Suspects can commit additional crimes in their homes or on their way to work or school or by disabling their ankle bracelets or by simply ignoring them. A recent Chicago Tribune analysis found that Foxx dropped charges in a large percentage of cases in which suspects were accused of violating electronic monitoring rules.

In one alarming case, Dimitris Horns, 18, cut off his ankle bracelet, left his home and allegedly shot a man in the face in Englewood.

Further complicating the program is that Dart oversees many suspects on electronic monitoring while Chief Judge Timothy Evans does so for probation and pretrial cases. It might be wise to bring those responsibilities together into a central electronic monitoring system that uses the most up-to-date technology.

Up to now, the expansion of electronic monitoring has not been accompanied by an increase in resources for the program. More than 3,330 people are now electronically monitored, compared with about 2,200 last year, according to Dart’s office.

An electronic monitoring system that frees accused murderers from jail while they await trial is fundamentally absurd. We have supported the larger aims of the de-incarceration movement, and we will continue to do so, but this had better get fixed.

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