Illinois has lost its mind. I thought California had truly fallen off the wagon, but Illinois is trying it’s best to out due them.

In an unprecedented move, lawmakers have pushed through what they are calling the Safety, Accountability, Fairness and Equity-Today Act. Also called the SAFE-T Act for short. What is the SAFE-T Act you might ask? It’s the complete elimination of the cash bail system for the entire state of Illinois. According to The Jacksonville Journal-Courier, starting January 1, 2023 it will be replaced with a system that considers the offense severity, the risk of not appearing in court, and the potential threat to the community if a person is released.

The idea is that it’s not fair that some people, especially blacks and minorities, cannot afford their bail and therefore must sit in a jail cell until they get a court date or appearance, while others who can afford their bail are allowed to go free. In order to alleviate this so-called problem, lawmakers have decided that the best course of action would be not to hold anybody on cash bail and to just let everybody go free.

You can still be held on bail if the severity of the crime is extreme. How extreme? So extreme that things like second-degree murder and kidnapping aren’t even worthy of holding you on bail. In fact, there are several things that are in the bill that are not worthy of being held on bail. Other offenses in the bill not worthy of bail include, aggravated battery, arson, drug-induced homicide, burglary, robbery, intimidation, aggravated DUI, aggravated fleeing and eluding, drug offenses and threatening a public official. That’s right. Beginning in January, you can pretty much do anything you want, and you won’t be held on bail.

There are other concerns as well. For example, trespassing. Let’s say that your have a house located on some land and it’s private property. You notice a man out on your property. You confront the man and ask him to leave, but he refuses. You call the authorities and ask them to remove him for you. Guess what? Under the new law, police will be unable to remove the man. Grundy County Sheriff Ken Briley said about the matter, “Today, I can arrest him if you sign a complaint for trespassing. January 1st, I’m not going to be able to do that. The law says I have to write him a ticket and leave.”

Democrat Governor J.B. Pritzker says the new law, “marks a substantial step toward dismantling the systemic racism that plagues our communities, our state, and our nation and brings us closer to true safety, true fairness, and true justice.” Wait, what? True safety? You’re about to let criminals go back onto the street with no cash bail for some of the most heinous crimes imaginable, and you have the gall to say this represents true safety? Safety for who? How does releasing criminals back onto the street make your communities safer? If anything, it’s going to make them riddled with more crime because if criminals know there is little to no consequences for their actions, it’s going to embolden them to do more crime.

These sort of “catch and release” laws have been going on for a while and there is little to no evidence that shows that they are working as intended. You’d be hard pressed to find a single instance of “catch and release” where crime didn’t go up. In an article from KRON 4 out of San Francisco,  San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said his office looked closely at the jail’s “spinning turnstile,” and identified repeat offenders who were arrested more than 30 times within the past 28 months. Some serial criminals committed homicides while out on bail. “This has frustrated our police officers. They arrest somebody, they take them to jail, they wait two or three hours through the booking process, and (the same day) they are right back on the street,” Liccardo said. Liccardo asserted, “The data shows that a few hundred offenders commit an enormous share of crime, often without any period of detention that would have otherwise interrupted or at least slowed their pattern of rampant criminal activity.”

I encourage you to go read the article yourself as it gives many examples of the failed catch and release program that California has enacted.

In an article from NPR back in 2016 which was a follow up to California’s Proposition 47, Huntington Beach Police Chief Robert Handy says property crimes jumped in his city in the 12 months following the passage of Prop 47: auto thefts up 21 percent; larceny from vehicles up 30 percent; garage burglaries up 33 percent. Proposition 47 was enacted in California in November of 2014. The idea is to put less criminals in jail while also not increasing crime. Proposition 47 also changed some nonviolent felonies into misdemeanors. Also, according to the article, Will Matthews, who is manager of public affairs for Californians for Safety and Justice, the group that sponsored Prop 47, wrote an email to NPR in which he is pointing out other California cities where property crime has gone down, not up. However, NPR fails to mention a single city in this letter from Matthews where crime has gone down.

The bottom line is that Illinois’ new SAFE-T Act is anything but safe. Putting criminals back on the street for extreme acts is dangerous for the general public. It emboldens criminals because they know they will get little more than a slap on the wrist if caught. Even worse, if the public feels that their government isn’t there to help or protect them, it could lead everyday citizens to start taking the law into their own hands. This law doesn’t promote safety, it doesn’t promote justice, and it doesn’t promote fairness. If you wanted fairness, you would keep everyone in jail. No bail for anyone. Instead, you have taken the backwards approach by letting all criminals go free without bail.

Only time will tell if this law works, but I’d bet my bottom dollar that come January 1, crime in Illinois begins to skyrocket.