In January 2021, the Illinois General Assembly passed House Bill 3653 – an omnibus crime bill known as the Safety, Accountability, Fairness and Equity Act . A part of the Act, referred to as the Pretrial Fairness Act (PFA), fundamentally changes bond court practices and pretrial release in Illinois. The Act abolishes cash bail, prohibits pretrial detention for most defendants, creates new pretrial hearing processes, curtails the conditions that may be placed on defendants released pretrial, and limits revocation and modification of pretrial release.

Since the passage of the Act, opponents have argued that the reforms will limit local courts’ ability to detain dangerous defendants or to impose meaningful pretrial release conditions to ensure public safety.

In contrast, proponents argue that the reforms will lead to few changes in the number and types of defendants held pretrial; rather, they argue, the reforms will simply reduce the number of people required to pay cash bail to secure release and will reduce the number of days defendants are held before release. Since the bail reforms mandated in the PFA do not take effect until January 2023, it remains unclear what the actual impact of these changes may be. Thus, estimating whether and how the reforms may affect court decision making, pretrial release rates, and jail populations before the law takes full effect is vital to addressing these concerns.