State legislators in Illinois head into the year’s final session with possible changes to a controversial criminal justice law.
Supported by Democrat supermajorities in the state General Assembly and signed by recently reelected Gov. J.B Pritzker in February 2021, the Safety, Accountability, Fairness and Equity-Today Act (SAFE-T Act) is set to take effect on Jan. 1, 2023.
While some provisions of the bill are not considered particularly controversial—such as requiring police officers to wear body cameras by 2025—the SAFE-T Act’s passage officially made Illinois the first state in the nation to abolish cash bail as the standard for pretrial detention. Offenses for which those arrested cannot be held in custody prior to trial include second-degree murder, car-jacking, kidnapping, battery, theft, and selling drugs….