Officials reflect on one year of pretrial fairness

“We’re one year in and overall it’s been a lot smoother process than we imagined,” Randolph County Circuit Judge Jeremy Walker told the North County News recently when discussing on the one year anniversary of the Pretrial Fairness Act.

The Pretrial Fairness Act – a part of the Safety, Accountability, Fairness and Equity-Today (SAFE-T) Act – is the portion that concerned cash bail.

The SAFE-T Act overall was controversial, starting with the fact it was very quickly passed in the early morning hours of Jan. 13, 2021 during a lame duck session and was slated to go into effect on Jan. 1, 2023.

By the fall of 2022, numerous lawsuits had been filed against the state concerning the act, saying it was unconstitutional. These lawsuits were combined into one suit and in December of that year, a Kankakee County Circuit Judge had deemed the SAFE-T Act as unconstitutional.

For more on the SAFE-T Act, please see this week’s print edition.