State\u2019s attorneys from Kane, Kendall and DuPage counties are voicing concerns the Safety, Accountability, Fairness and Equity-Today Act signed into law last year by Gov. JB Pritzker could result in more violent criminals roaming free.<\/p>\n
They talked about their concerns during a forum Thursday night at the Eola Community Center in Aurora. The forum was hosted by State Sen. Linda Holmes, D-Aurora.<\/p>\n
Their concerns center around the elimination of the state\u2019s cash bail system effective Jan. 1, 2023. They are worried the way the new law is written, prosecutors have little say in who can be kept in custody.<\/p>\n
Kane County State\u2019s Attorney Jamie Mosser was elected in the fall of 2020, a few months before the SAFE-T Act was passed by the Illinois General Assembly in January 2021.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was one of the opponents to it when it came out,\u201d she said. \u201cI am very much in favor of criminal justice reform, but I\u2019m in favor of criminal justice reform as guided by public safety.\u201d<\/p>\n
She has been working with other state\u2019s attorney\u2019s and state legislators to fix aspects of the SAFE\u2013T Act. Mosser said she is in favor of abolishing cash bail, although she said the legislation needs to be rewritten to prevent violent offenders from being released.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe that if you are a danger to our community, you should be held in jail,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd just because you have money doesn\u2019t mean you should be able to bond out. But if you are not a danger and you\u2019re being told that you have to post money and you don\u2019t have that, keeping you in jail is not fair either. So there is a way to do this the right way.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a letter she wrote to state legislators last year, she criticized the language in the bill as \u201cpreventing judges from holding an offender with multiple DUIs, drug dealers and people who illegally possess or shoot guns when we can\u2019t identify a threat to a person or persons.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kendall County State\u2019s Attorney Eric Weis and DuPage County State\u2019s Attorney Bob Berlin also voiced their concerns about the SAFE-T Act.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can put whatever title you want on a bill,\u201d Weis said. \u201cThe SAFE-T Act. Sounds great. Who\u2019s not in favor of safety? Who\u2019s not in favor of pre-trial fairness? How could you not be in favor of that? But when that fairness jeopardizes victims, when that fairness jeopardizes residents of our community and when it jeopardizes law enforcement, that\u2019s when you have to take a step back and look at what are we actually doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Weis said the way the bill is currently drafted, \u201cviolent criminals are going to get out.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAs prosecutors, we have to show a specific threat to hold that person,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd it seems very odd that if you\u2019re successful in murdering somebody, you can get out, but if I wasn\u2019t successful, if I didn\u2019t shoot well enough and the person didn\u2019t die, I can be held\u2026We all know that the right thing to do is to correct this so that we can address the concerns that we as prosecutors have to keep our residents safe, our victims safe, but also allow those who don\u2019t need to be in custody to be released on electronic monitoring or home confinement or something that allows them to continue to be productive members of society.\u201d<\/p>\n
He hopes that state legislators can make changes to the SAFE-T Act sooner rather than later.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully they will do so before something bad has to happen for us to then have to react to it and then try to change the law later,\u201d Weis said.<\/p>\n DuPage County State’s Attorney Bob Berlin, right, spoke at a forum Thursday hosted by State. Sen. Linda Holmes, left. <\/span>(Eric Schelkopf)<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n As Berlin noted, a violent crime can affect an entire community.<\/p>\n \u201cTake for instance, the December shooting at Oakbrook Mall two days before Christmas,\u201d he said. \u201cI hear from so many people in the community that are now afraid to go to that mall. That\u2019s the kind of impact that a shooting has on an entire community.\u201d<\/p>\n Berlin was concerned about more violent criminals being in a community because of the new law.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd research has shown that many of them reoffend, and that\u2019s really unfortunate,\u201d he said. \u2018We\u2019re hoping that we can fix that.\u201d<\/p>\n Holmes said she does like some of the measures in the bill, especially when it comes to mental health and crisis intervention.<\/p>\n \u201cWith the police that I\u2019ve talked to, they would be happy to have a mental health professional go on these domestic calls with them when somebody seems to need that sort of assistance,\u201d she said. \u201cBut by the same token, you wouldn\u2019t want just a mental health specialist going into these situations without having the backup of the police.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"DuPage](\"https:\/\/www.shawlocal.com\/resizer\/0rsHNl0DNSd5JuSPwgk_5pJns_U=\/1440x0\/filters:format(jpg):quality(70)\/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com\/shawmedia\/NYS4Z4XC2JAUPBTD5AFMIVG3BQ.jpg\")
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