{"id":433,"date":"2025-09-05T13:01:03","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T13:01:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/attorneycalendar.com\/?p=433"},"modified":"2025-09-09T11:34:14","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T11:34:14","slug":"trump-threatens-pretrial-fairness-in-a-push-that-only-protects-wealthy-bondsmen-opinion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/attorneycalendar.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/05\/trump-threatens-pretrial-fairness-in-a-push-that-only-protects-wealthy-bondsmen-opinion\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump threatens pretrial fairness in a push that only protects wealthy bondsmen (Opinion)"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week, President Donald Trump took aim at Illinois\u2019 Pretrial Fairness Act<\/a>, which ended cash bail in the state in 2023. Trump pledged to repeal the Act and deploy the national guard as an occupying police force in Chicago<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no surprise that Trump used false claims and fearmongering<\/a> to vilify the thoughtful pretrial reform law in Illinois. After all, the early success of this reform threatens a key deception Trump relies on for coalescing his power \u2013 that more people in cages will make us safer.<\/p>\n

For some context, most people jailed in the United States, including in Colorado, are accused and not convicted of a crime and are in jail only because they cannot pay the money bail required for their freedom. Cash bail is a poverty test with dire consequences: poor people remain jailed pretrial, often losing their jobs, their housing, custody of children, and connections with services. People with money buy their freedom, keep their jobs and housing, take care of their families and see far better case outcomes.<\/p>\n

Our cash bail system, where wealth determines freedom, is a scourge on the moral fabric of this country and this state. It does nothing to increase community safety, and it further destabilizes and impoverishes our most vulnerable communities.<\/p>\n

But in Illinois, because of the Pretrial Fairness Act, money no longer determines pretrial freedom \u2014 judges now decide about pretrial release or detention through transparent hearings. While facts may not matter to the Trump administration, Coloradans should know Illinois has ended cash bail with strong results: jail populations are down, crime is down, court appearance rates are steady, and poor families no longer must pool scarce resources and forego rent and food to buy freedom for their kin.<\/p>\n

The results in Illinois are positive, but not surprising. Cash bail has\u00a0never kept our communities safe, because money is a terrible proxy for safety. People who are jailed pretrial on cash bail are not more dangerous, they are simply more poor.<\/p>\n

Likewise, more than a decade of data from\u00a0across the nation, including in\u00a0Denver\u00a0and\u00a0Jefferson County, show that the vast majority of people released on pretrial bond (regardless of whether released with or without payment of money) come to their court dates, resolve their cases, and are not rearrested.<\/p>\n

Accusations of violent crime while on pretrial release are rare, although those incidents play an outsized role in the media. The extraordinarily commonplace story of pretrial \u201csuccess\u201d doesn\u2019t qualify as clickbait and is rarely reported.<\/p>\n