Maintaining Accountability Without Cash Bail In Illinois

As you are probably aware, the Illinois Supreme Court recently struck down challenges to the SAFE-T Act, effectively making Illinois a no-bail state as of September 18, 2023. Courts across 102 counties are now scrambling to understand how this ruling will impact them. For more details about the decision and its impacts here: No Cash Bail in the Land of Lincoln

While Illinois isn’t the first state to eliminate cash bail, it’s by far the largest. The state has created a new Office of Statewide Pretrial Services, but it’s still in the very early stages. That office currently expects to provide electronic monitoring for fewer than 750 defendants in 2023.

What does the road ahead look like for Illinois courts? Missouri May Offer Clues

In 2019, the Missouri Supreme Court significantly limited the use of monetary bail in Missouri.  While the Court did not fully eliminate monetary bail, it did substantially change both the longstanding substance and the procedures governing pre-trial release across the entire state with the explicit goal to ensure that those accused of a crime are fairly treated according to the law and not their pocketbook.

As in Illinois, not everyone agreed with the change—over 80 Missouri legislators wrote a letter complaining—and many had concerns over public safety and the procedural burdens to the trial courts and county jails.  

To address these concerns, Missouri began implementing the RePath mobile supervision program in 2021.  RePath is a mobile supervision platform that provides accountability, assistance, and data to improve the process in community corrections for the participant, the agency, and the state.  Over the past two years, RePath has helped agencies across the state deal with the challenges of pre-trial release in the era of bail reform and delivered unexpected positive results across the board.

Hear what officials in Joplin, MO said about their pre-trial supervision program:

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Mobile Supervision Adoption in Missouri

Courts across the state have ordered RePath mobile supervision on over 16,000 individuals in 37 of Missouri’s 46 judicial circuits, in 92 counties, and in over 130 different agencies including pre-trial, treatment court, DWI court, juvenile court, juvenile probation, juvenile diversion, truancy court, co-occurring court, veteran’s court, mental health court, and family court. 

Over the past two years, a new court agency in Missouri has signed up for RePath every 5.4 days.

RePath has already supervised more individuals than are currently ordered on state parole and supervises 3x more individuals with location monitoring than state probation and parole combined.  Missouri courts will order more individuals to RePath supervision this year than:

• New prison admissions

• Returns to prison from probation and parole

• New parole supervisions

Financial Impact for Pre-Trial Incarceration

In Missouri, the state shares the costs of pre-trial incarceration with the circuit courts for individuals eventually convicted of a felony.  RePath has helped reduce these costs significantly.   

St. Louis County (21^st Circuit) is the most populous in the state and also has the most participants on RePath.  Even with a large spike in reimbursement over the past fiscal year (due to lingering Covid-19 effect), St. Louis County has reduced its reimbursements by over $4.3 million when compared to the prior two years that it did not use RePath.

Since starting using RePath on every pre-trial defendant, St. Louis County has only requested 10.1% of the total state requests even though it represents 16.25% of the population (62% of expected).  

Over the same period, Greene County, which does not use RePath in pre-trial, showed no decline in reimbursements.  Greene County is the 4^th most populous in the state and it represents 4.9% of the state’s population. However, its reimbursement requests stubbornly remain at 9.3% of the whole (190% of expected). This discrepancy holds true across the state for circuits that fully utilize RePath in pre-trial.

*The 36^th Circuit signed the agreement to start using RePath on July 5, 2023.

Other Positive Outcomes of Pre-Trial Mobile Supervision

Missouri’s courts have reported numerous benefits since rolling out RePath for pre-trial supervision, including reductions in failures to appear and use of expensive ankle monitors by more than 50%. 

The results exceed any prediction or expectation.  Missouri’s 40th Circuit (McDonald and Newton Counties) reports that it had no money for a pre-trial program so it built the program around RePath.  The pre-trial and treatment courts staff found that participants immediately started making better choices with RePath and that each little improvement made a massive difference in results.  After a year, failures to appear and warrants dropped by over 50%, and rearrests have plummeted to 4%.  The circuit, which has a total population of well under 100,000 residents, reports savings of over $1M since using RePath.  Because of this savings, the circuit has been able to increase funding for its pretrial program, including its successful treatment courts.

Put simply, judges across the state are using RePath more and more because it works.  It provides accountability, assistance, and data that the courts simply could not have any other way.  And they (and their staff) have told us why they use RePath:

• “eHawk’s user-friendly RePath platform has continued to reduce recidivism by keeping individuals out of jail. The program is also saving the County and State the expenses they would usually spend on housing individuals.”
• “It’s the first thing I do every morning: open my computer and go to the RePath Officer Dashboard, I simply would not have the ability to manage this large of a caseload as effectively without RePath.”
• “Without RePath, we would barely have a program. We simply don’t have resources to do this another way.”
• “RePath is super easy, very efficient and everybody is very helpful. I never thought our people would tell us as much as they do. RePath has opened up the line of communications. We love it and it has been very effective for us."
• "We love it. It's the best thing that has happened for our treatment court."
• "We simply do not have the space to keep people in jail. We are over-crowded. RePath gives us information in real time which allows us to get people out of jail that we otherwise would not be able to."
• "We are getting information about where they are going that we never could have gotten before."

Many Paths Forward in Illinois

Illinois faces a number of decisions with the September deadline looming. In Missouri, circuit courts that have implemented RePath’s mobile supervision have increased their supervision capacity, reduced jail days, and increased accountability.  Implementation is completed for each agency in days and no integration of technology is required.  The program is simply ready to go for any agency at any time and it has worked in urban, suburban, and rural areas.  The same can hold true for all Illinois agencies that have to adapt so quickly to the new rules.

Ready to learn more about RePath? Let's Schedule a Demo to discuss how RePath can help your court put more people back on the right path.