Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart says his office’s electronic monitoring program, in place for more than three decades, will come to an end next year.
Instead, Dart is aiming to have Chief Judge Timothy Evans’ circuit court fold the sheriff’s office’s program into its own purview beginning in April 2025.
Dart cited safety concerns when discussing his reasoning behind ending the program.
“We can’t look people in the eye and say ‘this is an effective, responsible program right now,’” he said. “We don’t want to perpetuate this notion that this program is safe and secure.”
Dart says most other programs are overseen by the court system, and he says Cook County needs to join those ranks.
“The judiciary and every other jurisdiction in this country are the ones that administer home monitoring,” he said. “They should probably be doing this.”
The program initially only allowed low-level, non-violent offenders to be placed on electronic monitoring, but in recent years has begun allowing more individuals to participate, even some charged with murder.
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Dart criticized the Illinois General Assembly for a policy change allowing for electronic monitors to be turned off at times.
“We tried to alert everyone that this was reckless,” he said. “We tried to explain to people that it needs to be changed back to where if you’re on home monitoring, it means you stay in your house unless you’re going to school or going to work, which we would let people do all the time, and they just had no interest in it.”
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Sharone Mitchell with the Cook County Public Defender’s Office said that whether those awaiting trial are put into the sheriff’s program or the chief judge’s program, one needs to exist for their clients.
“When people are accused of offense, they are innocent until proven guilty, and pretrial programming should allow for the person to be able to do the things that they need to do to survive and provide for their family while getting to court,” Mitchell said.
Dart agrees, and says the office is working with individuals whose cases are still pending. He hopes the transition between programs is a smooth one.
“There’ll be a bit more scrutiny of it, and clearly having two systems was always sort of puzzling anyway,” he said.
