Anyone not following closely would have missed the latest maneuver in the long political battle over expensive, dangerous, and illegal overcrowding at the county jail.
The notion that the court and jail system needs reform may be the only point that criminal justice officials agree on. And since most of the problems are out of the public view, officials have felt little urgency to fix them.
The issue has been a political and legal problem at least since the 1970s, when the Cook County Jail was first placed under federal court decrees for violating the rights of defendants because of chronic overcrowding.
Dart and Preckwinkle decided to try shifting responsibility for the release program to Preckwinkle’s office and expanding the criteria so that more detainees are eligible. The move needs approval from the federal court; passage of the resolution by the county board was meant to show that it has broad support.
Bond court judges may be responding already. In recent months they’ve ordered more defendants on electronic monitoring instead of high cash bonds that lead to jail time.
