Earlier this month, at around 4:30 a.m., Chicago police officers noticed a car with a broken headlight and initiated a stop. The officers spotted a black bag on the floorboard, felt an L-shaped object, according to prosecutors, and found a loaded pistol with a defaced serial number.

The 34-year-old man charged with a gun felony then became one of the newest of the roughly 1,500 people currently on the Cook County sheriff’s office’s electronic monitoring program.

Another approximately 1,900 people are on separate electronic monitoring programs operated under the court system, including one geared toward domestic violence offenses.

Experts and county stakeholders have long criticized the parallel electronic monitoring programs as wasteful, with Cook County as one of the only jurisdictions in the country that splits resources in this way.

“It’s a historical artifact, just that the two programs were created at different times essentially,” said Sarah Staudt, an attorney who consults with the Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice. “It’s fundamentally inefficient.”

Now, the county is making moves to merge the programs under the auspices of the chief judge’s office, rather than the sheriff’s office — a move that Sheriff Tom Dart has long pushed for and Chief Judge Tim Evans has resisted.

The proposed changes follow years of debate about electronic monitoring, with criminal justice reformers advocating for a smaller, more targeted program and contending that — despite some high-profile cases involving monitored defendants — there isn’t much evidence that electronic monitoring has a positive impact on public safety. Dart, on the other hand, has made arguments — often challenged by his critics — that changes in the law have made it harder for his office to safely manage the population.

Proponents of the plan to merge the programs say it will make them more efficient and better aligned with best practices, though Evans has pushed back on claims that a merger would be cheaper.

Last month, the Cook County Board approved an amendment that would move about $6.3 million out of Dart’s budget and into Evans’ adult probation department.

But in a statement to the Tribune, Evans said he projected requiring nearly $37 million to run an effective program, a figure that could set the stage for future budget battles.

Dart’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

Officials have talked loosely about transitioning new detainees out of the sheriff’s program beginning April 1, but few details have been released about a plan for combining a large and complex program that at times generates controversy and heated debate about the appropriate use of the technology.

Stakeholders said they hope to be involved, with opportunities to shape the process. They called for transparency, especially given that the court system is not subject to the same open records laws as the sheriff’s department.

“There are a lot of people on electronic monitoring,” said Stephanie Agnew, co-executive director of the Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts, which has studied the county’s electronic monitoring programs. “It’s going to be a big transition. It’s worth it to make the information more accessible and available to the public.”

Polarizing debates

In 2015, Lavette Mayes was ordered to post a $250,000 bond to be released from jail on electronic monitoring after being charged with aggravated battery following an altercation with a relative, she said. Her attorney was eventually able to get her bond reduced, so she posted the amount and was ordered to the home confinement program.

But before she was released from the Cook County Jail, she had to have major surgery, she said, meaning she left the jail with a need for further medical appointments.

Her lawyers had to go to court multiple times, she said, for her to be allowed movement for her medical care.

“My stitches and staples started growing into my skin,” Mayes says, growing emotional years later.

Advocates point to stories like Mayes’ when arguing about the potential harmful effects of electronic monitoring, which often hinders people from working and can jeopardize their living situations. Public defenders and advocates have long criticized the sheriff’s program for its historically more onerous requirements around movement.

On the other side of the coin, amid polarizing debates about the programs, proponents of harsher detention policies often seize on high-profile cases involving electronic monitoring.

In November, Chicago police Officer Enrique Martínez was killed by a man who had been held on electronic monitoring in Will County for a pending drug case, prosecutors alleged. That same month, Constantin Beldie allegedly killed his estranged wife weeks after a judge ordered him released on electronic monitoring.

During a county budget hearing earlier this year, Dart said the sheriff’s electronic monitoring program was originally for low-level offenders but that as the county started reforming its bail and detention policies in 2017, people charged with what he characterized as more violent offenses were ordered to his program.

“That’s where so many of the challenges came about,” Dart said.

Others, though, question the ability of electronic monitoring to keep the public safer, noting cases like Mayes in which people aren’t able to get basic needs met, which can be a barrier to rehabilitation. Mayes noted that there are hundreds of people on monitoring that need movement to address their needs, and most don’t commit new crimes.

“It’s not a particularly effective way of ensuring people come to court or don’t get rearrested,” Staudt said. “People get rearrested and show up in court at the same rates as people not on electronic monitoring.”

Reports recommend taking steps toward changes

In 2020, the Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts was contracted by the Cook County Justice Advisory Council to take part in a review of the county’s electronic monitoring programs, which at the time were overburdened as judges ordered more releases amid the COVID-19 crisis, which posed particular danger to people incarcerated in the Cook County Jail.

Along with CGL Cos., a private company that designs detention facilities, the organization published a report in 2022 that recommended the county begin to take steps to merge its electronic monitoring programs, calling the current setup inefficient and confusing. They cited siloed programs and communication challenges between programs.

“While some jurisdictions may have separate community supervision programs for sentenced offenders and pretrial detainees, it is highly unusual to have two separate pretrial release programs administered by different agencies which feature heavy use of electronic detention,” the report said. “The development of parallel electronic monitoring programs managed by the Sheriff’s Office and the Office of the Chief Judge respectively impairs coordination of pretrial release programs and increases costs, without providing discernible benefits to the County.”

The report also recommended the county shrink its reliance on electronic monitoring, writing that research shows that defendants on electronic monitoring generally come to court and reoffend at the same rates as people released back into the community.

“Electronic monitoring should be used for short periods of time and focused on select groups of defendants with high-risk characteristics, often in conjunction with mandatory treatment programs,” the report said.

Sharlyn Grace, senior policy adviser at the Cook County public defender’s office, noted that the nonprofit Appleseed organization and CGL Cos. come from opposite spectrums of the criminal justice system but arrived at the same conclusion in the dual report.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “I don’t think anyone would have intentionally designed a program … to have multiple electronic monitoring programs that are actually run through the same contract in the County Board and use by and large the same technology.”

‘The rubber meets the road’

Now, more than two years after the report was published, plans to merge the programs appear closer to reality.

For several hours during an Oct. 29 budget hearing, county commissioners grilled Evans and Dart about electronic monitoring, asking for details about how such a big change would work, and digging into long-running debates about how to use the programs.

The two county leaders came down on different sides. Dart in the past has said that the courts can better manage electronic monitoring programs because judges set the conditions in the first place. And he has criticized aspects of the SAFE-T Act, which he has said inhibits his ability to manage the program.

He noted that his program was created in 1989 out of a mandate to reduce overcrowding in the county jail following a consent decree, a need that no longer exists given that the jail’s population has been falling.

Evans, though, said the sheriff’s office is responsible for detainees, and electronic monitoring is a type of detention.

“You hear the sheriff has announced as of a date in the future he … no longer wants to be in the business of handling electronic monitoring,” Evans told commissioners at the meeting. “I think there is a need for both his system and my system.”

How to manage the electronic monitoring population has long been a political hot potato, with criminal justice reform advocates contending that electronic monitoring further destabilizes people who could otherwise be rehabilitated while those on the other side of the aisle argue for stricter detention policies. And highly publicized offenses committed by electronic monitoring participants at times result in political blowback on the agencies that oversee the programs and/or the court actors involved in the decisions.

In 2018, Dart controversially blocked the release of about 55 suspects who had been ordered released on electronic monitoring because he deemed them too high-risk to leave the jail.

But despite Evans’ objections, the move of electronic monitoring away from Dart and to the courts is a change with otherwise strong support, including by Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle.

“At some point the rubber needs to meet the road,” Cook County Commissioner Bridget Gainer said during the hearings. “We need to make a decision about what we’re doing and then we need to figure out how we’re getting there.”

What’s next

Officials have released few details about the next steps for making these changes, though navigating labor union contracts for personnel who staff the programs will be a critical part of the planning.

Staffers for the sheriff’s electronic monitoring program, represented by Teamsters Local 700, have raised concerns about layoffs. Dart has pledged that staff members would be reassigned, though his staff acknowledged changes could mean the loss of specialty pay.

The Cook County Board of Commissioners has requested regular meetings to discuss the operational changes “to prevent issues or concerns that may jeopardize the safety and security of Cook County residents,” according to a resolution. The board requested that Dart and Evans provide staffers to appear before the criminal justice committee on a monthly basis to discuss progress.

In response to Tribune questions, the chief judge’s office said in a statement that the programs will run in parallel for a time while officials ramp down the sheriff’s program and ramp up the court programs.

Contrary to hopes from stakeholders of a more efficient system, his office is not projecting a cost savings.

According to Evans’ office, the system would need an additional $23.9 million to run an effective program, on top of the current budget of $13 million.

The sheriff’s program is budgeted at just over $24 million.

“After the transition, it is likely that the combined program will have similar costs to the current status quo,” Evans said in the statement, explaining that his programs provide more comprehensive supervision.

Some who work in the criminal justice system, though, hope to use the opportunity to build and refine an electronic monitoring program that hews to best practices.

“I think it’s important to bring all the stakeholders to the table,” said Grace, who noted that the public defender’s office represents most people in the county who are on electronic monitoring.

The Cook County state’s attorney’s office looks “forward to continuing collaboration with our justice partners as new electronic monitoring procedures are introduced,” it said in a statement, noting that newly sworn State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke recently created new policies for seeking detention.

As the process unfolds in coming months, stakeholders called for transparency from the chief judge and sheriff’s offices.

“It is a huge undertaking,” Agnew said, though adding that she is optimistic. “It seems like with a system this big with as many resources as we have, we should be able to make it.”