Want to know what CCBF is up to in 2023? Join our upcoming teach-in next Monday, February 27 to learn important updates about our work. RSVP here today and join us!

As some of you may know, the implementation of the Pretrial Fairness Act, which would have abolished money bond on January 1st, has been delayed by a court order that came mere hours before the law was set to go into effect. This is obviously deeply upsetting, as every minute the  Pretrial Fairness Act is stalled means more people spending more time in inhumane jail conditions instead of working to heal from incarceration in freedom, family, or community.

The Coalition to End Money Bond remains confident that the Illinois Supreme Court will reaffirm the constitutionality of the  Pretrial Fairness Act and that money bond will end. However, a decision may not come until late spring or early summer — if you’d like to learn more about the specifics of the court challenge, you can read the Coalition’s blog post here, and see their Twitter for updates The rest of this post will be about the changes that CCBF’s  revolving fund is making in response to these unfortunate developments.

Due to financial capacity, we sadly cannot accept new general requests for support at this time. In anticipation of the elimination of the money bond on January 1, 2023, we provided more support than usual towards the end of 2022. As a result, we’re operating with more limited resources. We are currently working through existing requests and will pay a limited number of bonds, predominantly for referrals of individuals with extenuating circumstances from community partners.

We now have an informational hotline (1-844-END-BOND) where we will provide anyone seeking support referrals to other services, a brief orientation to the pretrial legal process, and information on the changing status of pretrial detention. We invite you to use the resources at the bottom of our Revolving Fund website page linked here and share them with your community.

We will re-evaluate our policies on a quarterly basis as court cases resolve and bond money is returned to our fund. We’ll keep everyone updated if our policies change due to such developments.

Thank you all for bearing with us as we navigate these complicated times. We’re committed to continuing our work to support people getting out of jail and rejoining community, as well as fighting pretrial detention, electronic monitoring, and all incarceration. We look forward to the near future, when we believe money bond will finally end in Illinois, as rightly demanded by the years-long statewide movement for decarceration and an end to wealth-based jailing.