Everything Illinoisans should know about the SAFE-T Act

The omnibus criminal justice reform bill became highly politicized, mixing fact and fiction. Here is where it stands.

Note: This analysis was updated September 2026.

Introduction

The SAFE-T Act has been the source of plenty of controversy, becoming a favorite campaign issue for those skeptical of criminal justice reform broadly and no-cash-bail in particular. Advocates have pushed back, labeling attacks on the bill as cynical fearmongering.

So who is right? While some states have moved toward eliminating cash bail, Illinois was the first to end it statewide. The SAFE-T Act was a flawed piece of legislation that was rushed through the Illinois General Assembly without proper debate, and it required significant amending before it took effect. Even with those changes, the bill could be made better, and we now have some initial findings on how the changes made by the SAFE-T Act have affected defendants and the community so far.

Judges should have more flexibility to detain repeat offenders, to assess the threat to individuals or the community of a defendant charged with a felony, and to take threats against animals and property into account when making their determinations.

The omnibus bill made sweeping changes to how criminal justice operates in Illinois, aside from it eliminating cash bail. The law revised police use-of-force standards and procedures, reformed complaint rules and misconduct proceedings for police officers, amended the police officer certification and decertification process, and reformed both pretrial and correctional proceedings.

Here is a summary of some of the changes to the law beyond cashless bail:

Police reforms

The SAFE-T Act implemented several reforms to policing in the state and how police officers are held accountable for misconduct. The law:

• Restricts the ability of police officers to in cities of over 100,000 people to negotiate residency requirements.
• Gives the Illinois Attorney General additional authority to investigate allegations of civil rights violations committed by police officers.
• Allows anonymous complaints against officers and eliminates the requirement to sign a sworn affidavit.
• Requires the retention of misconduct records and requires increased reporting of crime statistics and use-of-force information by police departments.
• Adds several restrictions to what constitutes a police officer’s justified use of force, including a ban on chokeholds, clarifications on when deadly force is justified and additional requirements for obtaining and executing no-knock warrants.
• Requires all law enforcement agencies to use officer-worn body cameras by 2025.

Correctional reforms 

• Reformed the felony-murder Law so the defendant or someone acting with them must have caused a death in order to be charged with murder.
• Loosened mandatory minimum sentences and supervised-release terms.
• Eliminated “prison gerrymandering” by counting inmates as living in their last known place of residence for the purposes of legislative redistricting.

 Pretrial detention reforms

Contrary to popular belief, the purpose of cash bail is not to detain dangerous suspects but to ensure they show up for court, even if holding people for bail will incidentally prevent defendants from committing additional crimes if they cannot afford to pay. However, pretrial detention with or without bail can bring additional harms, including an increased likelihood of recidivism, which must be weighed against any immediate threat to public safety.

The elimination of cash bail and the amendments to the corresponding pretrial detention provisions are where the SAFE-T Act proved most controversial, and with good reason. Pretrial detention replaces bail to prevent the defendant from fleeing prosecution but also serves to protect the public from the threat posed by dangerous defendants. The provisions ending cash bail were delayed by litigation and became effective later than most of the act.

How does the current law work?

Arrest:

Under previous law, everyone arrested, regardless of offense, was to be taken without unnecessary delay to the nearest judge in the county. The SAFE-T Act changed that by limiting this solely to offenses detainable under Section 110-6.1. This effectively lifted the requirement for arrests in non-detainable offenses, meaning police officers may release suspects in Class A misdemeanors (i.e., simple battery, theft) without them appearing before a judge for a bail or pretrial release hearing. Rather, these defendants would be issued a summons to appear within 21 days.

Initial appearance in court:

Under the previous law, the judge, among other things, determined the bail amount.

Release on recognizance:

Under the previous law, the court had the right to release the defendant on their own recognizance, meaning no bail, given three conditions:

1. If the court unilaterally is confident the defendant will appear as required before or after conviction.
2. If the defendant does not pose a danger to any person or the community.
3. If the defendant complies with all conditions of bond.

Monetary bail was to be set only if no other conditions of release would reasonably assure the defendant’s appearance in court, presuming the person posed no danger to any person or the community and complied with all conditions of bond. The state had the right to appeal any order of release on personal recognizance.

Pretrial release/bail:

The law previously said all persons were bailable with certain exceptions, such as capital offenses, offenses that may have warranted life imprisonment, felony offenses requiring imprisonment, and certain cases in which the defendant posed a real and present threat to anyone’s physical safety.

For bailable offenses, the court was required to account for multiple factors when considering the bail amount, including the nature and circumstances of the charged offense, the motivation for the charged offense, potential gang affiliations of the defendant and the financial resources of the defendant. The amount is to be sufficient to assure compliance but not financially oppressive, considering the status of the defendant.

How does the SAFE-T Act change things? 

Much of the confusion around the SAFE-T Act came from the fact that it imposed multiple layers of standards for pretrial detention contained in three subsections of the pretrial release section of existing law and required prosecutors to prove a defendant poses a threat to a specific, identifiable person to deny pre-trial release. These provisions were amended in subsequent legislation before the law took effect to allow detention in the case of threats posed to any person or the community.

Standard 1: Release on recognizance

Under the current version of the SAFE-T Act, detention can be imposed only if the defendant poses a specific, real and present threat to a person or the community, or has a high likelihood of willful flight.

The phrase “specific, real and present threat” is not defined, and no case law interprets the meaning of the phrase, though “real and present threat” is a standard used in jurisdictions outside of Illinois. However, 725 ILCS 5/110-6.1(g) lists factors to be considered in making such a determination. These include the nature of the offense, the history of the defendant, the identity of threatened persons, statements attributed to the defendant, age and physical condition of the defendant and the victim or complaining witness, whether the defendant has access to a weapon, whether the defendant was on probation, and any factors deemed by the court to have reasonable bearing on the defendant’s propensity for violence.

Standard 2: Detainable offenses

A court may deny pretrial release only if the defendant is charged with a detainable offense and meets the corresponding standard of threat to a person or the community, or the defendant has committed any felony that is not a Class 4 felony — the lowest category of felony that includes drug and property crimes but also includes certain categories of aggravated assault — and has a high likelihood of willful flight to avoid prosecution.

Under this standard, criminal charges under the SAFE-T Act can be broken into three types: those that can be called detainable offenses under 725 ILCS 5/110-6.1, those that are detainable only under the condition that the defendant is proven highly likely to willfully flee if not detained, and those that can be labeled purely non-detainable — even without any evaluation as to whether the defendant poses a threat to a person or the community.

Standard 3: Petition to deny pretrial release

The state has the burden of proving by clear and convincing evidence that (1) there is proof or great presumption that the defendant committed one of the detainable offenses, (2) the defendant poses a threat to any person or to the community, and (3) no conditions on release can mitigate that threat or the likelihood of defendant’s willful flight.

Because Illinois gutted and replaced the bill with a 764-page amendment on the same day it passed, lawmakers could not know what they were voting for. As a result, the law required multiple amendments and was subject to numerous lawsuits.

The General Assembly passed significant amendments to the law before it took effect. That legislation expanded the types of crimes that qualify to keep a person jailed before trial, allowing denial of pretrial release for any forcible felony where the defendant poses a threat to any persons or the community. In the original law, forcible felonies subject to probation could be denied pretrial release only when there was a high likelihood the person would flee. The legislation further removed some of the seeming contradictions by clarifying the procedures required for denial of pretrial release.

Even so, there are reforms that could better protect the public from defendants likely to face new charges while out on release, as the results from the years immediately following the law’s implementation have shown.

Defendants held on a non-detainable offense cannot be denied release no matter the threat they pose to persons or the community or how many times they reoffend. In addition, the law gives no consideration to the threat a defendant might pose to animals or property. It may be true that most defendants charged with crimes non-detainable under the SAFE-T Act should be released, but it is conceivable that some should not. Judges should have more flexibility to make those determinations.

Conclusion 

Cash bail and pretrial detention together impose an often unfair burden on poor defendants while allowing wealthy suspects to go free. Establishing a risk assessment system that mitigates that unfairness is a noble goal. But any such system must be clear and must balance the interests of the defendant with the risk to public safety. While criminal justice reformers were quick to celebrate the SAFE-T Act, the law was rushed through the legislative process. Some of the most important provisions related to eliminating cash bail — those regarding pre-trial detention — required significant reworking and overly restrict the options of judges and prosecutors to keep defendants likely to reoffend off the streets.