Cook County Chief Judge Charles Beach explains changes coming to electronic monitoring program
Changes are coming to Cook County's electronic monitoring system starting this weekend. They are aimed at making the system more effective in flagging people who violate the terms of their release.
In an exclusive interview with CBS News Chicago, Cook County Chief Judge Charles Beach II explained how the changes will be implemented logistically and how they'll make Cook County safer.
"I call them improvements," he said.
Beach became chief judge of the Circuit Court of Cook County on Dec. 1. Months earlier, his office had taken over sole responsibility for the county's electronic monitoring program, after the sheriff's office ended its own program.
"The reality is is that the electronic monitoring system will tell us if the person is wearing the band, where they're at every minute of the day, every minute. So it's a fair way of keeping track on someone until they cut the band, remove the band, mess with the band, and then you can't," Beach said.
Shortly after he took office, Beach ordered an urgent review of the EM program, after a man with an ankle bracelet was accused of setting a woman on fire on a CTA Blue Line train, after repeatedly violating his monitoring in the days leading up to the attack.
"How do we make this better? How do we improve it for public safety? How do we improve it for the process that it is?" Beach said.
Last week, his office outlined changes aimed at more quickly tracking down violators.
Starting on Saturday, if someone on electronic monitoring is somewhere they're not supposed to be for three hours or longer, that will trigger a "major violation." Previously, the threshold for a major violation was 48 hours.
"Someone is away from their home for three hours when they should be in their home, we go up we go out and investigate why," Beach said.
Those alerts will then go before judge handling that violator's case on a 24/7 basis, whereas before that turnaround time was only happening on weekdays.
So, if someone was caught violating on a Friday evening, Beach said, "under the old system, Monday morning would be when it would go into court and see a judge."
"I felt that was too long," Beach said.
That judge would decide if police need to be involved and if that person would need to be brought back into court.
If a judge issues an arrest warrant in response to a major violation, the Cook County Sheriff's Office has agreed to expedite service of the warrant, and the Cook County Circuit Court Clerk's Office has agreed to place that case on the judge's court call within 24 hours.
"Ultimately, that is what we're doing right now, is making things work faster or bringing people back to court quicker. We're evaluating things quicker," Beach said.
The judge said his office needs to add more staff to help make that happen, and the hiring process already has begun.
Beach's office said they need 153 new hires to implement the new procedures. So far, they have hired and trained 92 people. A new class of 25 begins in late March, and their goal is to have everyone working by this summer.