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While announcing plans to send National Guard troops into the country’s capital, the Trump administration spread falsehoods about crime in Washington, D.C., as well as legal system measures like Illinois’s bail reform.
During his remarks at the White House, Trump claimed that “every place in the country where you have no cash bail is a disaster.”
“Somebody murders somebody, and they’re out on no cash bail before the day is out,” Trump said. “We’re going to end that in Chicago.”
In 2021, the Illinois state legislature passed the Pretrial Fairness Act, which eliminated cash bail in the state and replaced it with individual assessments to determine a person’s pre-trial conditions. This new system means that “people who pose a threat to their community will not be able to purchase their release,” Allie Preston, a senior policy analyst for the Center for American Progress, wrote in a report on the legislation.
The overwhelming majority of people involved in the criminal legal system live in poverty, “[a]s a result many people are held in jail on bail amounts as low as $250 or $500,” she wrote.
“People often must rely on family members and friends to supply bail money, thus spreading the economic impacts across families and communities,” she continued. “It is not uncommon for people to have to forgo paying for electricity, food, or...
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