For more than thirty years, the Cook County Sheriff’s Office has overseen the Electronic Monitoring Program (EM), originally created to reduce jail overcrowding. Over time, the program’s guidelines and scope have changed. Sheriff Tom Dart has announced his intention to discontinue the program.
The EM program was launched in 1989 and was primarily used for non-violent offenders. Currently, there are 1,530 individuals enrolled in the program in Cook County, including one hundred individuals facing charges of murder or attempted murder that occurred before the implementation of the SAFE-T Act. Operating this program costs nearly $24 million annually, and Sheriff Dart believes issues began to emerge two years ago due to changes made as part of the Pre-Trial Fairness Act.
The Cook County Sheriff’s Office is one of the few offices nationwide to operate a program like this; most similar programs are managed through the judicial system. In September, Dart initiated discussions with Cook County Chief Judge Tim Evans, informing him of his plan to discontinue the program effective April 1st and his desire for the courts to take over its management. Evans’ office currently oversees a GPS tracking program for approximately two thousand individuals involved in domestic violence cases and those with court-ordered curfews. This change would effectively merge the two programs.
Teamsters Local 700, the union representing the workers involved in the EM program, opposes this shift in jurisdiction. They believe that if the courts manage the program, the quality of oversight and intervention would significantly decline. Sheriff Dart has stated that the county has agreed to transfer the necessary funds to operate the program to the courts.
