New state’s attorney vows to seek pre-trial detention for all violent crimes. How different is that policy from Kim Foxx’s? We found out.

Eileen O’Neill Burke and Kim Foxx (justiceforcookcounty.com, Twitter, pngtree)

CHICAGO — Within hours of taking office as the new Cook County State’s Attorney this month, Eileen O’Neill Burke and her team announced some new ground rules for how prosecutors will handle their most serious cases.

She also promised to start charging all retail thefts of more than $300 as felonies. State law sets that limit, but her predecessor, Kim Foxx, decided to put the felony bar at $1,000. So far, our court watchers can confirm that prosecutors are following the new policy.

In a press release, O’Neill Burke’s office enumerated a lengthy list of crimes that will automatically prompt prosecutors in her office to ask a judge to keep the defendant in jail. Among the crimes listed were murder, carjacking, armed robbery, home invasion, aggravated battery of a child, domestics involving a weapon, and any detainable felon offense where a defendant is accused of using or possessing a ghost gun, extended magazine, or machine gun.

When the retired appellate court justice memo circulated online, it generated many responses from people who believe the new policies would be significantly tougher on criminals than Foxx’s administration.

But is it? We decided to look deeper to see how frequently prosecutors in Foxx’s administration sought detention for some of the crimes O’Neill Burke said would automatically result in detention requests “effective immediately.”

It’s worth noting that we only found four qualifying hate crime cases since cash bail ended. We did not include aggravated battery of a child in the grid because we only found three qualifying cases. Prosecutors requested detention in two cases, and both requests were denied. There were only four qualifying hate crime cases.

As you can see in the chart above, Foxx’s prosecutors generally requested detention for most major crimes.

By volume, the crimes that will see significantly more detention requests under Burke’s policy are detainable crimes committed on the CTA and machine gun possession.

And there’s another commonly filed complaint that will result in significantly more detention requests under the new administration: O’Neill Burke’s memo promised to seek detention for all sex offenses where the “victim was under the age of 13 and the offender was an adult throughout the duration of the offense.”

That sounds like a natural for detention, right?

You may be surprised to learn that the majority of sexual assault cases filed in the city involve child victims. You’ll probably be even more surprised to learn that, in our random sampling, prosecutors only sought detention in 83% of cases where the victims were under 13. And judges only granted 42% of those requests.

Why? Based on our experience observing thousands of bond and detention hearings, these kinds of cases are typically not random attacks involving strangers. The accused are very often relatives. With some regularity, the allegations involve crimes alleged to have occurred many years ago. It’s not unusual for the accused to have little or no other criminal background. So, judges find themselves weighing all of that as they decide about detention. Most of the time, they opt to send the defendants home, usually with orders to stay away from anyone under 18 and sometimes with an ankle monitor.

By asking for detention in 100% of serious crimes, O’Neill Burke moves all responsibility for a defendant’s release to the judge. That’s smart politically. Whether it will result in judges granting detention requests more often remains to be seen.

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