The Cook County sheriff’s office is ending its decades-old electronic monitoring program, handing it over to the chief judge amid questions about who will arrest violators and how extra staff will be funded.
Beginning Tuesday, anyone placed on electronic monitoring after being found to be a flight risk or a danger to the public will be overseen by the Adult Probation Department, administered by Cook County Chief Judge Timothy Evans.
The sheriff’s office, which has complained it can no longer safely administer the program, will continue handling its current caseload of people on monitors.
Questions remain about how the Adult Probation Department will scale up its operation, with about 900 new cases expected over the next six months.
Evans’ office says it will need more than 150 new hires, new office space, additional training and more resources to run the expanded operation.
As of Monday evening, Evans’ office said it was still working with the county, the Illinois Supreme Court and the Office of Statewide Pretrial Services to secure resources for training and reimbursement for new hiring.
The chief judge’s office plans to begin hiring additional probation officers in phases, with the hope of being fully staffed by next spring, according to Adult Probation Department officials who spoke before commissioners in March.
Cook County’s 2025 budget includes $6.3 million in funding for the Adult Probation Department but Evans’ office told commissioners it will need closer to $10 million to make the necessary hires for this year.
Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart will still monitor the 1,500 people currently in the electronic monitoring system, but his office expects all those cases to be adjudicated by early September.
In the meantime, unions for both offices are wary of the change.
Anders Lindall, a spokesman for AFSCME Local 31, which oversees the union in the Adult Probation Department, said it would closely watch to ensure employees have the support needed to do their jobs.
“Staffing, resources, safety — that’s where we have our priorities,” Lindall told the Sun-Times. “It’s not enough just to put a person in the chair, you’ve got to make sure that they have everything they need, from training to technology and more to do the job.”
The union will begin formal negotiations over the impact of the switchover in the coming weeks.
Anthony McGee, vice president of the Teamsters Local 700, which represents the sheriff’s office correctional staff, has been highly critical of Dart’s decision to end the program, arguing it is irresponsible and “shows a lack of leadership.”
Unlike members of the sheriff’s office, Evans’ probation officers are not sworn law enforcement and cannot make arrests.
“When people think about electronic monitoring, they think about people just sitting back, watching people’s movement on a computer,” McGee told the Sun-Times. “That’s not really the majority of what they do.
“They assist on fugitive warrants. They assist in conducting search warrants and have patrol responsibilities as well,” he said. “None of the skills that I just mentioned are possessed by an adult probation officer.”
During a hearing before Cook County commissioners in March, Chief Probation Officer Megan Volker said if a probation officer were to come across a violation, they would need to call local law enforcement to make the arrest.
In Chicago, they would call the police, but in unincorporated Cook County they would call the sheriff’s office, according to Volker.
Dart’s office said it has told the chief judge it is “there to support them with any law enforcement services they may need to ensure public safety going forward.”
McGee says the union will be monitoring for any violations of their collective bargaining agreement. Dart’s office says there are about 100 people currently working in their EM unit who will all be offered transition positions.
The sheriff launched the electronic monitoring program in 1989 to reduce overcrowding in the Cook County Jail.
It was intended to monitor “low-level, nonviolent offenders” and ensure they appeared in court, according to a statement from Dart, who said in recent years people with more serious charges were placed under his supervision.
Under the Pre-Trial Fairness Act, which took effect in 2023, all defendants placed on electronic monitoring were given two days of “essential movement” to go shopping, do laundry or take care of other personal needs.
Dart fought strongly against the reform and argued it had rendered his program “largely ineffective.”
Naomi Johnson, co-executive director of the Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts, argued that the restrictive conditions placed on people in the sheriff’s program “amounted to a human rights crisis.”
Lavette Mayes said the 140 days she spent on the sheriff’s monitoring program before the “essential movement” policy was “horrific.” She said she struggled to care for her children and make necessary doctors’ appointments.
“It’s not freedom, It’s still a part of being incarcerated and it’s even more difficult because you don’t know where your next meal is going to come from, you’re not working,” Mayes told the Sun-Times. “It becomes a thing for just trying to live, just trying to do that, so it makes it difficult for you to even fight a case because you don’t have any movement, you can’t even help yourself.”
A 2022 study conducted by Chicago Appleseed recommended the consolidation of the two programs under the chief judge’s office or a statewide Office of Pretrial Services.
The legal advocacy group argued that while “neither program is perfect,” the chief judge’s was “less harmful” and “provides a better model for a pretrial release monitoring program.”
The public defender’s office has also been in support of the shift, which it says will bring Cook County into alignment with how the rest of the state operates, including the 81 counties overseen by the Office of Statewide Pretrial Services
Sharlyn Grace, a representative of the public defender’s office, was critical of previous “draconian policies” and said she would be monitoring the transition to ensure the operation does “not return to that kind of system.”
The chief judge’s office currently monitors about 2,300 defendants placed on a curfew by a judge or facing domestic violence charges and are banned from entering certain protected zones, according to Jordan Boulger of the Adult Probation Department.
The chief judge’s office expects its EM population to grow by more than 900 people over the next six months, which would bring them up to 3,200 people.
To become a 24-hour operation like the sheriff’s office — which can activate devices and respond to alerts at any time —the chief judge’s office said it would need to nearly triple the number of officers in its home confinement unit, adding 83 new hires to the 39 officers and 9 supervisors already employed.
This would require moving the unit to a new facility because its current location is “bursting at the seams already,” Boulger said during a March hearing before commissioners.
Boulger said they planned to make the move over the summer, but the office did not provide additional information on its location or funding.
The chief judge will also need to add 70 new staff members to its Pre-Trial Services division, positions that involve regular reporting to probation officers, sending court date reminders and resource referrals.
All people in Evan’s program will have an assigned pretrial service officer, which will increase the division’s caseload from 6,400 to 7,300 over the next six months.
The chief judge’s office said it has reached out to the Office of Statewide Pretrial Services for reimbursement for those positions, but a spokesperson said they were still working on the request.