Public defense reform advances as Illinois moves to hire statewide
public defender
[September 12, 2026]
By Hannah Meisel
The overhaul, one part of the SAFE-T Act lawmakers approved in early
2021, mandated an entirely new — and in many cases, much faster —
process for arrestees to get in front of a judge for an initial hearing
in order to quickly evaluate who should stay in jail and who should be
released to wait for a next court date.
As a result, proponents argued, defendants charged with low-level crimes
would no longer face life-altering consequences like losing their jobs,
home or parental rights just because they were unable to afford bail,
while those arrested for violent crimes like domestic battery wouldn’t
be able to buy their way out of jail.
But the September 2023 implementation of the Pretrial Fairness Act
revealed glaring disparities in resources afforded to public defenders
across the state versus their prosecutorial counterparts in Illinois’
102 county state’s attorney offices.
At the time, Illinois was one of only seven states at the time without
any oversight mechanism for monitoring how effectively counties’ court
systems help defendants exercise their right to counsel for trial via
the public defender’s office, according to a 2021 study commissioned by
the Illinois Supreme Court. Additionally, Illinois left funding for
public defenders entirely up to counties instead of incorporating costs
into the state budget.
The Pretrial Fairness Act requires more in-depth evidence and arguments
during first appearance hearings than under the old bond system, where
first appearance hearings often lasted just a few minutes while a judge
set bail. Now detention hearings are required to take place within 72
hours of an arrest, meaning public defender services are often needed
right away to review early evidence in cases.
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Charles Mulligan's "Justice and Power" statue is pictured outside
the Illinois Supreme Court building in Springfield. (Capitol News
Illinois file photo)
But now after a two-year legislative process to create the Office of
Statewide Public Defender, the Illinois Supreme Court is finally moving
toward hiring for the position.
In an official job posting this week, the qualifications and duties of
the statewide public defender are laid out, including the mandate to
standardize county public defender practices, workloads and salary
scales. Recruitment and retention for these jobs has been a difficult
barrier, especially as rural areas have long faced attorney shortages
more broadly.
The initial statewide public defender will serve a two-year term and
receive a salary of $218,400 — equal to that of Attorney General Kwame
Raoul, an elected constitutional officer. The parity is required by the
2025 law creating the office, as is a raise for public defender
employees across the state to compete with prosecutors employed by the
state’s attorney’s office in the same county.
The application deadline is Oct. 9, and an appointed commission
finalized earlier this year will review candidates and make a final
decision in order for the statewide public defender to begin the job
Jan. 1.
Capitol News Illinois
is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state
government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded
primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick
Foundation. |
