Judge, Preckwinkle spar over jail issue

Cook County’s chief judge is taking a swipe at the county board president over the issue of jail overcrowding.

Chief Judge Timothy Evans on Friday issued a statement accusing board President Toni Preckwinkle of being untruthful about what’s causing jail overcrowding.

Preckwinkle has said delays in getting cases through the court system result in people sitting in jail longer than normal waiting for cases to be resolved.

Evans says his office hasn’t received enough funding for a growing workload, or for a stand-alone pretrial services program.

Preckwinkle says her office doesn’t have enough information on whether that would be effective to justify spending the money.

She has said she’ll ask the County Board for permission to oversee the release of some jail inmates on electronic monitoring to ease overcrowding.