Cook County sheriff says chief judge isn't doing job

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart took aim at the county's chief judge, Timothy Evans, this week, claiming Evans is refusing to do his job regarding electronic monitoring at the jail.

Dart made the charge in a legal filing, in an escalation of a campaign Dart has been engaged in for some time to shift responsibility to judges for deciding which inmates are eligible for home detention under electronic monitoring.

Currently, Dart's office picks those inmates. But he claims that in most counties across the country, judges decide because they have more information about the defendant's background and can make a better judgment as to who is a bad risk.

Releasing inmates is a hot topic for two reasons. First, no one wants to get stuck with the responsibility for being the official who released an inmate who went out to murder or rape someone. Second, electronic monitoring is almost a requirement now in Cook County because the jail is close to capacity and is under a federal court order to ease crowding. Home monitoring is one way to do that.

It is in that federal court case, known as the Duran case, that Dart made his accusations Thursday.

"The primary and direct responsibility for reducing the inmate population at the Cook County Department of Corrections rests with the state court judiciary," wrote Dart's lawyers.

"Since April 26, 2007, the sheriff and his staff have had nine separate meetings with the chief judge … or his designees … seeking to obtain meaningful input from the judiciary in the (electronic monitoring) program which is being operated by the sheriff solely due to the failure of the judiciary to act."

Dart's lawyers claim they have proposed six plans to Evans, all of which have been rejected.

The filing notes that Dart has authorized his attorneys to try to add Evans as a defendant in the case if he won't cooperate.

Dart's filing comes at the same time he is under fire in the Duran case for sharply lowering the number of inmates he's allowed out on electronic monitoring.

In January 2006, about 1,500 inmates were on electronic monitoring. In January 2007, there were more than 900. Last month, there were only 419 allowed out, said Charles Fasano, a court monitor at the jail.

Fasano agreed that the judiciary should play some role.

But another advocacy group that's party to the Duran case has taken issue with Dart's unilateral decrease of releases, saying Dart is in violation of the agreement the Duran case produced.

Jail officials and the advocacy groups met in U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall's chambers Friday morning to discuss the situation. The meeting was closed to the media and the public.

Dart's office declined to comment Friday; Evans could not be reached for comment.