Cook County Jail population down about 700 people

Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart released a year-end report on the Cook County Jail, highlighting efforts to reduce incarceration of people for lower-level, nonviolent offenses because of their inability to post bail.

In November, the sheriff's office began tracking the daily tally of nonviolent, low-level offenders in custody because they cannot pay bond amounts of $1,000 or less and found the number averaged 187 people a day. The sheriff's office solicited on its website for people to help bond out a poor inmate, resulting in 108 people being released.

In addition, 100 people have benefitted from a program that ensures that nonviolent defendants charged with crimes such as retail theft or criminal trespassing will have their cases disposed of within 30 days of assignment to a courtroom or be released pending trial.

The program has a 96 percent success rate in either expedited adjudication or pretrial release, according to a sheriff's office news release. The program is being expanded to include minor traffic offenses and petty drug possession as of Jan. 1.

Such programs have effectively ended overcrowding at the jail, with 7,533 people incarcerated and another 2,181 individuals on electronic monitoring, according to the news release. At this time last year, there were more than 8,200 people behind bars and more than 2,300 people on electronic monitoring.

Dart also offered these statistics on the jail's 2016 operation:

• 94 percent of the people in jail or on electronic monitoring are awaiting trial.

• In 2016, about 1,203 people were "turnarounds," meaning they were convicted and sentenced but spent so much time incarcerated pretrial that their sentence had already been served.

• Many turnarounds served "dead days" - additional days beyond their eventual sentence - equivalent to 251 years of unnecessary incarceration.

• Dead days in 2016 cost taxpayers an estimated $14.7 million in housing costs.

• The jail transported 171,739 people to suburban courthouses for hearings or to Stroger Hospital for medical care.

• The jail employs 4,000 people.

• The jail produced more than 9 million meals, using 138 semi truckloads of milk, 100 semi truckloads of bread, 460 tons of meat and 230 tons of vegetables.

• The jail used 507,918 bars of soap, 54,578 pairs of shoes, 126,941 toothbrushes and 818,300 garbage bags.