[qingcharles]

One other point about Cook County in particular. Not only is it regularly listed as the biggest single-site jail in the country, but it usually has the longest-serving detainees who have yet to reach trial.

Augustin Toscano has so far spent 14 years in pretrial detention without conviction and no sign of trial in the near future. He is not an outlier. There are dozens near or over a decade inside CCJ.

[x1798DE]

> He is not an outlier.

According to [1] the average pre-trial detention in Cook County was 51 days in 2017-2019 and 76 in 2020-2021. Searching for Agustín Toscano I see many references to him being the detainee with the longest pre-trial period, so I think he actually is a pretty dramatic outlier. Though it is true that according to [2] there are at least two other people on murder charges with similarly long pre-trial detention periods.

Which is not to say that it isn't horrible to be even a few weeks in pre-trial detention let alone 51 days, but I don't think 14 years is a particularly regular occurrence.

1. https://loyolaccj.org/blog/pfa-jail 2. https://www.chicagotribune.com/2023/12/31/stalled-justice-sl...

[qingcharles]

The stats are bullshit, and here's why. I did a deposition with the director once. I asked him why the conditions at the jail are so repugnant. He stated that since they are such a very short-term facility (based on the stats you've seen) that there was no need for better conditions.

So, we dug into the stats. Turns out those stats are heavily skewed by recording the vast majority of criminal defendants who bond out in the first 24, 48 hours. Certainly within 7 days. A lot of people (in the past) were cycled through the doors on petty traffic offenses, trespassing, drunkeness etc. This hides the thousands who end up stuck for months and years inside the jail.