Executive Summary
The Safety, Accountability, Fairness and Equity-Today Act (SAFE-T Act) is omnibus criminal justice reform legislation passed by the Illinois General Assembly. This report is the one part of a series of issue briefs relying on research, analysis, and investigation to evaluate the impact of the SAFE-T Act’s reforms related to policing behavior and public safety.
Throughout the history of policing in the United States, police officers have had the power to use physical force against individuals to carry out their duties. This immense power has been ambiguously defined and created opportunities for abuse, particularly against Black and other marginalized people.
Passed in 2021, the SAFE-T Act established a more defined use-of-force policy, with affirmative duties to assist injured people and intervene against excessive force, and new requirements for reporting. Evaluating the implementation of the Act is an important step to assessing whether the intended reforms have become reality. Impact for Equity found that among sampled ten Illinois law enforcement agencies implementation has been uneven. Of ten law enforcement agencies reviewed, only one completely adopted the new use-of-force policies. In other agencies’ policies, we found that key provisions of the new standards were not included or contained additional exceptions or outdated requirements. And while public sources reveal that most agencies across Illinois report use-of-force and deaths-in-custody data to state authorities, the usefulness of that reporting is limited by missing data.
