The top prosecutor in Cook County, Illinois, has sounded the alarm about the county’s electronic monitoring system for over a year, and two of her most striking claims have painted a picture that’s alarming Chicagoans.
In a March 2025 interview on the Legal Talk Network’s “@theBar” podcast, State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke first raised the issue of “furlough days,” a provision in Illinois’ SAFE-T Act that gives people on electronic monitoring two days a week free from active tracking.
Asked whether defendants could simply leave the state during those windows, Burke didn’t mince words: “They can go anywhere if they’re on their two furlough days.”
At the time, she said roughly 140 people charged with murder or attempted murder had been on electronic monitoring within the prior six months, which she called impossible to justify given the severity of those charges.
More than a year later, in an August 2026 interview with podcaster Landon Campbell, Burke returned to the subject with updated and more specific numbers. According to figures her office says it received from the Chief Judge’s Office, 87 people charged with murder or attempted murder and 181 people charged with sexual assault were currently on electronic monitoring in Cook County. She also said over 300 people, 10-12% of the roughly 3,200 defendants who were supposed to be on monitoring, were unaccounted for, calling it a system where officials “have no idea where they are.”
Those figures have moved around considerably over time. A chief judge’s dashboard in spring 2026 showed a combined 34 people facing murder or attempted murder charges, while a separate report on the program’s population as of June 1, 2026, put the AWOL rate closer to 10% of just over 3,000 participants.
Burke has also been clear about one nuance that often gets lost: the two furlough days aren’t a fixed allotment but a statutory minimum. The law requires at least two unmonitored days a week, not a maximum of two.
The situation grew more chaotic when Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart handed the entire electronic monitoring operation over to the chief judge’s office, effective April 2025. The catch: the chief judge’s pretrial services staff aren’t law enforcement and don’t have arrest powers. If someone cuts off an ankle bracelet or skips out on their restrictions, staff has to notify police or seek a warrant through the courts, and there’s no dedicated system in place for which agency actually goes and makes the arrest.
While Burke’s comments conjure an image of ankle bracelets that simply switch off for a weekend in Vegas, the underlying law is a bit more nuanced but still troubling. Under Illinois law and Cook County Sheriff’s Office policy, defendants on pretrial home confinement don’t get a literal blank check to leave the jurisdiction. The “essential movement” provision is meant for things like court dates, medical appointments, job hunting, and groceries. In Cook County, this typically takes the form of a fixed weekly schedule. Depending on their booking number, participants get either Monday/Wednesday or Tuesday/Thursday from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. free of active monitoring.
The GPS ankle bracelets are never actually powered off; they log location data around the clock. The real gap is in enforcement. As far back as 2022, Sheriff Dart’s office maintained that the law prohibited deputies from actively watching a participant’s live movements during those approved furlough hours, even though the device kept recording. That interpretation has essentially persisted as responsibility shifted from the sheriff to the chief judge’s office.
So while an accused murderer can’t legally hop a flight to Vegas without violating the terms of release, nobody is actively watching in real time where they go during their furlough hours.
It’s an administrative gap that has left prosecutors frustrated, law enforcement without a clear enforcement mechanism, and residents wondering who is keeping track.
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