Toni Preckwinkle wants to get people out of Cook County jail.
She also wants to keep them from going there in the first place. And in the cases where people have to be locked up, Preckwinkle would prefer they limit their stay--and not return.
The Cook County board president says it's a matter of both money and justice. She rattles off a series of numbers she's grown used to wielding in the presence of skeptics: "We spend roughly half a billion dollars on the jail every year. Seventy percent of the people are awaiting trial for nonviolent offenses, and the recidivism rate is about 52 percent ..."
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