Madison County felony prosecutions so far in 2025 exceed 2024 total

by Randy Pierce • Prosecutions of criminal offenders by the Madison County State’s Attorney’s staff during the first 10 months of the current calendar year have exceeded those occurring in all of 2024.

In reporting this information to the county board judiciary committee earlier this month, State’s Attorney Tom Haine was quick to note, “That’s not due to some major uptick in crime. It’s just due to continued working with our law enforcement and making sure that we have a quick turnaround on those cases and we can take an aggressive posture.”

Earlier in this presentation, Haine told the committee members, “Our ethos is we want to put repeat violent offenders behind bars for as long as possible, so they stop victimizing our community.”

Sharing that he feels “the team (in his office) is doing a very good job at that. I’m so very proud of the team we’ve assembled,” Haine said there were 3,000 such felony charge cases from January through December in 2024 and more than that total already through the end of October this year.

In adding that he believes everyone involved in this effort will be very busy for the coming year, Haine concluded, “We’re happy to do it because we know it makes an impact.”

When providing a report containing similar figures on behalf of the sheriff’s department to the same committee, its deputy chief, Marcos Pulido, said that there have been 592 more detainees in the county jail, 3,857, through October than in the entire previous calendar year. 

He further mentioned that there are some instances where the same individual will be detained in the jail more than once, but each time is counted separately. 

There have been some county jail inmates, Pulido shared, who have been “remanded,” or relocated per a court ruling, to the Illinois Department of Human Services because of conditions those individuals have which make them unsuitable for local confinement including three transferred to a facility in Kankakee County in the northeast area of the state per an agreement forged between its representatives and the local government unit’s law enforcement team.

Such circumstances were discussed by Sheriff Jeff Connor in late October when the county board finance and government operations committee reviewed the proposed budget for the fiscal year that begins Dec. 1.

In reference to the mental health issues which factor into assessments of detainees who belong somewhere else instead of the county jail, Connor at that time said, “DHS has continued to disappoint. I’m not going to sugarcoat it, I’m very disappointed.”

Previously, there was a specific time frame within which the DHS had to address its responsibility, Connor said, responding to a question from committee member Dalton Gray of Troy, concerning the transfer of such inmates who were in need of professional mental health treatment but the Illinois agency “saw that the sheriffs across the state were suing them to make sure and ensure they pick up the people that needed to be in a proper facility – Their response was to change the law and increase the time frame they had to pick them up.”

“I believe that’s disappointing to see the state respond that way,” Connor added.

Kankakee County received a grant which pays for the care received by those detainees, Connor explained, who, when housed there, receive the treatment they need and would not get at the Madison County Jail. This actually, he went on, helps to lower the cost at the local level related to dealing with those people needing such attention.