Some downstate counties struggled as bail reform took hold this week; one didn’t even try applying the new law

Associate Judge Ryan Jumper speaks to a defendant Monday, the first day without cash bail in Illinois, at the Madison County Courthouse. (Tristen Rouse / St. Louis Public Radio)

For more than two years leading up to Illinois’s historic end to cash bail, counties south of Chicago had been warning they didn’t have the staffing or the resources to overhaul their pretrial systems.

When the law went into effect Monday, some of those officials were relieved to see a slow start to the unprecedented remaking of the state’s court system.