The first duty of government is to keep people safe
I am once again going to delve into the case of Lawrence Reed, the alleged perpetrator of a horrific act of arson. When the story broke that Bethany MaGee had been set on fire aboard a CTA Blue Line train in November, Chicagoans wanted answers. The suspect, 50-year-old Lawrence Reed, had been arrested more than 70 times over decades. News reports indicated his history included aggravated arson, batteries on strangers, violations of electronic monitoring, and a pattern of escalating danger. Yet he was out on pretrial release when he carried gasoline onto that train. If someone with that rap sheet is still free, what does it say about the system built to protect the public?
Searching for Reed’s current case details after the attack was straightforward. Federal prosecutors charged him with committing a violent terrorist attack against a mass transportation system, and a federal judge ordered him detained pending trial. But when journalists and the public tried to trace his history, they immediately encountered a deeper problem. His criminal record was fragmented. Some court information could be found in modern digital systems; other parts were buried in paper files spread across years and courthouses. As one reporter summarized it, you could piece together Reed’s history while never seeing it all in one place when a judge needed it. This is where the danger lies.
The criminal justice system depends on timely, accurate information. Booking databases, arrest reports, charging decisions and conviction records. These are the tools judges and prosecutors rely on when deciding who can safely return to society. Today, those tools are incomplete. Electronic case-search portals do not reliably show full criminal histories in violent felony matters. Older records may exist only in a physical file room at 26th & California. During a busy bond hearing when a defendant stands before a judge for only minutes there frequently is no realistic way to retrieve a complete history in a timely manner.
Reed’s aggravated battery arrest just months before the tragic train attack illustrates this disconnect. Prosecutors warned he posed a serious threat and asked he be held in custody. But the judge reviewing his release conditions did not present a seamlessly integrated picture of the danger he posed to the community. Another judge later loosened Reed’s monitoring rules to permit extended absences for “church activities.” Each decision might have seemed reasonable by itself but only because the larger pattern remained hidden.
This is not a theoretical flaw. It is a lethal one. It positively degrades the judicial system. Digital transparency changes everything. Imagine a system where a judge reviewing a bond request could instantly see total arrests and convictions, past incidents of violence, violations of court supervision, escalation of his anti-social behavior, and mental health evaluations relevant to public safety.
That single, unified profile would have forced everyone involved in Reed’s case to confront the reality of who they were dealing with. Patterns only matter when they are visible. Without visibility, the system treats each case as if it existed in a vacuum, even when the past is clearly screaming out warnings. Digitization is not just a technical upgrade. It is a true safety reform.
The psychology of decision-making also matters. Judges are human beings. They make choices under the pressure of time, often juggling complex constitutional considerations and limited detention resources. In an opaque system, where release decisions are forgotten unless a tragedy occurs, leniency feels like the go-to default. But when a judge knows the public can later connect a release decision to an offender’s violent history and a possibly preventable crime, then the incentives change. This is not about intimidating judges. It is about giving them the tools and accountability necessary to protect the community. When decisions are easily traceable, then responsibility sharpens. When sunlight is the default mechanism, thorough preparation and responsibility replace complacency.
When the public, not to mention a hungry crime reporter or crime author, searches for Reed’s background they want to know who were the judges in his prior violent cases, how many times he violated his electronic monitoring, why a prior aggravated arson conviction resulted in probation and how many times the judicial system released him despite the clear risk at hand. There is no single public database where those answers could be found. That is unacceptable for a modern justice system. Safety should not depend on a journalist spending days reconstructing court files by hand. A digitized system would also bring the public into the process in a new way. When citizens can clearly track violent-offender cases through the system, they become more informed and more demanding. Transparency energizes democratic oversight. It enables voters to insist judges and legislators defend community safety rather than rely on procedural inertia.
That type of civic engagement is the final cornerstone of reform. How do we energize the public into demanding modernization? First, by telling the truth vividly. Cases like Reed’s must be presented as preventable tragedies, not freak events. When people see where the system missed obvious warnings, they realize reform is not hypothetical, it is an absolute must.
Second, by building coalitions around shared goals. Victims’ advocates, neighborhood groups, mental health professionals, police officers all have a stake in ensuring violent offenders are neither lost in bureaucracy nor abandoned without treatment. Third, by linking accountability to elections. Judges and policymakers must understand that failure to modernize record transparency is a choice, one the public can reverse at the ballot box. When the voters have a scorecard that they can easily access the judges will really be on their toes.
Fourth, by emphasizing fairness and humanity. This reform is not necessarily about punishing every repeat offender harshly, it is about correctly identifying those with known violent risks and ensuring they receive the level of supervision or treatment necessary to protect others, maybe even a long period of incarceration if need be.
Finally, by embracing technology in service of the common good. A public portal showing case progress and release decisions, all within privacy boundaries turns the public into watchdogs rather than bystanders. Websites could even pop up designating different judges as cream puffs, judicious, or hanging judges. It sounds silly but the more eyeballs the better.
Of course everything is subject to a cost/benefit analysis. Tyler Technologies currently has a contract with Cook County and several other agencies. The original contract was for $75 million which ballooned to $250 million. The estimated cost for the Full Archive plus the Public Portal, which is the gold standard, is estimated to be $300-$400 million. That means that you can count on $700 million. Is it worth it? The number one job of any governmental entity is to keep the people safe. Yes, it’s worth it. Maybe some of the public sector unions could cut back on a part of their cost-of-living adjustments and chip in.
Sorry, you can strike that last remark from the record. I must have been hallucinating after a long day.
The Lawrence Reed case shows what happens when the truth about a dangerous individual is scattered across two decades of paperwork. The knowledge existed. The warnings existed. What failed was our ability to see the danger in time to stop it.
Digitizing justice means judges can see the whole story. It means prosecutors can argue risk with precision, knowing full well that everyone is watching. Most importantly, it means the next violent tragedy like this one does not have to happen. The public is ready. All they need is access. They have plenty of reasons to demand it.
