Sen. Dick Durbin says visiting a prison can be an “eye-opener,” giving lawmakers a firsthand understanding of the realities of incarceration and the need for meaningful reform.

During an April 30 conversation with student reporters from MEDILL TrialMonitors, Durbin, D-Ill., said bipartisan cooperation was critical to passing the First Step Act, a landmark criminal justice reform law he co-sponsored with Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. Signed by President Donald J. Trump in 2018, the legislation sought to reduce recidivism, reform federal sentencing practices and ease prison overcrowding.

Durbin said he has continued to advance criminal justice reform through subsequent legislation, including the First Step Implementation Act, which expands upon provisions of the original law.

Reflecting on his broader reform efforts, Durbin said he believes every member of Congress should be required to visit a prison at least once every two years.

“Visiting a prison is an eye-opener to actually see what’s happening,” Durbin said, recalling a visit to the maximum-security prison in Tamms, Illinois.

Durbin also reflected on his support, while serving in the House, for the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which established a 100-to-1 sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine offenses. He called that vote the biggest regret of his political career, saying the experience helped shape his decades-long commitment to criminal justice reform.

In April, the longtime senator and Senate Democratic whip announced he will retire when his term ends in January 2027, concluding a 44-year career in Congress. A native of East St. Louis, Illinois, who has lived in Springfield for the past five decades, he was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1982.

JUSTICE REFORM & LEGISLATORS: Click here for slides

By Kaprice Daniels, Zoe Otto, Siri Reddy and Miguel Tsang

At 17 years old, James Swansey was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. Following a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, two resentencings and a grant of clemency, the Chicago native walked free in 2020 after nearly 30 years behind bars.

Now, Swansey is committed to using legislation to reform the system which incarcerated him.

“They literally told me that I was supposed to die as a child, and here it is: I’m in the Capitol, I’m advocating for individuals such as myself,” said Swansey, who was found guilty of two murders in 1992. “The system that we have is supposed to look towards [rehabilitation], and it doesn’t do that …. Ultimately, what my job is is to show legislators that they can change that and be different.”

Swansey works as the associate policy director for Restore Justice, an advocacy organization aiming to replace Illinois’ punitive criminal justice policies with more restorative laws. As a registered lobbyist, Swansey helped pass the state’s abolishment of juvenile life without parole — the very sentence he once carried.

With research conducted by the Prison Policy Initiative finding that 50,000 people from Illinois are behind bars and rates of pretrial detention are rising across the nation, lobbyists like Swansey use legislation as a mechanism to drive meaningful change in the system. Indeed, state lawmakers craft and vote on bills which influence the state’s criminal justice policy from the top.

Among the lawmakers spearheading justice reform legislation in Illinois is state Sen. Rachel Ventura. She pioneered the state’s first legislative internship program for incarcerated individuals, which she said she started in 2023 after meeting with a group of men at Stateville Correctional Center in 2022.

“It was really working with these individuals, [hearing] their real-life stories, that led me into the work of trying to reform the system so that it’s more about restorative justice and less about punishment,” said Ventura, who was sworn in for her second term in January 2025.

Ventura said three of her interns worked on legislation reforming the structure and procedures of Illinois’ Prisoner Review Board. The bill they helped on passed last June.

Bringing legislators like Ventura to carceral facilities can be a difficult task, however. Advocate Katrina Baugh said she found herself abruptly banned from all prisons in Illinois after she brought 20 state legislators to meet incarcerated individuals at Stateville in 2018.

Baugh said the ban revealed to her how influential legislators can be to making real change within the criminal legal system — that bringing fewer than two dozen to a prison posed a threat “enough to get [her] banned for life.”

“This is an opaque system with no accountability, and they like it that way,” Baugh said. “The people who operate the system benefit from the fear that comes from a lack of knowledge … They are not eager to have outside eyes looking in.”

Justice Hasa Kingo said visits to correctional and detention facilities have shaped his judicial perspective by revealing the realities people face after a court order is issued. The New York State Supreme Court justice believes such visits should be encouraged, if not required, because they help judges make more informed decisions. (MEDILL TrialMonitors on April 30, 2026)

Now senior policy director for nonprofit Families Against Mandatory Minimums, commonly known as FAMM, Baugh played a major role in defending and implementing Illinois’ Pretrial Fairness Act. The PFA, which went into effect in 2023, aimed to modernize pretrial decision-making practices across the state.

Along with expanding eligibility for pretrial release, the PFA made Illinois the first state in the nation to fully eliminate cash bail for all criminal cases.

“[I hoped] to end the practice of holding people hostage or holding people ransom pretrial because we did not have a safe system,” said state Sen. Robert Peters, a legislator instrumental in the passage of the act. “We had a system based off of money, and a system based off of money is an unjust, unfair, unsafe system.”

Peters said a great deal of momentum to pass the act came during protests in the wake of George Floyd’s 2020 killing in Minneapolis, with Peters calling it a “transformational period” for justice reform.

Research conducted by Loyola University Chicago’s Center for Criminal Justice shows that pretrial jail populations in Illinois are down as a whole following the PFA. The total number of people under some form of pretrial correctional control in Illinois has risen by 17%, however, and Cook County jail populations are higher than before the passage of the act.

“The legislature changing the law doesn’t always change what happens on the ground,” explained Patrick Griffin, the center’s deputy director. “It’s very common to find that laws either haven’t changed anything, or haven’t resulted in what the legislation intended.”-

Much of this discrepancy is structural, Griffin said — the system is run by many players with their own authority and motives, such that carceral practices can’t just be changed with “the stroke of a pen.”

Political risk deepens the problem. Legislators worry about reelection, and voters are often wary of anything that can be cast as soft on crime, Griffin explained.

Even so, advocates like Baugh remain committed to using legislative pathways to address systemic failures in the system. After all, Baugh said, the often life-or-death nature of criminal justice reform makes the stakes of a legislator’s vote unlike any other.

“You don’t have more authority over anyone else’s life than when you are making laws about incarceration,” Baugh said. “That is the entirety of a person’s life that is within your decisionmaking power.”

Kaprice Daniels, Siri Reddy, Miguel Tsang

Stanley Howard, a torture survivor from the Jon Burge era, addresses supporters at an April 15, 2026, rally organized by the No New Prisons Illinois coalition to oppose plans for two new prisons in Crest Hill, Illinois. He was joined by James Soto, who, along with his cousin David Ayala, spent 42 years wrongfully imprisoned—the longest such incarceration in Illinois history. (Photo courtesy of Stanley Howard/click: video link

POLICING THE POLICE: Torture, Misconduct and the Systems of Police Accountability in Chicago: Click here for slides

By April Arabian, Grace Gormley, Caroline Gould, Sol Thomas

After Chicago police officers beat and suffocated him with a typewriter cover until he lost consciousness and coerced a false confession, Stanley Howard endured 39 years in prison. He describes the root of the problem as “never just one bad actor.”

“It wasn’t just crooked cops,” said Howard, 63, who was accused of a fatal shooting during an attempted robbery in 1984 and later sentenced to death in 1987. “It was all three branches of government.”

Since Howard, now a prison rights advocate with the Uptown People’s Law Center, was first tortured in 1984,

Chicago’s police accountability system has been repeatedly reformed in response to recurring allegations of police misconduct, public distrust of oversight institutions, and changing political priorities across administrations. Now, its transparency is in question as the Illinois Supreme Court considers whether arbitration hearings in serious police misconduct cases can be shielded from the public.

The appeal stems from a 2024 Cook County Circuit Court ruling that allowed officers facing termination or suspension longer than 365 days to choose arbitration instead of a Chicago Police Board hearing but required those arbitration hearings to remain public — a requirement the Illinois Appellate Court affirmed last August. The Police Board has adjudicated serious disciplinary cases in public hearings since the 1960s.

On Aug. 19, 2024, Stanley Howard and James Soto joined Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman to discuss Chicago’s long and troubled history of police misconduct, including acts of torture carried out under former Police Cmdr. Jon Burge during the 1970s and ’80s.

The appellant, Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7, argues that Chicago police officers bargained for private arbitration proceedings through their collective bargaining agreement and that courts should not override those contractual protections.

Officers face 21 disciplinary cases

Union president John Catanzara Jr. did not respond to requests for comment.

The Illinois Supreme Court’s decision leaves 21 cases pending, according to the Chicago Police Board — including seven seeking the termination of officers accused of unjustified shootings. Police Board hearings cannot proceed without the accused officer’s consent, and arbitration hearings cannot occur until the court rules.

Max Caproni, executive director of the Chicago Police Board, voiced concerns about arbitration. Since arbitrators are selected with agreement from the city and the police union, “there’s an incentive there to kind of split things,” he said.

Police Board members are appointed for fixed five-year terms, and therefore do not have an incentive to please both sides, according to Caproni.

“Not to say that [the Police Board] is perfect,” he said. “But that’s a big problem with arbitration.”

The current legal dispute sits within Chicago’s broader system for police accountability, a system that has evolved from decades of police abuse, according to the U.S. Justice Department’s investigation into the Chicago Police Department in 2017.

Mark Clements, a well-known Chicago torture survivor, has spent years raising awareness and advocating for justice click: video link for people who were tortured by former police Cmdr. Jon Burge and officers who served under him. (Photo by Jean Melesaine)

The current legal dispute sits within Chicago’s broader system for police accountability, a system that has evolved from decades of police abuse.

From the 1970s into the 1990s, Police Department Cmdr. Jon Burge and his detectives used electric shock, suffocation and other torture methods to extract confessions. More than 120 people, predominantly Black men, were tortured, according to the Chicago Torture Justice Center.

Four natural life sentences

Mark Clements, 62, who spent 28 years in prison after being tortured into a false confession at age 16, said reform has rarely come from institutions without outside pressure.

“None of these things were freely given,” said Clements, who was sentenced to four natural life sentences for the deaths of four people in a fire. “It was given under a lot of sweat and misery by little poor old mothers because their kids had either been assassinated by members of our police department, or they had been wrongfully detained.”

In response to police torture, the Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission, was created in 2009 to review police torture claims and refer credible cases back to the courts.

Paul Haidle, communications director and supervising attorney with the commission, said that because traditional pathways often fail to address police torture claims, the commission may be a person’s last chance for justice.

“There is essentially no other way if a person has exhausted their appeal and any post-conviction filings,” Haidle said. “This may be the only other avenue available for relief related to the torture aspect.”

More recently, a court order — known as a consent decree — was enacted in 2019 following a federal civil rights investigation that determined Chicago Police Department officers used unreasonable deadly force.

The consent decree requires reforms of CPD’s policies, training and accountability mechanisms. According to WTTW News Reporter Heather Cherone, this decree is one of the most complicated in history.

“The CPD would tell you that they haven’t even really begun to make those changes,” Cherone said. “Police departments, especially the Chicago Police Department, have been notoriously resistant to oversight.”

As of Dec. 31, 2025, the Independent Monitoring Report said CPD is in full compliance with about 25% of the decree’s requirements

Chicago has also expanded civilian oversight through the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability, a body whose seven members are nominated through the District Council Nominating Committee and appointed by the mayor. The permanent commission began work in 2024.

Among other powers, the commission has the ability to set and approve policy for the Police Department and the Police Board.

Frank Chapman, educational director and field secretary of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, has pushed for civilian control over the police since his wrongful conviction in 1961.

“It was a 10-year struggle to get something done about this,” Chapman said.

Chapman said he sees it as “significant reform” to have a civilian body that can “not only oversee police policies, but initiate policies of their own.”

Yet Howard, who spent 16 years on death row, said current changes are not enough compared to the human cost of police misconduct.

“My daughter and my sons had to grow up without their dad and live with the fact that their dad was on death row,” Howard said. How much stress did that put on my mom to lead to an early death?”

As the pursuit of police accountability continues, the Illinois Supreme Court will soon decide whether the most serious police misconduct cases will be open to the public.

“Whether or not the new structures will prevent the next big scandal,” Cherone said, “I don’t have a crystal ball.”

April Arabian, Grace Gormley, Caroline Gould, Sol Thomas

Serving as master of ceremonies, Judge John Fitzgerald Lyke Jr. speaks during the Dec. 1, 2025, swearing-in ceremony for Chief Judge Charles S. Beach II at Chicago-Kent College of Law. Judges Ankur Srivastava, Alfredo Maldonado and Mary C. Marubio also participated in the event. Lyke’s career reflects the growing, though still limited, racial diversity of the Cook County judiciary. (TV image via WGN News/ click: video link

DILEMMAS AMONG JUDGES: Click here for slides

Jack Baker, Bianca Dishmon, Isabella Dumenigo and Alice Tao

Judge John Fitzgerald Lyke Jr., born in his grandmother’s public housing apartment on Chicago’s South Side, now serves on the bench in Courtroom 208 at the George N. Leighton Criminal Courthouse.

“My background is very humble, to put it mildly. I’m from Robert Taylor Housing Projects, as well as [the] Englewood [neighborhood], two of the roughest places in Chicago, particularly back in those days,” Lyke said during a 2023 interview with Chicago-Kent Magazine, describing his upbringing in the 1960s and ’70s.

For Judge Lyke, a sense of responsibility as a Black jurist is rooted in his Christian faith and early life experiences, including exposure to civil rights violations and police misconduct. He has said those experiences shaped his decision to pursue the bench.

Lyke is one of roughly 400 judges serving in Cook County, according to the Circuit Court of Cook County. In 2018, however, Black judges accounted for only about 19% of the county’s judiciary, according to Injustice Watch. Similar representation patterns appear to exist in the Northern District of Illinois, where Black judges make up 19% of the federal bench and minority judges account for 31% overall.

Compared with the federal level, demographic information about state court judges is less accessible and more difficult to compile.

Elizabeth Monkus, program director and senior attorney at the Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts, noted that Illinois courts are “not subject to” the state’s Freedom of Information Act or standard public records requirements.

“You can’t ask the court,” Monkus said. “The court won’t tell you if they’re even keeping that information. They don’t have to tell you, and chances are they’re not going to.”

Issues of transparency raise broader questions about experience and perspective on the bench, including how personal history shapes judges’ understanding of the communities they serve.

‘Elected to be different’

Reflecting on his experiences, Lyke said he understands the realities of “driving while Black” and has also been racially profiled while shopping. Those incidents, he said, inform his perspective as a judge.

“I was elected to be different,” said Lyke, an Army veteran who also presides over the Veterans Treatment Court, part of the county’s problem-solving program.

New York State Supreme Court Justice Hasa Kingo recognizes that racial bias and unequal expectations still exist, often requiring some individuals to work harder to earn the same level of respect. He emphasizes that meaningful change takes time, but consistent preparation, excellence, and professionalism can challenge stereotypes, influence perceptions and promote greater equity and inclusion over the long term. (MEDILL TrialMonitors on April 30, 2026)

Before becoming a judge, Lyke spent six years as an assistant state’s attorney and 15 years working in private practice as a defense attorney.

His perspective differs from and aligns with that of Judge Carol M. Howard, who works several floors above him in the same courthouse. Howard spent 19 years at the Cook County Public Defender’s Office before joining the bench in 2006.

Howard recalled her early impressions of the criminal division, saying, “All the players in the game seemed to be white. All the people in positions of power were white, making decisions about the lives of mostly minority defendants, Black and Hispanic defendants.”

She has also noted progress over time, though she emphasized that representation gaps remain. Women made up just 41% of Cook County’s judiciary in 2018, according to Injustice Watch.

Lyke said that although diversity is “much better” today, “we still have a long way to go.”

“I have seen a tremendous uptick in Black female judges, but I really can’t say the same about Black men,” Lyke said.

Judge Loveleen Ahuja has also highlighted the pressures faced by women of color on the bench, saying they are often expected to “prove our worth” and serve as “the best representation” for their communities. She pointed to moments in court that underscore the value of cultural awareness, including one instance in which a woman requested a new trial date due to fasting. Ahuja recognized it as Ramadan observance, and the woman reacted with visible relief.

“Her eyes just lit up that somebody knew what Ramadan was,” said Ahuja, who assume office in 2024.

More than a dozen judges of diverse racial, ethnic, gender, and sexual orientation backgrounds declined to discuss diversity on the bench, citing concerns about preserving the appearance of impartiality. At the same time, some judges and court observers noted that diversity also includes professional background, which can shape courtroom perspectives.

According to Scott Pollack, court watcher with the Illinois Alliance for Reentry & Justice, most Cook County judges are former prosecutors. Statewide, the ratio of professional backgrounds is more balanced, he said.

Judge Alfredo Maldonado, a former defense lawyer, said he understands the challenges faced by former clients who are desperate and alone.

“They didn’t have any friends; they didn’t have any family. They truly were alone in the world,” Maldonado said.

During his 25 years on the bench, Judge Thomas More Donnelly click: hyperlink has participated in discussions that bring together judges, attorneys, law enforcement, corrections professionals, crime survivors, and formerly incarcerated individuals to examine issues affecting the justice system. (MEDILL TrialMonitors video by Miguel Tsang)

Howard added that her public defender background shapes how she evaluates evidence and testimony.

“I don’t accept anyone’s testimony as fact simply because of their position,” Howard said. “Many times, my clients are telling the truth. Sometimes they’re not. Many times, [police] officers are telling the truth. Many times, they’re not.”

Some say diversity builds trust

Judge Ahuja similarly emphasized that public defense work builds empathy and listening skills. “You really get to learn what empathy is,” she said. “Every single person is more than the worst instant in their life.”

Recalling his work as a defense attorney and former prosecutor, Lyke mirrored Ahuja’s perspective, explaining that “there’s a difference between being a bad person and having a bad day.”

Several judges emphasized that greater racial diversity on the bench can strengthen public trust in the judiciary. Ahuja suggested that when defendants see judges who share their cultural or racial background, it puts them “at ease” and helps “garner more trust in the system.”

Howard agreed, explaining that while she does not privilege defendants who share her racial background, their shared experiences “may make a difference in their ability to accept the outcomes in their cases.”

“I’m sure there’s feelings of being overwhelmed, but it makes a difference when some of the people making decisions concerning you seem to share your background,” she said, adding that diversity is especially important for people appearing in court for the first time. “That makes a difference in how the justice system is perceived.”

Alicia Alvarez, a law professor at the University of Illinois Chicago, said she believes life experiences shape people as both individuals and lawyers.

“Though judges are to apply the law equally, I think different life experiences help with empathy, helping judges [and others in the legal system] understand the situations the people who appear before them find themselves in,” she said in an email.

Jack Baker, Bianca Dishmon, Isabella Dumenigo, Alice Tao

After 37 years of incarceration for killing her abusive husband, Janet Jackson (light gray sweater) was released in February 2024. While at Logan Correctional Center in Illinois, she earned two Ph.D.s, became an ordained minister, and devoted herself to mentoring fellow incarcerated women. (Photo courtesy of Janet Jackson)

INCARCERATED WOMEN: Obstacles and Advocacy: Click here for slides.

By Gia Liu, Olivia Payne, Ereny Tanious, Amani Yousuf

After her release on parole in 2024 following 37 years of incarceration, Janet Jackson became an advocate for incarcerated people, arguing that the prison system “has gotten so much worse for women,” who face higher mortality rates—including suicides, according to the JAMA Internal Medicine.

Jackson, 72, was initially sentenced to life for her connection to the attack that killed her abusive husband, according to the Illinois Prison Project. Since her release, Jackson vows not to leave others behind, remaining dedicated to prison reform for the gender-based challenges women face.

“Men do time, hard time, they do physical time,” said Jackson, who earned two Ph.D.s, became an ordained minister and mentored disabled and elderly women while incarcerated. “Women, we do emotional time. We carry all the burdens in our head and our hearts.”

Jackson is part of a broader movement of formerly incarcerated women advocating for reform.

Maria Garza’s commitment to prison reform began during her 12 years in state prison. Now a restorative justice practitioner and activist, Garza said her experiences behind bars continue to drive her work supporting incarcerated people and confronting the obstacles women face during incarceration and re-entry.

“System-impacted women often face obstacles that extend far beyond finding a job or a place to live,” said Garza, 52, who recently earned her bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University, in an email. “Many return to their communities carrying the effects of trauma, separation from their children and families, limited financial resources, and the stigma associated with having a criminal record. In addition to this, many exhibit patterns of past behaviors, for example, having to hustle the system.

One of fastest growing segments

Garza said her organization provides a range of reentry services, including housing and transportation assistance, help obtain identification, employment and educational referrals, digital and financial literacy training, life skills development, and access to behavioral health and substance use treatment services when needed.

Women represent one of the fastest-growing segments of the incarcerated population. From 1980 to 2023, the number of women behind bars surged more than 600%, from 26,326 to 186,244. A temporary decline during the COVID-19 pandemic gave way to a 22% increase in 2023, according to The Sentencing Project.

Maria Garza, a recent Northwestern University graduate, has said her 12 years in state prison inform her work in restorative justice, including advocacy for incarcerated people and attention to barriers faced by women during incarceration and re-entry. She and Javier Reyes co-founded Challenge II Change, a nonprofit providing pre-release and re-entry planning and resources. (TV image via WTTW/ click: video link

“We also help women navigate family reunification, legal barriers and community resources that can often feel overwhelming after incarceration,” said Garza, who co-founded Challenge II Change, a nonprofit organization based in Aurora, Illinois, with Javier Reyes. The organization focuses on criminal justice reform and restorative justice.

Obstacles unique to incarcerated women can start before they enter a prison. According to the Council on Criminal Justice, more than 70% of incarcerated women report prior experiences of domestic violence.

“I have never met anyone in there who did not suffer from some form of domestic abuse,” Jackson said.

This violence continues into incarceration, where sexual assault, harassment and extortion remain significant issues, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, responsible for measuring crime, criminal victimization.

According to the federal agency, Logan Correctional Center, a multi-level security women’s prison and intake facility, is one of 17 prisons nationwide with the highest sexual victimization rates. Logan, about 150 miles south of Chicago, is one of two main women’s prisons in Illinois and the state’s only women’s prison above minimum security.

Furthermore, the CCJ reports that more than half of incarcerated women are parents to minor children, and mothers were twice as likely as fathers to be sole caretakers.

“Their incarceration put them in so much more peril than for somebody who’s not a primary caretaker,” said Christina Rivers, a political science professor at DePaul University’s Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program, “because then they run the risk of losing your kids.”

Women also have specific health-related issues regarding menstruation, pregnancy, mental health and substance use disorders.

“A categorically different reality”

Professor emerita Barbara Shwom, publisher, editor and writing coach of Northwestern Prison Education Program’s magazine, Northwestern Insider, shared the story of a student whose fibroids leave her incapacitated during her menstrual cycle as she awaits surgery after three years.

“That’s not an unusual timeline,” Shwom said.

Incarcerated women face “a categorically different reality” than men, according to Joe Rice, a criminology professor at DePaul who teaches incarcerated women for the university’s Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program.

Deanne Benos, former assistant director of the Illinois Department of Corrections, left her position after efforts to treat these differences for women failed. Benos said that the women leading those advancements were demoted and the division supporting them was “struck on paper.”

Benos, like other prison reform advocates, turned to external sources to fill these gaps for incarcerated women.

After leaving IDOC, Benos co-founded the Women’s Justice Institute to reduce female incarceration and improve prison conditions through gender-responsive research and programming.

The WJI’s Women’s Justice Pathways Model focuses on relationship safety, health, families, housing and economic security and empowerment.

“What the WJP represents is really a paradigm shift,” Benos said. “When you say criminal justice, that means prisons, paroles, police parole, all those things. We kinda just wanted to flip it and say justice is these five areas.”

Justice is also a priority for Uptown People’s Law Center, which addresses issues affecting incarcerated communities through legal action.

The clinic has filed seven lawsuits about sexual abuse by staff members at Logan, aiming to “shine a light on what these women have to go through and how horrific it is,” said Maggie Bourke, a fellow at Equal Justice Works.

Bourke views UPLC’s work as a way to hold prison staff accountable and make an impact.

“There’s not a lot that the outside world can do to force prison officials to treat people better,” Bourke said.

Other programs focus on providing support through education and activities.

NPEP offers incarcerated students a pathway to earn a Northwestern bachelor’s degree while in prison. However, this opportunity is often more limited for women, according to Jennifer Lackey, founding director of NPEP, because Illinois’ primary women’s prison is much farther away than the men’s prisons.

“Women, I think on the side of programming are just systematically disadvantaged,” Lackey said, adding that NPEP is the only program in Illinois offering bachelor’s degrees to incarcerated women.

Shwom reports similar issues with Northwestern Insider programming at Logan, with visits limited to about once a month, compared to weekly classes at Sheridan Correctional Center, approximately 70 miles west of Chicago.

Northwestern Insider provides incarcerated individuals with an outlet to publish writing and artwork, enabling them to share their experiences and advocate for issues affecting prison communities. Shwom said she aims to dedicate 25% of the magazine to content from Logan.

“They are all three-dimensional, interesting women who are often not seen that way,” Shwom said. “To write from their experience is an opportunity to be known more fully for who they are.”

The magazine also connects students to publications and contests that offer monetary rewards, one of few opportunities for individuals to make money while incarcerated.

Beyond organizational support, several interviewees said incarcerated women need personal support.

“You find out who really loves you when you’re locked up,” Jackson said. “I’m not talking about supporting you financially, I’m talking about that emotional support which is so much more valuable than finances.”

Advocates said that support begins by recognizing the humanity of incarcerated women, beyond their convictions.

“I think that one of the things that’s really important is to change the narrative about who are behind these bars,” Lackey said. “They are some of the most generous, honest, remarkable people.”

Gia Liu, Olivia Payne, Ereny Tanious, Amani Yousuf

At a recent naturalization ceremony, applicants take the oath at the Everett McKinley Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in Chicago. In order to apply for naturalization, a non-citizen must be a permanent resident of the U.S. for five years, though that number can vary depending on the person’s status. ( Photo by Anna Zheng/MEDILL TrialMonitors)

CITIZENSHIP/IMMIGRATION: Click here for slides.

BONUS (below): A Look Into The Courtroom

By Dylan Lanier, Brooke Nelson, Helen Ryan, Anna Zheng

Election Day 2024 was a major event nationwide—and a deeply personal one for Jeanette Blanco. After 27 years in the United States, she became a citizen. Representing Mexico in a naturalization ceremony, she received her certificate and cast her provisional ballot within a few hours.

“Immigration is just very political,” said Blanco, 34, a San Francisco paralegal originally from Guanajuato, northwest of Mexico City. “With the current administration, it’s been really hard.”

For Blanco, the day was “a mix of emotions.” Naturalization had always the plan, but despite living in the U.S. since age 7, she hadn’t been able to make much progress until recently. After receiving a U visa--a status designated for crime victims—she was finally allowed to begin her path to citizenship.

‘End of the road”

Naturalization is the “end of the road” according to immigration attorney Nathan Ganong, and one of the few positive experiences in the field of immigration law.

This process has become more scrutinous of aspiring citizens. With recent crackdowns by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Trump administration’s new immigration policies lengthen the road to naturalization and create an environment of intimidation and uncertainty for citizens and non-citizens alike.

Officers now conduct more rigorous investigations of applicants to review their moral character, even interviewing applicants’ neighbors. This can delay naturalization, according to immigration attorney Allen Orr. Last year, he said, naturalizations could take six months from application to citizenship — now, it can take over a year.

Jeb Scipio del Campo, 19, of Portland, Oregon, who was recently naturalized, said it took his family seven years to get citizenship since entering the country, which required lots of legal help and personal expenses.

In order to apply for naturalization, a non-citizen must be a permanent resident of the U.S. for five years, though that number can vary depending on the person’s status. Non-citizens then take tests to prove they are proficient in English and understand the basics of U.S. government and history.

Once everything is filed, the applicant completes an interview with an immigration officer. Upon review and acceptance, the applicant attends an oath ceremony and becomes a full citizen.

The process is paperwork-heavy and can be intimidating for people who have difficulty with English, criminal charges, or outstanding tax or child support payments.

Possible interferences to process

Attorney Dustin Bankston specializes in helping people with such “outstanding” issues that could interfere with their naturalization process. Due to the uncertainties surrounding immigration, he is more likely to recommend an unsure client to postpone the process, he said.

Bankston said he used to recommend applying for naturalization more often before recent, increased ICE activity.

“Worst case scenario you just get denied,” he said. “Now [immigration officials] might actually try to place you in a deportation proceeding.”

Despite the potential risks, Bankston and Ganong’s firm in the Bay Area saw an increase in naturalization cases and a decrease of asylum cases at the start of Donald Trump’s presidency. Ganong said he believed this to be due to a general anxiety — non-citizens seeking asylum feared detainment or deportation, and those seeking naturalization wanted the security that comes from citizenship.

Katarina Ramos, a managing attorney at the National Immigrant Justice Center, who helps individuals through the immigration and naturalization process, said there has been an extra level of precaution taken in recent cases.

Now prospective citizens must ask themselves if applying for naturalization and putting themselves into the “attention of the immigration system” will put them at greater risk, Ramos said.

Some individuals, fearing government retaliation, changed their travel plans because re-entering the country may threaten their status.

Jasmine Guo, a 20-year-old from New York City, who was recently naturalized, said “it’s pretty up in the air” for her parents, who hold work visas. She said they are choosing not to visit their home country of China for at least two years until she can petition for their Green Cards.

‘An erosion of due process’

The detainment of U.S. citizens at protests and raids by ICE and the Supreme Court allowing them to detain people on the basis of apparent race is unprecedented, according to Orr, whose firm is in Washington, D.C.

“It is an erosion of due process and civility,” Orr said. “In no other place in our government is it okay to single people out by their race, ethnicity, language, and where they work.”

The recent raids have created what Ramos called a “crisis” in vulnerable communities.

“I see friends of friends getting picked up, or friends’ parents,” Ramos said. “Nobody knows where they went. They went out to get groceries and they never came back.”

Within the courts, administrative issues leave judge shortages and lengthen the immigration and naturalization processes. Over 125 judges nationwide have been fired or resigned since the beginning of Trump’s second term, according to retired immigration judge Dana Leigh Marks, creating a backlog in immigration cases.

HIAS is a nonprofit organization that supports refugees and immigrants through this increasingly long process. Program manager Rachael Moreno noted how such policy updates make things volatile.

The Trump administration’s naturalization and immigration policy “has really dramatically changed the landscape of how applications are processed,” Moreno said. It has altered how paperwork is done, the tests people have to take, and the requirements they must meet to even submit forms in the first place.

The immigration system, Ramos noted, is broken and has been for a long time.

“It’s horrifying,” she said. “I’ve cried so many times, so many times.”

Despite these barriers, naturalizations still occur today. On Nov. 6, 98 people from 39 countries became American citizens at the Everett McKinley Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in Chicago.

Judge John Z. Lee, who presided over the ceremony, encouraged new citizens to register to vote and emphasized the importance of America as “a nation of immigrants.”

“Diversity makes us and keeps us strong,” he said. “One citizenship — mine and yours — binds us as brothers and sisters.”

Dylan Lanier, Brooke Nelson, Helen Ryan, Anna Zheng

Courtroom rendering by Anna Zheng of the Medill Trial Monitors at Everett McKinley Dirksen U.S. Courthouse

Manuel Gomez, a Navy veteran, told Medill Trial Monitors in October that 78% of justice-involved veteran women have reported experiencing sexual assault during their military service. (TV image via CBS News Los Angeles/click: video link

VETS TREATMENT IN LEGAL SYSTEM: Click here for slides.

By Natasha Torkzaban, Yeabsira Getachew, Madelyn Powers, Anthony Scarmozzino

For Manuel Gomez, the executive director of VetPhoenix, calls from a veteran ready to enter his program rarely come on schedule. He must be ready at a moment’s notice to ensure no one falls through the cracks during the transition from incarceration.

VetPhoenix is a California-based non-profit organization focused on helping veterans who have been incarcerated through peer support and comprehensive reentry programs—including trauma-informed mental health treatment, substance abuse recovery and assistance with finding stable housing and employment.

“We identify the causative factors, we develop evidence, and then we try to connect you to those critical veteran services,” Gomez said. “While at the same time, we stabilize you and give you the best shot at being successful, post-military, post-prison.”

Led by multiple formerly incarcerated veterans who are now social workers, researchers and advocates—like Gomez—VetPhoenix is part of a national trend of providing resources for justice-involved veterans, both during and after their time in the legal system.

The U.S. has seen a significant expansion in resources for justice-involved veterans. Since 2009, the number of Veterans Treatment Courts alone has surged from 19 to more than 500, according to the National Treatment Court Resource Center. This growth in official capacity has been mirrored by non-profit organizations, which have also expanded to provide essential post-incarceration reentry services, such as those offered by VetPhoenix and similar programs.

Michael Hood, a veteran and associate judge who presides over cases for Veterans Treatment Court in Cook County, said that the mission of Veterans Treatment Court is recovery.

From 2005 to 2011, Gomez served in the U.S. Navy aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln and USS Peleliu. (TV image via CBS News Los Angeles)

Veterans Treatment Court is one of Cook County’s Problem-Solving Courts. All defendants are individuals who previously served in the military and became involved in the criminal legal system.

Hood said that rather than punishing veterans, the court focuses on pushing veterans forward in their rehabilitative process.

“We want them to continue to make appointments and continue to prove and continue to work hard in whatever it is,” Hood said. “If it’s a job placement course, continue to work on it. If it’s anger management, continue to work on it. If it’s mental health treatment, continue to work on it.”

Scott Tirocchi, division director for Justice for Vets, has spent three decades working across community treatment, jails, prisons and courts in Rhode Island.

A 21-year Army Reserve and National Guard veteran, Tirocchi said he noticed a spike in incarcerated veterans during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars when he worked as a social worker in a Rhode Island jail.

“I recognized a lot of individuals that were veterans and I was also serving in the military myself at that time, so it kind of hit a spot,” he said.

Tirocchi later joined Justice for Vets in 2015, an organization that provides free, on-site training to Veterans Treatment Courts nationwide on how to structure and run these programs.

He estimates the organization has assisted roughly 400 of the nation’s more than 500 veterans courts, noting that the VA’s higher tally of more than 700 reflects a broader definition of what qualifies as a VTC.

Tirocchi said veterans entering the system often face a mix of criminogenic risks—such as substance use and unstable peer networks—alongside PTSD, alcohol misuse and traumatic brain injury.

Tirocchi said Veterans Treatment Courts are designed to respond to those underlying issues. The courts integrate the Department of Veterans Affairs, a Veterans Justice Outreach specialist, and trained peer mentors in the courtroom.

Tirocchi said the evidence-based treatment veterans receive is transformative.

“You meet someone who’s a shadow of who they once were, and a year later they’re a completely different person,” he said.

Even within a prison or jail, organizations such as the University of Chicago’s Office for Military-Affiliated Communities provide enrichment opportunities for incarcerated veterans.

Nick Macius, the director of the organization’s writing program, teaches a weekly creative writing and literature class in the veterans tier of the Cook County jail. Macius said that, in the face of confinement, writing serves as an “outlet [for veterans] to express themselves in ways that they’re just unable to otherwise.”

“I think there’s a basic distinction between something that’s clinically focused and something that’s just art for art’s sake,” Macius said. “I’m there because I believe that creative writing and literature is just powerful in and of itself.”

Macius is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran himself. He said that his shared identity with his students helps him resonate with their work on a deeper level. -

“Even though a lot of their writing doesn’t draw on their veteran identity or even when it doesn’t, I think just being able to walk into that room and have a basic shared affinity or lived experience helps me walk into that room and connect with them,” Macius said.

The support veterans receive while incarcerated is only one part of the reentry pipeline. After release, organizations like Hope Hall in Melrose Park, Illinois, help veterans navigate new sets of challenges.

Hope Hall, a transitional housing facility for veterans, accepts formerly incarcerated veterans from the Chicagoland area. Felicia Harris, Hope Hall’s assistant manager and service coordinator, said that the treatment of veterans in prisons and jails plays a big role in their reentry processes.

While Harris said that much progress has been made, there is still a long way to go.

“If we have better people in these positions that care about their overall well-being, then we would have less people coming out of our incarceration system depressed, suicidal, self-medicating on drugs and alcohol, and feeling hopeless,” Harris said. “The major thing is you have to treat people right.”

Natasha Torkzaban, Yeabsira Getachew, Madelyn Powers, Anthony Scarmozzino

StreetWise, a grassroots journalism outlet, provides income and a community for roughly 125 vendors with lived experience of homelessness, poverty and inequality, including those who are formerly incarcerated. (TV image via FOX 32 Chicago)

THE CRIMINAL LEGAL SYSTEM: Click here for slides.

By Lyric Benford, Arlette Correa, Eunice Lee and Sai Trivedi

On the day someone leaves prison, that freedom is often paired with immediate obstacles: finding housing, securing employment, avoiding recidivism, reconnecting with family and managing stigma. These challenges can feel daunting without proper support.

Xavier Perez, an assistant professor at DePaul University and co-founder of its Criminology Department, has researched these barriers extensively. He explained that many returning citizens face health issues, including struggles with physical ailments and seeking medical care.

Beyond these hurdles, Perez also pointed to the deeper question of societal acceptance.

“One of the challenges of reintegration is whether we willing to accept these individuals back into a moral society where we don’t think about them as sort of these evil connotations?” Perez said.

Kyle Morrison, an assistant Cook County public defender, sees this issue play out particularly in drug cases. He described a cycle where people return to the same pressures that led to their initial convictions and then reverted to familiar habits.

“It’s not a drug use problem, it’s an opportunity problem,” Morrison said.

Perez and Morrison both highlight how reentry is shaped less by individual inadequacies and more by systemic failings. Despite these challenges, there are organizations working to close those gaps and ensure people don’t need to navigate reentry alone.

Reentry Resource Program

When Steven Scotti began reentry in 2024, he didn’t know what the internet was. While at Danville Correctional Center, Scotti was connected to the Reentry Resource Program’s Mapping Your Future guide, which became his roadmap through a society he felt disconnected from.

Now serving as an advisory committee member of the organization, Scotti helps improve the materials he once relied on, drawing on his own experiences to provide comprehensive and individualized support.

“To see the information that I contributed helping somebody navigate an area of reentry in a meaningful way is really important to me,” Scotti said.

The Reentry Resource Program – part of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s Education Justice Project – was created at the request of formerly incarcerated students who were struggling to find support services.

“They said to us, ‘You all are researchers and professors and writers, why don’t you all create a resource for us?’ So, we did,” said Lee Ragsdale, director of the Reentry Resource Program.

The team is celebrating the 10th edition of its nearly 200-page guide, updated yearly. It covers everything from finding housing and employment to dealing with post-incarceration trauma.

“People come out and feel like they have to do everything all at once, and they don’t know where to begin,” Scotti said. “The guide breaks it down for them in much more digestible amounts.”

Advisory Committee Member Jay Villa called the program’s materials a “gold standard” for those recently released.

“It was really good to see an organization with a focus on the actual human being and making sure that it was relevant with people who had lived experience,” Villa said.

Both Villa and Scotti acknowledged the stigma that causes formerly incarcerated people to build a “mental wall around themselves” and avoid accessing resources over fears of being verbally accosted. Ragsdale, whose husband is system-impacted, said that limited autonomy while incarcerated can leave people afraid to advocate for themselves once they return home.

Villa believes the Reentry Resource Program not only solves these issues but also enhances safety that benefits the public good.

“If people are working, they’re happy and they’re stable, they’re less likely to reoffend,” Villa said. “More police on the streets aren’t preventing crime because they show up after the crime has occurred. Real crime prevention is support for marginalized people of any kind, including those reentering.”

StreetWise

As dawn settles over Kenosha, Wisconsin, Charlie Ross leaves his apartment bundled up with a hat, gloves and hand warmers. He walks to the train station, rides nearly two hours to Chicago to pick up StreetWise magazines, then boards another train north. By 9:30 a.m., Ross is outside Bennison’s Bakery in downtown Evanston, selling magazine copies for $3 apiece.

“Some days I make $75, some days I make like $12 a day,” Ross said. “But it’s enough to keep groceries in my refrigerator, keep my transportation going, pay my light bill and phone bill.”

StreetWise, a grassroots journalism outlet, provides income and a community for roughly 125 vendors, many formerly incarcerated or with lived experiences of homelessness, poverty and inequality.

Before working for the magazine, Ross slept in a tent on the beach. Just over a year ago, while stopping at a Mariano’s grocery store to buy a beer, he met a StreetWise vendor who told him about the organization.

“I was a little apprehensive at first, thinking that this was not gonna help me, I’m not gonna sell papers,” Ross said. “But it worked out, and I was able to make enough money to pick myself up.”

Describing himself as a “hustler by trade,” Ross has found a home at StreetWise after encountering employment barriers post-incarceration.

“StreetWise doesn’t discriminate,” Ross said. “Instead, they say, ‘Come on in, you’re part of the family.’”

For Ross, the relationships he builds while selling magazines are just as meaningful as his earnings. Regular customers greet him by name, and he said smiling and waving at people “makes my day.”

Julie Youngquist, executive director of StreetWise, said forging personal connections with vendors has been the organization’s “secret sauce” since its founding 33 years ago. Ross agrees, having formed a kinship with countless vendors.

“There’s so many different personalities, and they come from all different walks of life,” Ross said. “It’s one big family. If you could meet them all, you would love them all too.”

Lyric Benford, Arlette Correa, Eunice Lee, Sai Trivedi

Judge Michael Hood presents the Alma Roque award to Michael Wronkowski, a woodworker and retired deputy sheriff, during the Nov. 7 Veterans Treatment Court graduation at the Skokie Courthouse. Wronkowski crafted plaques for the graduating veterans. (Photo by Ben Shapiro/MEDILL TrialMonitors)

VETERANS AND CARCERAL SYSTEM: Click here for slides.

By Ben Shapiro, Finn Hazen, Baylee Krulewitz and Eleanor Song

After Manuel Gomez returned home to Los Angeles County from serving in the U.S. Navy, the injury he brought back with him sent him down what he now calls a “dark path.” The medication he was prescribed for the pain spiraled into addiction, and his addiction brought him to court.

Without treatment or support, Gomez eventually wound up facing a five-year prison sentence. He called the experience a “reality check” — one that offered no veteran-specific services, despite his repeated asking for help. He said he had to navigate withdrawal, trauma and recovery largely on his own.

After leaving prison, Gomez set out to ensure other veterans don’t have to make a similar journey alone. He now serves as the founder of VetPhoenix, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering justice-impacted veterans. Gomez has become an advocate for veterans rehabilitation programs and treatment courts designed to keep veterans out of jail — the kind of help he wishes he had known about when he needed it most.

“A veterans court, at its most simplistic form, is to be a vehicle toward healing, not a vehicle toward retributive accountability,” Gomez said.

Gomez’s hope reflects a broader shift within the criminal justice system. Across the country, some courts have created pathways for individuals found guilty of crimes that don’t include jail time. In Chicago and its suburbs, rehabilitation is becoming an increasingly popular option through specialized problem-solving courts.

Cook County has more than five times the number of problem-solving courts than any other county in Illinois. As laid out by the National Institute for Justice, these courts are led by a team of individuals in the justice system — from judges to probation officers — to expedite cases, lessen caseloads and reduce recidivism. The courts deal with issues ranging from drug abuse to mental health concerns to veterans’ affairs.

In one Cook County courthouse, Judge Michael Hood presides over the Veterans Treatment Court. A Marine veteran himself, Hood said the primary goal of the problem-solving court is to help “fix” offenders, rather than putting them in prison.

“I think we, as a society in the United States of America, have some obligation to help those guys who, when we say, ‘Hey, go over there and fight in a war,’ they say, ‘OK,’” Hood said.

Hood said the Veterans Treatment Court at the Skokie Courthouse is a one-and-a-half to two-year-long program. Veterans complete four phases during which they are required to report to their probation officer to work toward rehabilitation.

Hood said the problem-solving court focuses on two umbrella issues its program members are most likely to face: mental health concerns and addiction. The program’s goal is to provide services that are often unavailable to justice-impacted individuals in jails and prisons.

“Why send a veteran to prison to get nothing when they can go to our court?” Hood said.

On Nov. 7, the Skokie Courthouse held its biannual graduation ceremony from the Veterans Treatment Court. Both an Army and an Air Force veteran accepted their diplomas and expressed appreciation for Hood and the problem-solving court personnel.

Christine Bookwalter, an assistant public defender in Cook County’s felony court rotation, was honored at the event for her work with the Veterans Treatment Court. She said problem-solving court is important because it’s a “different kind of approach” to the law — a way for veterans to receive help, rather than punishment, as they return to civilian life.

“This really gives them an opportunity to work through what their problems are, so that they can go on and do great things,” Bookwalter said. “This enables them to move past whatever happened that brought them into court and get the treatment that they need and deserve.”

The assistant public defender added that the purpose of the Skokie Courthouse’s Veterans Treatment Court is not to give veterans a “free pass.” Rather, it is to help those who have served the country turn their lives around without the burden of a felony conviction hanging over them for the rest of their lives.

Representatives from related veterans support groups were present at November’s graduation ceremony. Milagros Santos, a nurse for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs who works with the Homeless Patient Aligned Care Teams, cheered on both veterans as they graduated from the problem-solving court.

Santos works with the VA to provide medical services to veterans in need. She said the Veterans Treatment Court, in partnership with her own work — traveling around the greater Chicago area

to immunize those who have served the country and provide post-operative care, among other medical tasks — is vital to ensure the well-being of veterans when they return home.

“We recognize that not a lot of the veterans are able to go to the hospital,” Santos said. “So we reach out to them. We go to them.”

Santos said she was happy to support the graduates and appreciates the Cook County court system for helping veterans.

Once a veteran graduates from the problem-solving court, their charges are dismissed and expunged. Hood said the success stories are the reason why he loves the program.

“There’s a million reasons to get behind it,” Hood said. “If you love veterans, you can get behind it. If you’re a money guy, you can get behind it. And the recidivism is great.”

Ben Shapiro, Finn Hazen, Baylee Krulewitz, Eleanor Song

The University of Chicago’s Office for Military-Affiliated Communities, also known as OMAC, partners with Cook County Jail through its Veterans Restorative Justice Project (VRJP) to support incarcerated veterans. The program provides supplies, creative writing opportunities, and reintegration pathways connected to the Cook County Veterans Treatment Court. Credit: Cook County Sheriff’s Office (Official)

The University of Chicago

Veterans Restorative Justice Project.

News Feature:

Local Navy veteran who struggled with substance abuse now dedicates his life to helping other vets

ABC 7 Chicago featured Greg Sanchez, the assistant director of the Office for Military-Affiliated Communities at the University of Chicago, on Oct. 13.

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From left, reporters Michael Capobianco, Cassandra Brook and Jezel Martinez portray an Italian interpreter, a defendant and a defense attorney, respectively, in an educational video about the pre-trial process.

Who’s Who in the Courtroom: (video wrap-up)

Skit 1: Violating Pre-Trial
Skit 2: Bank Heist Witness

By Cassandra Brook, Michael Capobianco, Jezel Martinez, David Sun, Sophia Zhang

Issues that shape daily life, including housing, safety, family and civil rights, are often neglected in the legal system, said Alison D. Spanner, director of the Access to Justice and Strategic Planning Division of the Illinois Courts. Despite reforms and limited resources, the civil justice system remains out of reach for many who need it most.

While the Supreme Court guarantees all criminal defendants have the right to counsel if they cannot afford it, no such standard exists for civil cases. According to the 2022 “Justice Gap Study,” nearly half of those surveyed did not seek help for at least one of their recent civil legal problems, citing concerns over cost.

Professor Danielle Hamilton, director of the Carter G. Phillips Center for Supreme Court and Appellate Advocacy at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, leads a clinic that assists self-represented, otherwise known as pro se, plaintiffs in civil rights appeals in circuit courts nationwide. She emphasized that financial resources play a significant role in courtrooms.

“For civil cases, it is about who has more money because you're fighting for money, and the only way to win the money is to have money initially, to get somebody to fight for your money,” Hamilton said.

Further, few attorneys offer pro bono services, where individuals who cannot afford legal services are represented for free.

“A lot of attorneys are going to firms that focus heavily on commercial work and high-paying clients,” Spanner said. “Particularly in metropolitan areas like Cook County, [many lawyers] go to big law firms that no average person would be able to hire.”

According to paralegal and manager of the Hibbler Help Desk Oliver Levy, pro se litigants in civil court are at a “definite disadvantage.” This virtual help desk is staffed with volunteer attorneys who help these litigants free of charge.

“If you are suing a huge corporation with a massive stable of corporate attorneys, the deck is stacked against you,” Levy said.

The deck is stacked against pro se litigants in other ways, as judges often hold them to the same standards as attorneys, said Karla Chrobak, director of legal services at CARPLS, a Chicago-based legal service that offers advice, brief services or referrals to self-represented litigants.

“I think there’s an imbalance of power,” said Maurice McFarlin Jr., senior instructor at Northeastern Illinois University in the justice studies department. “I think one of the challenges is how the judge and jury view [pro se litigants].”

But Levy views cost as the primary barrier to fair access to justice, leading individuals to navigate the legal system alone.

“Every person who calls wants an attorney, but there is such a sparse landscape of legal resources, and getting actual representation is not realistic for most litigants,” Chrobak said. “I’m not sure that many have the choice to represent themselves.”

To help mitigate the cost barriers to justice, the Illinois Supreme Court made amendments to Rule 298 in 2023 to expand statewide access to an application for court fee waivers in civil cases. Spanner said the Illinois Court Help team has received feedback suggesting that the process is harder than it seems.

Illinois Court Help, a free service established by the Illinois Courts in 2021, provides litigants with guidance on court procedures, required forms and legal resources. Through a phone call or online chat, individuals are connected with trained court guides, who offer legal information, not advice.

Spanner said the non-uniformity and amount of judicial discretion involved in the fee waiver application make it difficult for her and her 15-member court guide team to assist court patrons.

She said they will be hosting three or four listening sessions this summer with individuals who are “intimately involved” with helping others receive fee waivers, or have worked with communities that often seek fee waivers, in hopes of creating a more accessible experience for litigants.

At CARPLS, Chrobak and her team of practicing attorneys help clients by drafting motions, preparing documents and making referrals. Chrobak describes her role as “matching the neediest to those few resources that we do have.”

Among those in greatest need, Hamilton identifies incarcerated individuals as an especially vulnerable population, who often represent themselves. Hamilton mostly works with incarcerated individuals in civil rights cases in the appellate jurisdiction.

“They’re not getting their medication, they’re not getting the proper food, they’re being injured on the job, other people are beating them up,” Hamilton said. “This is a forgotten population where people have turned a blind eye.”

She emphasized incarcerated individuals are often overlooked in the legal system and deserve to be treated like human beings. She said she hopes the public will come to see the real harm they’ve endured.

“I feel honored to be able to help them get the justice that I think they deserve,” Hamilton said.

Cassandra Brook, Michael Capobianco, Jezel Martinez, David Sun, Sophia Zhang

BONUS: Interactive StoryMap: Click here to begin

By Betsy Lecy, Ridhima Kodali, Arjun Khatti and Joseph Mangin

Chloe Wakabayashi began plucking her eyebrows and growing her hair to present more effeminately within a year of her 15-year sentence at Oregon State Penitentiary.

“I never felt like I was in the wrong body,” she said. “But I’ve been dressing up in women’s clothes since I was like five.”

Wakabayashi, now 55, said she started to have feelings of gender dysphoria in 2015 while incarcerated. Mayo Clinic reports that gender dysphoria refers to the psychological distress that occurs when an individual feels conflicted between their sex assigned at birth and their own gender identity. According to Black & Pink’s National LGBTQ Prisoner Survey, of transgender and nonbinary respondents, 43% have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria and 31% reported being denied these diagnoses during incarceration.

Kara Ingelhart, director of the LGBTQI+ Rights Clinic at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, said since transgender people are often more impacted by incarceration, she makes it a practice to affirm their identity.

“The facility is a harmful place and can be really stigmatizing so having someone on the outside is affirming,” Ingelhart said.

Wakabayashi said that for her, requesting gender-affirming treatment in 2017 was easy, but not for other incarcerated individuals in the facility. This is because authorities questioned their gender identity as they presented more masculine, she said.

She also said the facility in Oregon provided utilities — like access to transgender showers, a blow dryer and a curling iron — and were careful when housing incarcerated individuals with her, to avoid the Prison Rape Elimination Act. PREA is a federal law to prevent sexual assault in correctional facilities.

She added that since the staff received training at OSP, they did an “especially” good job after the pandemic with being more informed on transgender issues and providing treatment for transgender people.

Wakabayashi credits these measures to OSP’s adoption of the Norway carceral system, focusing on rehabilitation for incarcerated individuals. For instance, OSP included meditations, Bible studies and a Japanese garden.

Uptown People’s Law Center Legal Director Nicole Schult said that Illinois is “very very far” from adopting this model due to funding and staffing issues. She added there is a cultural mindset of punishment over rehabilitation in most Illinois prisons.

Alyssa Meurer, a Larsen Justice Fellow at UPLC, said Illinois is not designed toward rehabilitation and that correctional officers in the Illinois Department of Corrections, in addition to other incarcerated people, are vocally transphobic.

Meurer, who has represented transgender individuals, said they are repeatedly misgendered and called derogatory names, leading to “serious” mental health issues. She said the word “b---h” is commonly used within the women’s prisons.

“The culture allows them to just denigrate and harass individuals,” Meurer said. “There’s kind of this culture of fear.”

Ed Yohnka, director of communications and public policy for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, said that previously, no one had any expertise in treating individuals with gender dysphoria in the IDOC, but that treatment conditions did improve.

“That was especially troubling and grueling often for folks,” Yohnka said. “People were summarily rejected without a real analysis or evaluation of their health care needs.”

Schult said there has been a change toward gender-affirming care in the IDOC and there have been programs like the Prison Rehabilitation & Identity Sensitivity Mentorship Program in Illinois’ Centralia Correctional Center.

However, there has been a decrease in transgender participants in PRISM, according to the correctional oversight organization John Howard Association of Illinois.

The UPLC and the Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center filed a lawsuit against the IDOC on behalf of transgender individuals who wanted to move to correctional facilities that identified with their gender. One individual seeking new placement was Janiah Monroe.

Monroe was in a men’s prison facility where she was subjected to sexual violence by correctional staff and other incarcerated individuals. Per the UPLC, the IDOC is aware that transgender women housed in men’s correctional facilities are at a higher risk for suicide, sexual assault and sexual harassment.

The IDOC did not respond to a request for an interview at the time of publication.

Of those who reported to have been sexually assaulted by a prisoner, 76% report that “prison staff intentionally placed them in circumstances where they would be at high risk of sexual assault from another prisoner,” according to the Black & Pink’s National LGBTQ Prisoner Survey.

Schult said that some people in custody and staff do not know what it means to be transgender.

“Prisons want a one size fits all answer to everything,” Schult said. “They want it to be the same for everyone. I think with trans[gender] issues, because it’s complex and it’s individualized, there’s not one box you can check.”

Arjun Khatti, Ridhima Kodali, Elizabeth Lecy, Joseph Mangin

James Soto, Illinois’ longest-serving exoneree, said fears about potential funding cuts to legal agencies echo the effects of President Ronald Reagan’s budget reductions. (TV image courtesy of Zoe Singer/Northwestern News Network/click: video link

By Karina Eid, Kamran Nia, Zoe Singer, Maiya Wahl, Aidan Weiss

Pablo Mendoza, 47, spent over two decades in Illinois’ carceral system, devoting much of his time to fighting his own legal battles. While in prison, Mendoza became a legal adviser, also known as a “jailhouse lawyer,” to other incarcerated individuals.

Since his release from prison in 2020, Mendoza continues to offer legal assistance to those involved in the criminal legal system, a job that he said triggers traumatic memories. He said he still remembers the anxiety of arguing his case in the courtroom.

“You have that impostor syndrome immediately,” Mendoza said. “Your brain is clouded through all these chemicals that are running through there, and you're not your best self.”

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Mendoza is among the thousands of people who have represented themselves in Illinois courts every year. But as legal aid agencies brace against the threat of funding cuts, self-represented litigants will have fewer resources to help them fight their cases.

Illinois JusticeCorps, an organization that helps self-represented litigants navigate the civil legal system, received a stop work and grant termination order from the AmeriCorps volunteerism program on April 28. The directive followed President Donald Trump’s nearly $400 million slash on AmeriCorps grants nationwide.

“It was kind of not if, but when, it was going to be our turn,” said Jenna Kearns, the JusticeCorps program director. “It was shocking and disheartening.”

After scrambling to secure alternative resources to keep the JusticeCorps operating through August, program coordinators said the organization is now in limbo, as coordinators determine how to continue the program’s mission in the absence of federal funding.

Kearns said the JusticeCorps is “integral” in offering assistance to self-represented litigants, especially in civil cases.

Defendants only have a right to an attorney in criminal cases. Generally, litigants are not entitled to representation in civil matters, such as divorce, eviction and small claims cases. Legal experts said finding and affording professional representation is not always feasible.

“Courts will have to reckon with the fact that there will always be a large number of people who don't have access to an attorney,” Kearns said. “[The JusticeCorps] is one tool that can be used to try to help mitigate some of those barriers and challenges that people face.”

Both legal experts and self-represented litigants report extreme challenges in litigating without counsel. Self-represented litigants often devote a significant amount of time to building their case, potentially interfering with their employment or childcare obligations. Conducting research, contacting courthouses and e-filing documents can also present logistical hurdles.

Shari Stone-Mediatore, director of Education at Parole Illinois, independently advises incarcerated self-represented litigants and said courts use legal jargon to “maintain power hierarchies,” disadvantaging self-represented litigants.

“Lawyers go to school for three years to learn this, and then you have people in prison who oftentimes don't have a high school education, let alone a college education or a law degree,” she said. “They need to learn all these legal terms and legal procedures before they even know what documents to look for.”

JusticeCorps leaders are discussing ways to salvage at least some parts of the program. Still, some courthouse advisers said they are bracing for more clients and busier schedules if the JusticeCorps is shuttered in the coming months.

Kathryn Huber Kenyon, a supervisory attorney at Legal Aid Chicago, said she has already seen “an increase in traffic” at her organization’s help desk since the JusticeCorps lost its federal funding. She said she was not surprised by the cutback in support for self-represented litigants.

“Intuitively, sometimes people think if you’re not entitled to a lawyer in a civil proceeding, you don’t really need a lawyer, so that's an easy place to make a funding cut,” Huber Kenyon said. “That just could not be further from the truth. The whole system breaks down when people are not represented in large numbers.”

While many of Trump’s funding cuts have sent shock waves throughout the nation, Huber Kenyon and others familiar with the legal system said reductions in legal support are not unprecedented.

James Soto, 63, an exoneree and Northwestern Prison Education Program graduate, said he watched support for accessible legal aid fluctuate throughout his 42 years in prison. Specifically, he said concerns that legal agencies may lose their funding are reminiscent of the impact of President Ronald Reagan’s budget cuts.

Reagan proposed eliminating the Legal Services Corporation, the largest contributor to organizations offering civil legal aid to low-income Americans. Rejecting that proposition, Congress instead cut 25% of its funding for the program, forcing the closure of 285 legal aid offices around the country, according to the LSC’s website.

“This is not fiscally responsible when you are cutting off funding to those that are most impacted by a system which is further keeping them marginalized, and keeping them in prison and keeping people on their way to prison,” Soto said.

Karina Eid, Kamran Nia, Zoe Singer, Maiya Wahl

SIDEBAR Feature: THRIVE: Addiction Rehabilitation for the Women of Cook County Jail (w/script)

By: Carlotta Angiolillo, Evelyn Heath, Georgia Kerrigan, Sammy Krimstein

When it comes to rehabilitation in the legal system, Xavier Perez said he likes to compare crime and substance use to the runny noses and splitting headaches that accompany a cold.

“If you’re just taking medicine to deal with those issues, then all you’re doing is dealing with the symptoms,” Perez said. “Because we only deal with symptoms [of crime and substance use] in terms of criminal justice policy, then we never deal with the causes of it.”

Perez, an assistant professor and co-founder of DePaul University’s criminology department, advocates for a different approach to substance use within the legal system, stating that “treatment produces better results than punishment.”

Since 2020, the Cook County Sheriff’s Office has done just that, said Perez — providing group counseling and individual therapy for incarcerated individuals in the Cook County Department of Corrections through the Sheriff’s Men’s Addiction Recovery Tiers, commonly known as SMART program.

SMART is court-ordered and typically lasts 90 days, although judges can adjust the program length for each individual. According to CCSO, the program has 146 men enrolled and employs 17 staff members as of May 9.

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The program exists alongside numerous other groups, including the Therapeutic Healing Recovery Initiative for Vitality and Empowerment, or THRIVE program, which provides similar rehabilitative services to the CCDOC’s female population

The THRIVE framework is similar to SMART, but with fewer participants and additional female empowerment initiatives, according to Joseph Rice, an instructor in DePaul’s criminology department who volunteers for the group.

SMART Deputy Director Mary Coulibaly said that to be admitted into SMART, individuals must be free of disciplinary issues for 90 days prior to the start of the program. Program refusals are reevaluated after a period of being incident-free.

Officials from the CCSO sometimes recruit individuals they believe would benefit from the program, according to Coulibaly. She said that if an individual is interested, they work with their legal team to secure a court order from a judge.

“I always say, I have an honor of overseeing this program,” Coulibaly said. “It is a very special program.”

Dr. Keyuana Muhammad, who works alongside Coulibaly as the assistant executive director at CCDOC, said that SMART does not typically service maximum security individuals. However, Muhammad said, the team is making frequent exceptions because of demographic shifts in the jail due to the Illinois Pretrial Fairness Act.

The legislation, in effect since 2023, was aimed at securing pretrial release for nonviolent offenders and has resulted in a higher proportion of maximum-security individuals at the CCDOC, according to Muhammad.

Perez, an advocate for criminal justice reform, said he applauds the work done at SMART. He said the program helps combat traditional criminal justice frameworks, allowing people to heal themselves and make amends with their communities.

Perez emphasized the importance of providing resources for individuals once they reenter society. He said that this is especially important when people are going back into “that same environment” where they had the “temptation” and “triggers” of addiction.

Coulibaly said that reentry care has been one of SMART’s greatest additions. The SMART program has three reentry care coordinators who handle alumni in need of support after reintegration into the community, and has merged with another CCSO program to provide community-based care for those experiencing opioid use challenges.

“Seeing our individuals engage and really take life under their own terms, once they are sober and once they are stable, is really awesome to see,” Coulibaly said.

Aaron Johnson, a professor and director of Augusta University’s Institute of Public and Preventive Health, said there is a need for more substance use treatment programs in carceral institutions.

With more than 30 years of experience in substance use, prevention and treatment, Johnson said that Cook County’s addiction treatment programs are possible because of how large the jail is.

“There are not a lot of places that offer substance use treatment within correctional settings, particularly in a jail,” Johnson said.

As SMART has grown, so has demand for the program, with refusals increasing since 2020 according to a 2024 Sheriff’s Office Semiannual Behavioral Health Report.

“While we would like to serve everybody here, we just can’t, because we don't have the manpower to,” Coulibaly said.

Perez said a downside is that treatment programs are nevertheless entrenched in punishment, operating under the criminal legal system. But proponents of SMART and its associated programs see them as a novel way to combat drug use through the carceral system, citing the post-incarceration treatment and community-based elements as unique.

Through collaborations with correctional partners across the country, Muhammad views Cook County as a blueprint for fighting the national drug crisis.

“I would go out and venture to say that we're kind of leading the way in some of those efforts,” Muhammad said.

Carlotta Angiolillo, Evelyn Heath, Georgia Kerrigan, Samuel Krimstein

Jeanne Bishop, who became a public defender after her sister’s murder, said when she started her career as a corporate associate, she didn’t feel like she “was helping anyone who really needed help.” (TV image via CBS’s “48 Hours”)

By Mia Mraz, Sara Stanisavic, Josh Sukoff

It’s a regular day at the Skokie Courthouse. Assistant Public Defender Jeanne Bishop enters the courtroom at 9 a.m. and, defending client after client, leaves only once all the files on the judge’s table are closed. Though defendants shuffle in and out – some by their free will, some escorted in handcuffs by a sheriff – Bishop remains a constant.

With 85 percent of adults and 95 percent of juveniles represented by public defenders in Cook County, according to the UIC Law Review, Bishop and her 697 colleague attorneys wade through 3.9 million active court cases.

“At one point during COVID, I went up to 105 [cases],” Bishop said. This is well over the recommended load, which she said was around 50 per felony attorney.

Abigail Barefoot, an assistant professor of instruction in legal studies at Northwestern University, said high caseloads are a product of the overrun criminal legal system.

“They can't necessarily say, ‘I'm overworked, I have too many cases,’ because if it's not them, who else is going to take on these cases?” Barefoot said.

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But private attorney Wendy Zun, with over 30 years’ prior experience as a public defender, said the heavy workload isn’t unique to public defenders.

“Three weeks ago, I was working about 80 hours in one week,” Zun said. “That's probably a little of the public defender mentality. It's hard for me to say no to a case.”

The challenges have grown since Illinois eliminated cash bail, with 53 percent of defendants held in custody for first appearance hearings, according to the Circuit Court of Cook County. Circuit Judge Laura Ayala-Gonzalez said detainment exacerbates issues defendants face, like unfamiliarity with court procedures or criminal rights.

“Most of the breakdowns in the communication are because some of those individuals are in custody,” she explained.

Bishop mitigates this by spending extra time with detained clients who seem “cut off from the world.”

Zun said the biggest difficulty for public defenders isn’t the caseload or handling detainment – it’s the emotional weight of their cases and impact on defendants’ lives.

“You have a lot of vicarious trauma,” she said. “It’s a lot to hold.”

The pressure can deter aspiring lawyers like Elizabeth Bulat, a Cardozo School of Law student, from the position.

“It low-key scares me,” Bulat admitted. “This is somebody’s life. You have to represent them or they’re going to jail.”

Defendants’ skepticism poses another challenge. Elizabeth Tarzia said many clients believe they have a worse lawyer since it is provided by the state.

“They call us penitentiary deliverers,” said Tarzia, the chief public defender of Cook County’s Second Municipal District. “They think they're getting a lesser product because they aren't paying for it.”

Zun said clients respect her more now that she is a paid attorney.

“The mythology is that public defenders are not good lawyers,” Zun said. “The reality is, some of the public defenders are the best trial lawyers I know.”

Ayala-Gonzalez observed that the public defender’s office is a “training tool,” and said their experience is more profound than other attorneys.

“They are learning from being in court every single day and trying cases that they wouldn’t ordinarily try on their own,” Ayala-Gonzalez said.

Tarzia highlighted the public defender network’s access to the experience and specialties of their colleagues.

“There's just a plethora of real institutional knowledge here that working by yourself in criminal law, you're just not going to be able to find,” she said.

New research indicates community support for criminal legal reforms and increased public defense funding. This may spark much-needed policy changes to support public defenders and their clients.

For now, despite defendant skepticism, heavy caseloads, and high pressure, there is a common perspective uniting Tarzia and Bishop: their passion for their work.

“The minute I entered law school I always wanted to do criminal law,” Tarzia said. “I just wanted to provide really good defense to people who otherwise probably wouldn't have gotten it. I kind of like the underdog.”

Bishop’s attitude on the law has evolved. She started her career as a corporate associate.

“I was absolutely terrible at it because I didn't care deeply about it,” Bishop said. “I didn't feel like I was helping anyone who really needed help.”

After her sister’s murder in 1990, Bishop became a public defender. She hasn’t looked back since.

“When my sister died, that was just the most enormous wake-up call that life is short,” Bishop said. “We don't have a minute to waste it on anything that isn't deeply meaningful.”

Tarzia said if given the chance to start over from before law school, she wouldn’t want to.

“Even all these years in… I really, really love my job. Not everything, but I never am sad when it's Sunday. I'm never sad to go to work,” Tarzia said. “I don’t think everybody can say that.”

Mia Mraz, Sara Stanisavic, Josh Sukoff

Cermak Health Services, the second largest single-site correctional health service in the United States, provides care to the detainees at the Cook County Department of Corrections.

By Valerie Chu, Sarah Lonser, Eric Smith

A defendant fidgeted at the stand before Skokie Courthouse Judge Paul Pavlus. Before he left the courtroom with his misdemeanor charge dismissed, Pavlus said, “I hope that you come out not through that door but rather through the front door to say hello.”

On the stand, the public defender described her client’s struggles with mental illness. While detained on a previous charge, he was treated at Cermak Health Services at the Cook County Department of Corrections. Detention is just one outcome for people awaiting trial, especially after a measure was implemented to keep people out of jail when they can’t afford to pay bail.

In February 2021, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed the Pretrial Fairness Act (PFA) into law, eliminating cash bail. This ensures defendants are eligible for pretrial release, changing the process by which attorneys represent their clients. 

“Every defense lawyer will tell you it is far more difficult to defend someone who is incarcerated,” said Steven Lubet, former attorney and Northwestern University professor of law emeritus.

Latisha Wright, a post-release officer at the Skokie Courthouse, said individuals who are released awaiting trial are assigned to an officer like herself, depending on the conditions of their release. Wright, who also works as a pretrial officer at the George N. Leighton Criminal Court Building in Chicago, said the implementation of the PFA has made the pretrial process “more fair.”

While the PFA may increase fairness, as Wright said, it also forms an intersection with mental health courts and defendants with mental health issues.

According to the American Psychological Association, 64% of jail inmates are affected by mental illness. Those residing in jails are most often awaiting trial or sentencing, as it is one of the possible pretrial outcomes. Additionally, Cook County Assistant Public Defender Jeanne Bishop said “at least half of [her] clients are affected with some sort of mental issues.”

“There are a number of programs and strategies being explored that are intended to provide individuals who find themselves in the criminal justice system with an opportunity to seek treatment before having a case adjudicated in the system,” Sharon R. Fairley, University of Chicago Law School professor from practice, said. 

Most of the existing resources for those struggling with mental illness are found in and around mental health courts, not the state’s attorney’s office, according to Cook County State’s Attorney Kimberly Foxx. She said even when someone is found unfit to stand trial, her office has little control over the treatment modalities to get them ready for trial.

“On the misdemeanor level, we have very little resources to deal with the mental health issues that we face,” Foxx said. “But our office does not have the capacity — and it is not assigned the responsibility outside of our diversion programs — related to treatment of those suffering from mental illness who come through our courts.”

Though there are some resources available to those struggling with mental health issues, it is important that those in need are actually able to receive those resources, according to Matthew McLoughlin, a co-founder of the Chicago Community Bond Fund and a coordinator at the Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice.

“You can’t provide treatment to people when they’re in a cage,” McLoughlin said. “It’s antithetical to the idea of actually providing care.”

Part of that effort has to be addressed before the pretrial stage, which is what Jessica Gimeno does as a mental health policy analyst at Access Living, a member organization of the Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice, which helped pass the PFA.

“In a system where people don't expect to interact with mental health support unless they are in a deep crisis, this creates problems,” Gimeno said. “So we want to intervene as early as possible in the process so that people can get care.”

One of the projects Gimeno works on is the implementation of the Community Emergency Services and Support Act (CESSA), which requires emergency response operators to help dispatch a team of mental health professionals instead of police to callers seeking mental and behavioral health support.

“CESSA and the Pretrial Fairness Act — they're both positive tools in the system geared toward increasing access to mental health support and decreasing interactions with the criminal justice system,” Gimeno said.

According to Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice’s McLoughlin, the Pretrial Success Act, a bill currently in process, will continue to support these goals through a $15 million appropriations request that will expand access to health and human services for people awaiting trial, another step in reforming the criminal justice system.

University of Chicago’s Fairley said, “The challenges inherent in addressing mental health issues prior to someone entering the criminal justice system and while they are in the criminal justice system are most definitely an area with great potential for reform.”

Valerie Chu, Sarah Lonser

Prisoners sentenced under truth-in-sentencing laws must serve 60%, 75%, 85% or 100% of their sentences, depending on the crime. (Photo by HayDmitriy)

By Lillian Ali, Dylan Friedland, Rie Kim

While Gregory Chambers was serving time at Kewanee Life Skills Re-Entry Center, he received a yellow slip of paper, reducing his sentence by 45 days. His roommate also earned 45 days of “good time” but couldn’t use it. 

His roommate was convicted under Illinois truth in sentencing laws, which meant that the credit he earned through rehabilitation and education programs could not be applied to his sentence.

These laws were passed in 1998, four years after Chambers’ conviction. They restrict the amount of credit that prisoners can earn for early release and prevent those convicted of murder from receiving any credit at all. Those considered day-for-day inmates can receive one day of credit off their sentence for each day served. Prisoners sentenced under truth-in-sentencing laws must serve 60%, 75%, 85% or 100% of their sentence, depending on the crime.

According to the prison population data set from the Illinois Department of Corrections released on March 31, only 52.5% of current prisoners are considered day-for-day prisoners. 16.3% of prisoners must serve their full sentence, while 30.2% must serve 85%, and the remaining 1% of prisoners must serve 75% of their sentence.

“Truth in sentencing laws are an abomination,” said Steven Drizin, a professor of law at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law and co-director at the Bluhm Legal Clinic’s Center on Wrongful Convictions.

These laws play a large role in prosecuting criminal cases. Both parties may lose control of the sentencing range should the case go to trial and the judge determines the sentence. Jeanne Bishop, an attorney in the Cook County Public Defender’s office, said this causes defendants to calculate how much risk they are willing to take with a plea bargain.

“Even if they don't really like the sentence that they're pleading to, they feel more secure with that than they do with the unknown,” Bishop said.

Defendants can be harmed by truth in sentencing even before they are convicted. Drizin said these laws give prosecutors leverage, which can help induce false guilty pleas from defendants.

“If you’re looking at facing 100 percent time versus… something for much less, your likelihood of pleading to the much less goes higher,” said Kim Foxx, the Cook County State’s Attorney.

Prisoners who face extremely long sentences often have less access to rehabilitation programming, Drizin said.  He added that without such programming, reentry into society can be even more difficult.

“A lot of people are being released without any sort of preparation or life skills or anything of that nature, and that's just really unfair to the individual and to communities,” said Candace Chambliss, legal director of the Illinois Prison Project.

Lack of rehabilitation can also lead to feelings of hopelessness, Drizin said. Chambers witnessed this firsthand during his time at Kewanee. While he was able to reduce his sentence by two years, some prisoners convicted under truth in sentencing laws, after receiving their unusable credit, got “depressed… and moped around for days,” Chambers said. 

Unlike traditional prisons, reentry centers like Kewanee focus primarily on rehabilitation and reentry programming. It accepts a limited number of prisoners in the last years of their sentences, by application. So, despite his unusable credit, Chambers’ roommate kept attending educational programs.

“If you make [rehabilitation] available to people, even if there’s not an immediate benefit, they’re still going to do it because they have an interest in rehabilitating themselves,” Chambers said.

Another issue arising from truth in sentencing laws is the impact of extreme sentencing on juveniles in the criminal justice system, said Lindsey Hammond, policy director at Restore Justice.

“For people that go into the system as children or as young people, their brains aren’t fully developed or mature” Hammond said. “They are literally growing up in prison, in a culture that is dehumanizing them. It’s as if we’re telling them that there’s nothing they can do to redeem themselves.”

In early 2023, Illinois became the 26th state to abolish juvenile life without parole when Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed House Bill 1064. However, this law does not affect those previously sentenced under truth-in-sentencing laws.

Drizin said this is a “huge problem” and a limitation of the law.

“These men who were already in prison had the same developmental issues at the time they committed the crime, and that should be mitigation in their cases as well,” Drizin said. “So if you’re trying to pass these laws in order to make a dent in mass incarceration, you’re making a chink as opposed to a dent.”

Rep. Barbara Hernandez filed House Bill 5219 in February, which would restore one day of sentence credit for each day of service in prison. While the proposed bill is retroactive, it does not restore credit for those with natural life imprisonment. Currently, the bill is stalled in the Rules Committee.

Hammond said another “big priority” for Restore Justice is working toward making the juvenile life without parole law retroactive.

“We also have other bills adjusting truth and sentencing,” Hammond said. “I think that what we're ultimately trying to do is to abolish these sentences that don't make sense.”

Lillian Ali, Dylan Friedland, Rie Kim

Lawmakers reintroduced an initiative to eliminate cash bail as the Pretrial Fairness Act in the 2019-2020 legislative session at the State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois. (Photo by Yinan Chen)

By Sonya Dymova, Sydney Leon, William Tong

Jeanne Bishop spends much of her time in Room 206 at Skokie Courthouse. Under the fluorescent lights and in front of Judge Paul Pavlus, the veteran Cook County public defender guides suspects of crimes through arraignments, discovery hearings and trials.

After 33 years on the job, Bishop and her colleagues adapted to a new stage of criminal procedure starting in September — pretrial detention hearings under the Illinois Pretrial Fairness Act.

“I originally thought that it would be much more messy or frustrating, but that really hasn’t materialized,” said Bishop, an activist against the death penalty.

Since the PFA took effect in late 2023, many stakeholders in the criminal legal system said pretrial detention in Cook County has become more fair and more safe. On the other hand, the bill has also created burdens for some judges and attorneys, they’ve said.

“A real focus on argumentation”

In addition to detaching a defendant’s ability to post bond from whether they’re detained before trial, the PFA also implemented a hearing process that requires judges to make pretrial detention decisions based on if a defendant poses a “real and present threat to the safety of any person or persons or the community.” 

“There’s a real focus on argumentation,” Cook County Public Defender Sharone Mitchell said. “There’s a real focus on looking at the risk factors and really making a very transparent, up-down decision (about) whether somebody should be detained.”

The law also created a group of non-detainable crimes for which judges cannot hold a defendant in jail. Judges are allowed to assign conditions for pretrial release in these cases, such as electronic home monitoring or no-contact orders.  

Organizers in Illinois have advocated for ending cash bail through grassroots movements, legal action and legislative reform efforts for years.

In July 2017, Cook County Court Chief Judge Timothy Evans required judges in the court system to only set bail at amounts that defendants could afford. Earlier in the year, State Rep. Christian Mitchell, a Chicago Democrat, introduced a measure that would eliminate cash bail. The bill died at the end of the legislative session. 

Lawmakers reintroduced an initiative to eliminate cash bail as the Pretrial Fairness Act in the 2019-2020 legislative session.

“It feels like it’s been a decade-long fight, at least for some folks,” said State Sen. Robert Peters, a Chicago Democrat.

The PFA’s provisions entered a larger criminal justice bill called the SAFE-T Act, which Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed into law on Feb. 22, 2021.

Starting September 2022, several state’s attorneys filed lawsuits to block the Pretrial Fairness Act’s bail reform measures. They alleged the act violated the Illinois Constitution, but the state’s supreme court found otherwise.  Ultimately, courts eliminated cash bail starting on Sept. 18, 2023.

“We survived on the electoral front,” Peters said. “We survived on the legislative front; We survived in the court — proof of how much we’ve organized around this issue.”

Contrary to perceptions that the act is a “get-out-of-jail-free card,” the act is accomplishing its goals so far, Bishop said.

“The violent people are separated from society and the non-violent people have their freedom,” she said. “Additionally, there are a lot of creative solutions that the judges use to tailor the release for each case.”

Between the PFA’s implementation and May 18 — the latest date for which data is available — 88% of defendants in Cook County have not been charged with a new crime while on pretrial release, according to the Cook County Circuit Court’s PFA Dashboard. About another 8% have been charged with new, non-violent crimes.

Still, there are concerns that judges may skew toward approving detention petitions out of caution, said Joshua Jones, a professor at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law.

59% of petitions granted

“If they release one person who goes out and does something terrible, they’re going to be in the paper for that,” Jones said. “If they release 500 people where nothing happens, nobody’s going to know it.”   

About 59% of pretrial detention petitions are granted and 40% of them are denied, according to the Cook County PFA dashboard. For misdemeanor detention petitions, that comparison is about 59% to 37%. For felony detention petitions, it’s about 70% to 29%.

Bishop said the PFA’s budding success in Cook County comes in large part because of early preparation efforts from multiple parts of the county’s criminal justice system.

Some lawyers on the other side of the courtroom agree. Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx said her agency — the second largest prosecutorial office in the nation — spent more than a year preparing for the law, helping fuel its effective implementation.

“We did trainings, we had technical assistance, we had additional resources,” Foxx said. “We were able to put additional attorneys into this work.”

Elsewhere in the state, state’s attorney’s offices have not found as much success, Peters said. He said that’s because they focused too much on opposing the law in court rather than preparing for it. More than 60 of Illinois’ 102 state’s attorneys participated in the 2022 effort to block the law.

Staffing and resource availability continue to affect the law’s implementation, Foxx said.

“The burden on us in Cook with a staff of 800 lawyers — where we can dedicate 15 to (pretrial detention) court — is very different than say the State’s Attorney’s Office for Vermillion County, which may only have four attorneys,” she said. “I’m always mindful that the challenges of my colleagues throughout the state are different.”

Longer hearings

In general, the legislation hasn’t proved particularly burdensome for the Cook County prosecutors, Foxx said. Still, pretrial detention hearings take longer than their bond hearing predecessors, she said, because they require more extensive argument and analysis from judges.  

On the public defender side, the PFA is also taking more effort from attorneys, Jones said.

“There’s a right to present evidence and do other things,” he said. “But in order to do those things, you have to prep, and you have to meet with your client.”

The PFA has also imposed a heavy burden on some appellate court judges, according to Appellate Court Justice Eugene Doherty, who serves on state’s Fourth District — based in Springfield.

“Picture our normal criminal volume — which was already in some of these districts heavy — being tripled,” Doherty said. “And no additional resources, for the most part.”

As Illinois shifts from bond to PFA hearings, the projected average number of bond or pretrial detention appeals across the state has increased from 17 to 4,557 per year, the state Supreme Court’s Pretrial Release Appeals Task Force found in March.

While the state Supreme Court has tried to re-allocate judicial resources in response, it’s not “really within their ability to match the scale of the additional burden,” Doherty said.

Foxx said this wave of increased appeals isn’t surprising, however.

“Everyone’s going to test the system, right?” she said.

As the state continues to grapple with the PFA’s effects, policymakers said they are relying on more data to inform potential changes to the law.

For instance, about 58% of pretrial detention requests for suspects of committing domestic violence are denied in Cook County, according to the county court’s PFA dashboard. Because domestic violence cases generally fall under the misdemeanor umbrella, that statistic actually reflects an increase in pretrial detentions for domestic violence charges, Foxx said.

“A cultural shift for judges who are evaluating these cases — I think that’s what you’re seeing,” she said.

Still, there is a lot of uncertainty as to why the domestic violence detention petitions play out the way they do, Foxx said.

And, detention is only one part of the pretrial system to keep an eye on, Northwestern Legal Studies Professor Abigail Barefoot said.

“Even though we’ve eliminated cash bail, part of the problem is we’re moving toward higher rates of electronic monitoring,” said Barefoot who specializes in carceral studies.

Defendants must pay for their own electronic monitoring, which could shift current practices to a more implicit system of state surveillance and control, Barefoot added.

In general, Foxx said, there’s still a lot to observe about the PFA’s effects — and how to respond.

“It’s very early for me to be able to say, ‘we need to fix this just yet,’” Foxx said.

Sonya Dymova, Sydney Leon, William Tong

The census practice of counting incarcerated individuals as residents of their prisons, like Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, Illinois, instead of residents of their home addresses, affects how district lines are drawn.. (Photo by Josh Sukoff/MEDILL TrialMonitors)

By Madeline King and Zack Siegel

Jay Young, executive director of Common Cause Illinois, worked alongside legislators and other activists to pass legislation to end prison gerrymandering in Illinois, aiming to increase the equality of political representation in the state by counting incarcerated people as members of their home communities when drawing district lines.

“Why people talk about and say they need to fix prison gerrymandering is that they need to correct a problem that the U.S. Census Bureau has created for us,” Young said.

Prison gerrymandering results from the practice of counting incarcerated individuals as residents of their prison instead of residents of their home address, affecting how district lines are drawn. Experts say prison gerrymandering affects every person living in America, distorting each individual’s political power and representation.

“That’s ultimately what prison gerrymandering is — a form of insidious, largely invisible voter suppression,” said Brianna Remster, an associate professor of sociology and criminology at Villanova University researching prison gerrymandering.

Remster said people living in districts with prisons have more political power at the expense of those who do not live in a district with a prison, as the former group has easier access to their representatives and are more likely to have their concerns be taken seriously because they do not have to compete with the incarcerated population — who are still represented by officials in their home communities and cannot vote — to have their voices heard.

Illinois 16th state to take action

According to Prison Policy Initiative, 16 states have now taken some action, with varying approaches, against prison gerrymandering and 47% of people in America live in a state that has committed to such actions.   

Illinois became one of the 16 states to take action to combat prison gerrymandering in January 2021 with the passage of the No Representation Without Population Act as a part of the Illinois Safety, Accountability, Fairness and Equity-Today Act, or SAFE-T Act.

The No Representation Without Population Act requires the Illinois Department of Corrections to collect the last known street address prior to incarceration of incarcerated individuals, as well as other data. The Illinois State Board of Elections will be mandated to use this address data when redistricting, counting incarcerated individuals as residents of their home addresses beginning during the redistricting cycle of 2030.

Young, who is also the senior director of voting and democracy for Common Cause, said he remains optimistic that the act could help to remedy the issue of unequal representation due to prison gerrymandering in his home state.

Remster said she is less confident in the act. According to her, the issues with the Illinois law lie in the fact that it neglects to count incarcerated people from out of state or without known addresses in a district and has a longer turnaround time to be implemented after its passage in comparison to legislation of other states.

Both Remster and Young said prison gerrymandering disproportionately affects communities of color. John Pfaff, a law professor at Fordham University, said he agrees, as the majority of the incarcerated population is made of Black and Hispanic men. These men count toward the prison district’s population — typically rural districts composed of predominantly white people — giving the district greater power although they cannot vote themselves, Pfaff said.

“It’s effectively using Black men and Hispanic men to bolster the voting power of conservative, rural, white people,” Pfaff said.

Race, class cited as reasons

Christina R. Rivers, the director of the DePaul Institute for Restorative Educational Engagement, said that many legislators do not view incarcerated individuals as their constituents.

“As a political scientist, that makes me itch,” Rivers said. “Because if you can’t vote, you’re still a member of the community.”

Reasons some officials neglect to view incarcerated populations as constituents include the fact that those in prisons cannot vote and are “hidden” from society, Rivers said, adding that other reasons may be tied to race and class demographics of incarcerated populations.

Rivers, who is also an associate professor of political science and a pre-law adviser at DePaul University, said it is important to note that not all political officials are “a ‘lock them up, throw the key away’ kind of person,” but much more still needs to be done to ensure that all legislators understand the importance of representing incarcerated people. 

In agreement with Rivers, Brian Beals said that in his experience, incarcerated populations have no relationship with either representatives of their prison’s community or home community.

Beals spent 35 years in Illinois prisons for a wrongful conviction and said representatives “paid no attention to us at all.”

Beals added that access to representatives from inside prisons and eventually allowing for people to vote while incarcerated would benefit both those incarcerated and those not by making incarcerated individuals “stakeholders.”

“If people are connected to the politics of the areas that we come from and we be more engaged, I think it would really impact the levels of recidivism because we would have that community connection that we’ve lost because of incarceration,” Beals said.

For other formerly incarcerated activists, ending prison gerrymandering marks a step in the right direction for achieving enfranchisement for incarcerated individuals. Avalon Betts-Gaston, executive director of the Illinois Alliance for Reentry & Justice, said enfranchisement would help to solve issues of unequal political representation due to incarceration.

“Elected officials would have to pay attention to the conditions faced by people inside of prisons because those individuals can vote you in or vote you out,” Betts-Gaston said.

Betts-Gaston added that the carceral system has disproportionately silenced the voices of communities of color and low-income individuals through disenfranchisement and said that in her opinion, this power has been stripped on purpose.

When discussing the monetary aspect of the carceral system and prison gerrymandering, Remster, who published research on prison gerrymandering in 2018, said it is important to note that there are no direct benefits for districts with prisons when it comes to receiving government funding because the algorithms to determine federal funding are not based on population counts.

Remster’s research partner, Rory Kramer, echoed Remster’s statement and said it is a common misconception that prison gerrymandering has direct monetary impacts on districts.

“There’s not a state that we’ve talked to that someone hasn’t brought up funding either as a reason to fix it or a reason not to fix it,” Kramer said.

1. According to Prison Policy Initiative, prison gerrymandering does not lead to increased government funding for districts with prisons.

Kramer, an associate professor of sociology and criminology at Villanova University, said people may also be surprised to learn that prison gerrymandering is typically not created based on political party lines.

“I expected that there would be a really big partisan skew — that this would be a story of harming Democratic districts and benefitting Republican districts,” Kramer said. “We don’t really see that.”

On the other hand, Pfaff, a Joel Reidenberg Distinguished Research Scholar at Fordham University, said there is somewhat of a partisan aspect to prison gerrymandering. He said legislation against prison gerrymandering has only been passed when Democrats control the state House and Senate under a Democratic governor.

Pfaff also said that the issue of prison gerrymandering is “underappreciated but fairly straightforward.”

Furthering Pfaff’s argument, Kathy Cortez, vice president of issues and advocacy for the League of Women Voters of Illinois, said she thinks the public understands the importance of equal political representation.

Cortez said she believes the public would welcome any step taken to ensure American democracy functions properly, including the step to abolish prison gerrymandering, once they are aware of the issue.

“Anything we can do to continue to drive home that representation and the integrity of ensuring that representation for individuals and the communities they technically reside in — to protect that — is important,” Cortez said. 

Beals, who works in prison reform and reentry advocacy through the Chicago Torture Justice Center and The Mud Theatre Project, said he also emphasizes the importance of ensuring representation for all and believes equal representation for those in prisons will create a more effective and ethical system.

“If you really want corrections to work, you want to hear those inside voices,” Beals said. “Right now, you don’t.”

Madeline King, Zack Siegel