The harsh realities of truth in sentencing
In Illinois, defendants can be harmed by laws even before they're convicted
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.”