Please check out the updated attachments for links to new reports and articles and a second season of the Pulitzer Prize Winning podcast Suave: https://www.futuromediagroup.org/suave-returns/
Meanwhile now is critical time to take a few minutes to use the very convenient links below to ask your Illinois legislators for their support in getting important justice reform across the finish line, as the both houses of the legislature reconvene to consider bills that have now passed the other chamber.
Home For Good Legislation
Use the convenient new online form at this link:
https://secure.everyaction.com/24U9Xk0reUmY8UFpKzFLsg2?autoSubmitSuppressed=true
to modify and send a predrafted letter to your Illinois State Senator and State Representative, asking them to support SB2403 and HB3162, which provide for $103 million of investment that would expand housing access and housing support for people with arrest and conviction records.
Improving Public Defense
The FAIR Act, HB3363, passed the Illinois House on April 9!
– It would reform the structure and funding of the Public Defender System in Illinois,
– Contact your state Senator using this action tool to ask for his or her support of the FAIR Act when HB3363 comes before the Senate for consideration.
– Sign-up for a canvassing shift here to canvass in your community for FAIR Act, to provide citizens with the tools to write to their legislators in support this legislation to create a statewide public defense system
– You can access the fact sheet here and the campaign website to learn more about the bill, and here is coverage from the Chicago Reader of “Illinois’s Public Defense Crisis,” as well as a link to the handouts from the recent Statewide Summit on the Future of Public Defense in Illinois
Restoring State Support for College Programs in Illinois Prisons
Click to sign a letter of support for HB2466, which would renew State support for programs of college education for those incarcerated in Illinois prisons, by removing the ban on the Monetary Award Program (MAP) for incarcerated students in Illinois.
- You can learn more about the bill at: BackontheMAPIL.org.
- You can also go this link to access resources and fact sheets for information that you can share with your networks about how restoring educational equity through MAP restoration would actually save the State money, and how attending college in prison substantially reduces the likelihood that someone will commit another crime after being released.
Automating Expungement and Sealing of Criminal Records in Illinois
Contact your state legislators now at this convenient link: https://secure.everyaction.com/4Lu0wbj26U-t56nL87x7ew2#!, if you haven’t already, asking them to support Illinois legislation, following the example of other states, to eliminate the (often prohibitively complicated) extra procedures that are now required for the individual to obtain the expungement and sealing to which he or she is already entitled is entitled under the law.
Ending Lifelong Financial Punishment by Abolishing All Fees for All Public Conviction Registries
Please go to this link, if you haven’t already, to connect directly with your state senator and state representative to support SB2197 / HB3469, which would end lifelong registration fees for those convicted of crime, and where you will also find this SB2197 / HB3469 fact sheet with more information about the importance of this legislation
Increase of lower age of detention for juveniles
- SB 1784 would raise the age of detention for juveniles from 10 to 13
- SB 2156 would create a Juvenile Detention Utilization Task Force to shift fiscal incentives away from detention to community alternatives
- Write to your member of the Illinois House of Representative to urge her or him to support SB1784 and SB2156
- you can contact your representative using this link: https://www.illinoispolicy.org/maps/
- and go to this link for a: Fact sheet on SB 1784