Pritzker, Stratton lay out proposals for comprehensive justice reform

It’s not just about expunging pot convictions, although that’s a start

Lt. Gov. Stratton and Gov. Pritzker lay out their plans for comprehensive criminal-justice reform Thursday in Chicago. (One Illinois/Ted Cox)

Lt. Gov. Stratton and Gov. Pritzker lay out their plans for comprehensive criminal-justice reform Thursday in Chicago. (One Illinois/Ted Cox)

By Ted Cox

CHICAGO — The governor and lieutenant governor laid out extensive plans for criminal-justice reform Thursday, saying they’d work to end cash bail for low-level crimes, push drug offenders toward treatment rather than incarceration, and reduce mandatory sentencing.

At a so-called fireside chat at Kennedy-King College in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood, Gov. J.B. Pritzker credited Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton with heading what they call the Justice, Equity, and Opportunity Initiative.

Pritzker cited how, on New Year’s Eve, he pardoned 11,000 drug offenders as part of the equity provisions in the legalization of cannabis, which took effect the following day. The JEO Initiative builds on that, with perhaps an initial focus on drug crimes, but it also attempts to extend such community-minded reforms across the justice system and in all areas of the state.

Saying it’s about creating “a criminal-justice system that is fair,” Pritzker added, “We’re taking a holistic approach to reform.”

Stratton said it was about working to heal ailing communities, adding that she spoke to one woman who said, “I was in prison, and then I got sent to prison, and then I returned to prison,” meaning that her own home community seemed to her like a jail.

Stratton targeted “the gross inequities of the criminal-justice system,” many of which involve racial bias — as with all racial groups using marijuana, but African Americans and Hispanics bearing the brunt of the arrests for illegal possession. She called that “the disproportionality we see at every level of the criminal-justice system.”

She labeled the so-called War on Drugs “a stark example of the inequities.”

Basically, the full range of the JEO Initiative stresses rehabilitation over incarceration, but with an emphasis on a community approach. “This is all about the power of community,” Stratton said.

“We simply cannot have justice without equity and opportunity,” Stratton said, adding, “Real justice must include equitable access to educational opportunity,” to give children incentives to reject crime and provide them “no entry” to the justice system.

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“We simply cannot have justice without equity and opportunity.”

Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton (One Illinois/Ted Cox)

“Real justice must include access to housing,” Stratton said.

“It isn’t limited to an urban environment either,” Pritzker said. “There is injustice everywhere in the state of Illinois, and we’re going to correct it wherever it exists.” He pointed out that several cities in Illinois have per capita crime rates higher than Chicago’s.

“Listening to people who grew up in communities that are different from the ones that I grew up in and the ones that you grew up in, listening to those people, and then acting on the needs of those communities, will lead you to making real reform and correcting injustices that exist that you may not have otherwise known about,” Pritzker added.

They said they’d focus next on three concrete reforms, beginning with ending cash bail for low-level offenses, which can land people in jail for a protracted period, even for misdemeanors, simply because they don’t have the money available to post bond. Stratton quoted James Baldwin in saying: “How extremely expensive it is to be poor.”

But they’ll also push to divert drug offenders to treatment programs rather than jail, which will affect people in towns across the state hit by the opioid epidemic.

Pritzker said they’d also “reform mandatory sentences,” many — again including drug crimes — “excessive” in their punishment. Pritzker pointed out the state spends $1.4 billion a year to imprison 40,000 Illinoisans and said that can be reduced without jeopardizing public safety by focusing on nonviolent offenders. Stratton called such mandatory-sentencing laws “punitive” and “outdated.”

Pritzker and Stratton said they’d be releasing legislation on those issues this year in the General Assembly, but that the mission to provide comprehensive reform in criminal justice would take years.

Pritzker said he expected Illinois to become “a beacon of justice for the nation.”