New Report Looks at Strategies to Cut Incarceration of Illinois Women by Half
Colette Payne (right) speaks at the annual Mother s Day vigil, organized by Moms United Against Violence and Incarceration, outside Cook County Jail in Chicago. Payne and other organizers at the Women s Justice Institute released a report detailing the impact of incarceration on women and explaining how to dramatically reduce the Illinois women s prison population.
Between 1980 and 2014, the number of women incarcerated across the United States increased by 700 percent. In Illinois, womenâs incarceration increased by 767 percent during that same time period. While that number has slowly decreased over the past two decades, the 1,418 women in the stateâs prisons at the end of 2020 is still more than quadruple the 401 women imprisoned in 1980. (These numbers only include people in Illinoisâs âwomenâs prisons;â they exclude people in womenâs jails and trans women in menâ
A task force of hundreds of experts, researchers and incarcerated women delivered a lengthy report offering sweeping recommendations about how to better serve women behind bars.
Originally published on January 27, 2021 2:53 pm
One out of every 20 children in Illinois has had a parent in jail or prison, according to a new report released Wednesday from a task force that members hope will ease challenges those children face.
According to the report from the Task Force on Children of Incarcerated Parents, the trauma children face from a jailed parent can affect not only their education, but also their mental and physical health. Children s trauma is witnessing their parent being loaded into the back of a police car, said Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton. Their trauma is only being able to see their parents a few times a year because their mothers and fathers are incarcerated, and they are incarcerated many hours away from home.
ROCKFORD Violence prevention activists and local faith leaders are calling on state lawmakers to address the surging gun violence that has plagued Rockford and other Illinois cities in 2020.
The starting point, according to Rev. Kenneth Copeland with New Zion Baptist Church in Rockford, is a comprehensive strategy that includes additional resources for violence prevention, intervention, mental health, trauma and re-entry programs.
“We need a strategic way of thinking that takes away from politicians this binary of are you soft on crime or are you hard on crime, ” Copeland said during a news conference Thursday. “We really need to be smart on crime as it relates to our citizenry and as it relates to access and ownership of weapons that are designed to kill people.”