A debate class could change the future of parole in Illinois

Joseph Dole painted "A Room with a 'View'" in 2021 with acrylic on tag board.
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PINCKNEYVILLE — In 2018, Joseph Dole was one of a group of students facing about 20 lawmakers. He didn’t have any public speaking experience, so he was a little nervous.

The students were in Stateville Correctional Center on life sentences. They had studied law journals and studies and formed teams, each arguing for the most effective way to bring parole back to Illinois. 

“We thought they would be more informed than we were, and it was actually the opposite,” Dole said.

“Almost every one of the people who showed up said it wasn’t so much the arguments we were making, ‘Those are all valid arguments, but the fact that you guys are up there and so knowledgeable and composed, it just destroys the stereotype. That is more powerful than the actual arguments that you could ever make.’” 

Although the Illinois Department of Corrections canceled the class soon after the public debate, the students kept pushing their vision. They wrote House Bill 3373 (also known as Senate Bill 2129) for last year’s General Assembly and are introducing the bill again this year.


Doesn’t Illinois Already Have Parole?

Courtesy of Raúl Dorado Raúl Dorado

Illinois is one of 17 states that has severely restricted or eliminated parole for those who are incarcerated. 

The state abolished its parole system in 1978. Prior to that, a board could let people out before completing their sentence. 

“What we have now is a determinate sentencing scheme where you give people a fixed sentence. There’s no reviewing their progress throughout the sentence,” said fellow student, Raúl Dorado.

Parole officers and the Illinois Prisoner Review Board are only in charge of mandatory supervised release — which happens after the sentence is over.

It’s why Dorado and the class drafted legislation that would allow those in prison a chance to turn their work, education and disciplinary history while incarcerated into freedom. 

Dorado argues it’s safer to give those in prison a reason to improve themselves.

“After 20 years, you’re eligible to present your best self before the Illinois prisoner review board and plead your case for release, and it’s not a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card,” he explained. “You have to meet certain criteria.”

Dole was convicted of murder in 2000 based on a state law that holds people accountable for the actions of others. He has maintained his innocence. Dorado was convicted of murder under the same law in the same year. 


Who Is In Charge of the Bill Now?

At first, the debate class tried working with one lawmaker to get the legislation passed, but Dole said she made changes to it that they didn’t like.

They then gave it to Urbana Representative Carol Ammons. Before joining the General Assembly in 2015, Ammons ran the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center and its Books to Prisoners program.

“I’ve been involved in criminal justice reform for almost 20 years,” she said.

According to Ammons, the state would save money by keeping fewer people in prison. 

“Statistically and numerically, crime is down and so do we need the level of facilities that we have in the state? Perhaps we don’t,” she added. “If we had a parole system, we probably would not, which saves the taxpayers significant money.”

Ammons has been working on the earned reentry bill for three years. She said some of the delay is making sure the change will roll out smoothly. 

“The Prisoner Review Board, I think, has experienced some instability for a number of years, certainly in the last three years, we’ve been trying to pass this bill, and that instability makes it difficult for us to implement the bill.”


What Do Victims’ Families Think?

Some victims’ families are opposed to the bill as is, while others strongly support it.

Jennifer Bishop-Jenkins is a prominent victims’ family advocate who does not think all parole cases should be left up to the review board. 

“There are psychopathic serial killers,” she said. “There are people who are not safe, and unfortunately, sadly, my sister’s killer is one of them.”

Her sister was 25 and pregnant, when she and her husband were killed in their home by a teenager. Despite the crime, Bishop-Jenkins is against capital punishment. She helped end the death penalty in Illinois in 2011. 

“To put any body of human beings that are not psychiatrists and experts in sociopathic personality disorders and psychopathic diagnoses — nobody else should be making that decision,” Bishop-Jenkins said.

Shaneva McReynolds is the president of FAMM – Families for Justice Reform, a nonpartisan, national nonprofit that fully supports Illinois’ parole bill.

McReynolds’ first husband was killed by someone whose identity she still does not know. At the time, their daughter was two months old. She later reconnected with and married her childhood sweetheart, who was behind bars at the time. McReynolds calls victims’ families survivors.

“There are a large majority of individuals that do understand that the criminal justice system, it is not fair and just,” she said.

“As a survivor, we all know that these individuals will return to our communities one day. And so this bill is a direct translation to community safety.”

McReynolds’ daughter is 16. If the person who killed her husband had been found and convicted immediately after his death, that person would still have four more years before he can make his case for release at the Prisoner Review Board. 

“With two decades of your time, that means you go in there and you’re not doing drugs or fighting or making correctional officers’ life hard every day, because your goal is to be able to show the Prisoner Review Board, legislators, and survivors that you are remorseful and you are able to be rehabilitated,” McReynolds said.


What’s next?

In the years since the debate class, Raúl Dorado and Joseph Dole have co-founded a nonprofit, Parole Illinois. They oppose excluding groups of incarcerated people in their legislation, as Bishop-Jenkins and some lawmakers have suggested. 

Dole said the Illinois Department of Corrections gives everyone a risk assessment that goes in their master file, which the Prisoner Review Board has access to.

“You still have to go up before a conservative board, but at least it would act as a safety valve for all the overly punitive laws we’ve passed over the last four or five decades,” Dole said.

Carol Ammons says the Prisoner Review Board did receive more money from the state last year, which she thinks will help increase support for the earned reentry bill.

“The PRB has to be adequately staffed. The members of the PRB need to be stabilized,” Ammons said.

If the bill passes, the PRB hearings would start with those who have served more time and phase down to those who have served 20 years. About 4,000 people in prison have already served 20 years of their sentence, according to Department of Corrections data from September. 

Emily Hays

Emily Hays started at WILL in October 2021 after three-plus years in local newsrooms in Virginia and Connecticut. She has won state awards for her housing coverage at Charlottesville Tomorrow and her education reporting at the New Haven Independent. Emily graduated from Yale University where she majored in History and South Asian Studies.