Centering Lived Experience to Enact Legislative Change: A Day at the Illinois State Capitol

“I just want them to know that solitary confinement is not good for anything. . . . nothing,” Antonio said quietly yet firmly as he gathered the sandwich wrapper and crumpled it with the empty bag of chips and stood to throw them away.

“Well, let’s go tell them,” I replied as I rose to follow him.

I was talking to Antonio, the team lead for the lobbying team I was assigned to, in a cafeteria somewhere below the Illinois State Capitol. We arrived in Springfield that morning on an Amtrak train from Chicago as part of Restore Justice Foundation’s Advocacy Team’s lobbying day. Like many of Restore Justice’s staff and advocacy team, Antonio had personal experience with incarceration.

Restore Justice Foundation, a Global Alliance Recognition Award winner, is a policy focused organization that advocates for fairness, humanity and compassion in the Illinois criminal justice system. It “seeks to support, empower, and promote healing and hope for people who are incarcerated, their loved ones, and their communities.”

Restore Justice Illinois emerged in 2014 to change the Illinois criminal code to eliminate long term incarceration, especially for young people. They have had some successes, including abolishing juvenile life without parole, advancing the Youthful Parole Law, increasing the freedom of judges to show discretion in sentencing, especially for children being tried in adult courts, and helped create a family liaison in the Illinois Department of Corrections.

I became familiar with Restore Justice through their Outreach Director Julie Anderson, who I met nearly ten years ago, when she was a guest in the community health nursing course I teach. Julie’s son was sentenced to juvenile life without parole when he was fifteen years old pushing Julie into activism. This year, she came to the class with her son, Eric, who secured resentencing due to the legislative work of Restore Justice and now works for a restorative justice hub, and her daughter, a registered dietician, who spoke openly about the impact of Eric’s incarceration on her.

Antonio, like many of the others I traveled to Springfield with, could speak from his own experience about the bill we were focused on this year, the Nelson Mandela Act, which would bring Illinois law into line with international standards on the use of solitary confinement. The Istanbul Statement on the use of solitary confinement calls for limited use of the practice, for as short a time as possible and only when there are no other options to keep people safe. The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has stipulated that the use of solitary confinement, especially for prolonged periods of time, could constitute torture.

Illinois law sets no limits on how long a person can be held in isolation or solitary confinement. But the deleterious effects of solitary confinement on people’s mental and physical health are well documented. As well, it can hinder effective reintegration back into communities and increase the risk for re-entering the criminal justice system.

Our team included several students, a future lawyer who aspires to be a public defender, long time activists, a newly minted nurse who learned about Restore Justice in my community health course, several women whose partners are or were incarcerated, mothers whose children have experienced incarceration, people whose work centers on the criminal justice system, and, of course, several people who had experienced solitary confinement during their time in prison.

We stood shoulder to shoulder in the crowded lobby of our state capitol building vying for the attention of our representatives. We hoped to have a moment to persuade them to co-sponsor or support the human rights and dignity of incarcerated Illinoisans. While I did not have an opportunity to talk to my representative, I stood close by as people shared their personal experiences and passion and commitment to human rights for all with their elected officials.

Understanding that focusing on advocacy and lobbying, while crucial for making changes to our system, would only take our society so far, Restore Illinois Foundation was founded in 2015 to focus on improving the conditions of incarceration for people serving life or near life sentences for crimes they committed as young people. They visit people who have been incarcerated since they were youth and circulate a newsletter with updates on legislation and other news. They have also helped put in place policy changes for these people, as well as giving them real opportunities after they return to the community by hiring and training people who served long prison sentences to be leaders in social justice and system-wide change.

In addition to the work on criminal legal reform, Restore Justice works in the community. It runs support groups for returning citizens to help them find their way to leading the positive and productive lives that they want after spending long periods of their youth in prison. They support family members by training them in how to advocate for their incarcerated loved ones.  They also run support groups for family members of those who are incarcerated.

At the end of the day, before taking the train back to Chicago, James Swansey, the associate policy director, who knows first-hand the deleterious effects of solitary confinement, reminded us that while the bill might not get passed this year, Restore Justice was not going to give up. The words made famous by Martin Luther King echoed through the room as we understood that while we might not succeed with this bill this year, eventually the arc of the moral universe will bend towards justice for all.