[music] I'm Alexander Heffner, your host on The Open Mind.

I'm delighted to welcome our guest today, Jennifer Soble.

She is director of the Illinois Prison Project.

Thank you so much for joining me today, Jennifer.

Thanks so much for having me.

It's a real pleasure.

Jennifer, why was your organization founded in the first place?

What was the impetus?

Yeah.

So I founded the organization back in 2019, and at that point, I was doing some work, some communications and policy work in the criminal legal reform space.

And I lived in Chicago although my work was taking me other parts of the country.

And I started thinking about, what were some of the biggest problems that were affecting the community that I lived in?

And I had been a public defender for a long time.

I always worked with incarcerated people.

And my most rewarding cases were cases that involved folks who had served very long prison sentences and had this opportunity, which is really uncommon, to have their sentence revisited.

So I started digging through the, prison population data here in Illinois and was really shocked to learn not only how many people were in Illinois prisons, but for how long, how many people were serving excessive sentences that they received when they were children or emerging adults.

How many people were serving really, really long sentences for things like armed robbery.

And I started wondering like, why is this, right?

Why is our prison population so overpopulated with elderly people?

Like, surely these folks don't need to be incarcerated.

And I came to learn and this comes, you know, sort of shocking and embarrassing now that I didn't know this then I came to learn that Illinois, like many places, does not have parole.

We don't have midsentence review.

We have no sort of ordinary way for folks who are serving long sentences to have their sentences reconsidered.

And part of the reason why we don't have these things is we don't have the lawyers in these spaces.

So there's like this very cyclical cart and horse problem.

Without lawyers, we have no mechanism without mechanisms.

We have no lawyers.

And so there's this huge population of folks who are incarcerated, who shouldn't be incarcerated but had no way of getting help and no group of people to help them.

That's the impetus of the Illinois Prison Project.

And how have you advanced the process since you started?

In terms of what the law is in the state now -and the access -Yeah.

to reconsider, if not immediately release people to reconsider the length of their sentences.

Yeah.

So the landscape is really different now than it was back in 2019.

The most, I think obvious stark difference is medical release.

Illinois, until 2022, was one of two states in this country that had no process for medical release for folks who are terminally ill or dying.

So in 2019, IPP represented a really wonderful man named Joe Coleman.

Joe was a Vietnam vet.

It was a father of six.

He was just like this really wonderful guy.

He was also serving a mandatory natural life sentence for robbing a gas station.

His weapon in that robbery was an empty gas can.

He got a mandatory life for that sentence, which was just so horrific.

So I was representing him on this, on this, like, horrific sentence that he received.

And during the course of our representation, he became very, very sick.

And he declined very quickly.

And so I called the state's attorney in this downstate Illinois County, where he had been convicted and said, hey, this is Joe.

Joe's got six kids who are, like, fighting over how to care for him.

He has dementia and cancer.

He doesn't have long to live.

He has served.

You know, at that point, almost 40 years for robbing a gas station.

Do we think we could agree that this man should go home and die with his family?

And the prosecutor said, sure.

Of course he should go home and die with this family like we don't objected to that.

But the way to do that is through clemency.

So this is pre-COVID, back in 2019, the clemency process.

It still takes a long time in Illinois, but back in 2019, the process required that a formal paper application be delivered in paper copy to the prisoner review board.

That application had to be notarized.

My client was unconscious a lot of the time.

He was so sick that he was sort of drifting in and out of consciousness.

It took us about two weeks to sort out the power of attorney and figure out, like, how do you even get this thing before the governor?

When we finally managed to do that, Joe Coleman's son, who, of course, is Joe Coleman Jr was driving the final petition down to Springfield to give it to the governor.

And I was sitting in the parking lot of the prison where Mr. Coleman was dying.

And as Joe Jr arrived at the prisoner review board, we found out that Joe had passed away, which was pretty awful.

We used that story to change the law in Illinois.

And now Illinois has one of the best medical release processes in the country.

It's a three month process, start to finish.

-You can... -Independent of clemency.

Independent of the subjective choice of a governor.

Yeah, it's independent of clemency.

It does not involve the governor.

So it's a three month start to finish process that can be initiated by an incarcerated person, but also any family member, a lawyer, the Department of Corrections can submit these applications.

And they do in large numbers, and within 90 days of submission, if the person has a terminal illness or disability, they get a hearing before the prisoner review board.

That hearing has to happen within the 90 days.

And at the end of that hearing, they get an up down vote and if they're successful, they get released immediately.

And people who are imprisoned with mandatory life sentences are also eligible in this category?

Yes, there are no exclusions, no carve outs.

Now, you said from the outset this was a horrific, unjustified sentence in the first place.

So what about that piece of this?

Yep.

You know, there are people who succumb to illness in prison who would be eligible under the guidelines you describe, but I would imagine the majority do not have that, to work with, if you will.

Yeah.

And I mean, thank goodness, but they don't, right?

-Thank goodness... -Right.

the majority of folks who are serving these sentences are not terminal.

Although as that population ages, which they inevitably will that becomes more and more true for folks.

So Illinois, like a lot of places, has a three strikes statute.

We don't use it very much today, but we used it a lot in the 80s and 90s.

And that means that right now in the state of Illinois, there are roughly 100 people still who are serving a natural life sentence for an armed robbery or an offense related to that.

There used to be a bunch of folks serving life sentences and drug cases.

IPP has represented all of them at this point.

We were able last year to get everyone who was then serving a natural life sentence for a drug case in the state of Illinois out.

We were able to free all of them through executive clemency.

For the folks who were, still serving or still incarcerated on robberies.

I should say we've also managed to get out an additional almost 30 people serving natural life sentences on armed robberies.

Almost all of those cases have been clemency as well.

For the rest, we have a lot of clemency petitions pending.

And we're really hoping that Governor Pritzker, is able to sign those very, very soon.

Many of those cases are unopposed.

So the state's attorney agrees with us that these sentences are unjust and that our client should go home.

And for some folks, there was a recent change in the law, a case called Stuart, which basically changed the eligibility for who was even eligible for a three strike sentence.

And so for about 30 of the remaining 100, we are going back to court.

What would you say is the percent of the Illinois prison population in state custody, but feel free to add federal custody within the state if you want to.

That you would say are victims of unsubstantiated, unjustified sentences?

Is it, you know, like the example you used?

And, I mean, it does matter to the lay viewer, I think, whether the gentleman at the gas station had a gun or was a gas canister.

I think that these things matter.

And it's not that the person who was using the gun or who might have injured someone in the course of a robbery is undeserving of a second look, it's just that the person who is more deserving of a second look is the person who did not intend to harm anyone.

It might have been an a crime out of economic need.

It might have just been something immature that they were doing at the time that was related to gang activity.

Bottom line is, I'd like to try to identify what percent of the prison population, in your mind, is undeserving of the sentences they received that are in custody of the state right now.

Yeah.

I'm going to push back on the premise a little bit.

Right?

Because the really bizarre thing, if you think if you just stop to think about a sentence.

Is that it's a moment in time.

A judge looks at a person and looks at a decision or course of conduct that an individual before them committed at a moment in time and says, based on what I know about you right now, right?

Everything I know about you and what you did and, you know, let's even assume the judge has perfect knowledge, which the judge never does, right?

This is what I think you deserve today and will deserve for the duration of your sentence.

There's this idea of finality that's really common in the law, right?

That whatever decision a judge reaches or a jury reaches or the court concludes, that's going to be the decision for the life of the case.

And in some context, finality makes a lot of sense, right?

Contract disputes, property disputes.

You don't want to go back over and over and over again and debate whether or not the decision that was reached on a certain day is the right decision forever.

I would argue that in in the context of sentencing, not the conviction itself, right?

But in the context of sentencing, finality actually doesn't make a lot of sense, for the people...

It's just human nature that people grow and they change.

I agree with you.

Yeah.

So, my question is, is sort of the pertinence of your work.

And I know that it was acutely needed, and I'm sure it still is.

Sure.

And when I say undeserving, I don't mean just mandatory life sentences.

-I mean, 25 years for, -Right.

any kind of attempted robbery, but especially an attempted robbery that didn't involve any violence or injury.

-Sure.

-So I'm just trying to get a sense of the landscape of how many people like that as a result of those cases not being retroactively altered.

There's the sentencing terms.

How many of those people, in your mind still, occupy our jails and prisons?

People who are incarcerated with bloated, disproportionate sentences?

Yeah.

Well, I can tell you that, for example, a sixth of the Illinois prison population is serving a sentence that is either a mandatory or natural life sentence.

That's a sentence of either 40 years or greater or all the way up to mandatory natural life.

Even the folks serving sentences and the like 10, 20 year range.

In many instances, those sentences would not be given to that person if the judge knew -who they had become, right?

-Right.

And so I think any sentence of more than just a couple of years actually is a thing that we should be reviewing, right?

Folks change, they grow.

And, you know, it's really interesting, about a quarter of the people who come into prison come into prison in Illinois before their 21st birthday.

That makes a lot of sense for folks who know anything about, emerging adult brain development, right?

These are folks who are adults under the law.

But if you have a teenager, if you know a teenager, if you've ever met a college kid, these are not people who are making, like, well-reasoned, thoughtful decisions.

Just a couple of years later, their brains are going to be more mature.

They're going to quite literally be different people.

So it's the majority of folks who are incarcerated.

But do you, do you agree, I know you were pushing back on a narrative that I was identifying, not voicing myself, but do you accept the idea that you are going to be more effective, for example, in creating a path to parole?

And I want to ask you what exists now?

-You said it didn't exist.

-Sure.

What exists now?

But if you do differentiate between violent crime and nonviolent crime or crime, no.

No.

No.

And I will say I and many others really reject the sort of violent, nonviolent binary.

Violence is almost always a product of youth.

The people who commit violent crimes are people who have not reached the age of 30, almost exclusively.

Violence is a thing that almost everyone completely ages out of.

And actually, the group of people who have the lowest recidivism rate of any group of people are folks convicted of murder.

So violence is really, sort of at the core of the problem, right?

We are not going to end mass incarceration if we don't rethink our relationship to violence and the way that we treat people who have been convicted of committing violence.

Right, and you know, I was talking about violence as a whole.

Not specifically felony murder or homicide.

Sure.

Yeah.

And your answer still stands in your mind that there should not be differentiation in, for example, terms of parole or the access to parole.

And that is an argument that I know a lot of people in the justice movement, make and the story you told from the outset is, persuasive from a layperson's perspective, at least in part because of the fact that this person did not cause human harm or anguish, at least from what I hear.

And I know that that you're saying, no, don't assess it on that basis.

People change.

I'm just expressing the narrative.

According to most Pew surveys, when it comes to when do you consider something to be egregious or not?

And then usually it is correlated with, harming another human being.

That's all I'm saying.

We can accept that proposition or not.

But, is it not in your mind, at all related to this question of establishing, a rehabilitative parole system, where people have confidence that folks are not going to re-offend.

But if you were to map out, in other words, the system of parole that makes the most sense for Illinois or the country as a whole, what would it look like?

Yeah.

I mean, luckily, at this point in time, we have a lot of data around who's going to re-offend.

We're just really lucky at this point to have quite a bit of information about that.

And the data is very clear.

That, for example, somebody over the age of 55 who served more than 20 years in prison, on a murder has, a re-offending rate of less than 1%.

And I don't have all of those numbers right off the top of my head.

But there have been a lot of studies that have looked at the age of the person upon release, the age that they went in, how much time they've served and what they've been convicted of.

And the recidivism data is clear that folks convicted of violence who have reached a certain age, I think it's usually around 40, have extraordinarily low recidivism rates.

And so we could be looking at that data to think about who we release and who we don't.

I do think, any system of second chances needs to take the individuals personal work to rehabilitate themselves into account.

But the whole idea of rehabilitation, like the very fundamental premise of rehabilitation, has to include some notion that a person can have done, can have committed a really awful act at one point in time, but then goes through the growth and change necessary.

Over the course of however long it takes them to be deserving of not only review because I think everyone is deserving of review, but also of release.

When you think of the next reforms that you want to enact in Illinois.

Yeah.

What are they?

And are they something that could be replicated in other states?

Yeah, absolutely.

There are a couple that were... we're actively thinking about and working on now and that other groups in Illinois are working on.

So I want to be very clear.

These are not all initiatives that are IPPs, but they're ones that I believe in deeply and support whole heartedly.

One is the elimination of Truth in Sentencing.

Illinois, like a lot of other people have, like a lot of other states, have pretty dramatically restricted the ability of certain incarcerated people to earn credit off their sentence for programing good behavior.

All the stuff that we want folks to engage in.

This movement, which really took hold in the 80s and 90s, is called “Truth in Sentencing.” The idea being that whatever the judge gives you, you actually do, the whole notion of Truth in Sentencing really flies in the face of rehabilitation.

It really undercuts this idea that if a person grows and changes that we want to reward and celebrate that.

I would love to see Illinois abolish Truth in Sentencing.

I think a lot of folks would love to see Illinois abolished Truth in Sentencing.

It has the perverse, effect of keeping those who are the most ready to go back into the community, who the most data behind their release, keeps those folks incarcerated.

That's a reform that could be replicated in any state that has Truth in Sentencing.

And there are quite a few of those.

And there are states that have banned that practice?

I mean, they're not incentivizing it.

Banning it.

I mean, again, like you mentioned, the three strikes, the -these are ways that -Yeah.

that were attempting to create public safety and had the opposite effect in a lot of instances.

Yeah.

Well, I can say there have been lots of reforms to open up opportunities to earn credit against sentencing.

So even here in Illinois, despite the fact that we still have Truth in Sentencing, on the one hand on the other, we keep passing reforms to create new pathways for folks to earn sentencing credit.

So we as a state really recognize the value in sentencing credit.

We recognize the value in sentencing credit reform.

It's just taking that next step and saying we recognize how important this value is.

Let's make sure that everybody in our state has access to it.

And I guess the point would be to ensure that states don't ban the ability of system impacted people from earning -that credit, right?

-Right.

I asked you in the reverse way if, you know, in effect, those practices are allowed or incentivized.

But you mentioned a parole and said it was, Illinois was uniquely a state that had a different way of doing it.

-What's the way now?

And -Mm hmm.

Yep.

what would continue to improve that process?

Yeah.

So in 1978, Illinois got rid of parole and a couple of other states did around the same time.

Parole in the 70s and 80s here in Illinois was a very, very broken system.

It was racially disproportionate.

It was punitive towards everyone, but particularly to black and brown people.

Decisions were inconsistent.

It just wasn't working very well.

So Illinois got rid of it in favor of determinate sentencing, which means a sentence that is a length.

You do that sentence and there are ways to shorten that sentence through programing, but not through early review.

Illinois still has people who were sentenced before 1978 who still go up before our parole board every year.

They're called “C Numbers” affectionately because their IDoc number starts with a “C”.

And then in 2019, Illinois passed a law that created a new parole path for juveniles.

For young adults.

So anyone who was convicted of an offense before the age of 21 and sentenced after 2019 would come up for a very limited parole review.

Either 10 or 20 years after, into their sentence.

So we currently have those two paths for parole.

Got it.

I mean, one of the conceits of that you would say.

Oh, you don't have parole.

How horrible.

But in actuality, parole is often a pipeline back to prison.

When you violate the terms of your parole, I mean, probation, you know, in either the front or back end, if you violate the terms, you can get trapped, in the system.

As you look at reforms that ought to be considered nationally and standardizing parole practices, what do you think would be the most effective way of improving the state of, parole?

Because, again, if you in many places, if you violate a term, you leave a certain zip code to see a family member, you know, you seek medical care, you happen to be present with another ex-con, you know, or someone who is system impacted.

You know, you can easily get trapped back in the system.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a really good point.

In Illinois, our folks who leave a prison sentence are placed on something called mandatory supervised release.

Which is what I think people think about when they think about parole.

It's the same in the federal system.

So it's the same thing.

It's a period of supervision after your sentence has ended.

And if you violate one of the bajillion arbitrary rules that they place on you, you can absolutely be sent back to prison.

And there's systems like that basically everywhere.

And in the federal system, which of course encompasses the whole country, the answer to that, right?

Is to either eliminate these periods of supervision after a prison sentence, so just let them go home.

Right?

Or to find ways to really dramatically shorten them.

IPP has had a variety of parole reform, initiatives over the past couple of years.

We're going to be pursuing one in the new legislative session that basically halves every MSR term sort of automatically.

And that's because studies show that if a, A: if a person is going to re-offend after release, they're going to do that early, within the first couple of months after their release.

So these like long, protracted supervision periods don't help community safety.

And that two, being on supervision for extended periods of time, having to report to a a parole officer is actually, actually increases recidivism for all of the reasons you've named.

It makes it really hard to find a job.

It makes it really hard to find a place to live.

Parole officers place, a ton of restrictions on people without actually providing any support.

And so all it does as a structural matter is set folks back.

And so finding ways across the country to either eliminate periods of supervision post-release entirely or to really, really shrink them down, to very short periods of time would be really helpful in that regard.

So last question.

What are your prescriptions for what you see working in Illinois?

If you were to extrapolate and apply them on the federal stage with a new president and new Congress now in office.

Yeah.

Man, I spend most of my time thinking about what I want to fix in Illinois.

So that's a really good and hard question.

It's interesting, our medical release process is working reasonably well, right now.

In the federal system, medical release goes, that decision goes back to the sentencing judge.

And for that reason, there are jurisdictions where lots and lots of people who are very deserving of medical release, get it.

They get granted release, they die at home of dignity or they, you know, they go home with their families to be cared for.

But there are some jurisdictions where nobody ever wins medical release, because the jurisdictions that they were sentenced in, in the first place are so draconian.

I don't have a great answer, a great solution to that.

Well, let me ask you this, just to clarify for our viewers.

Yeah.

Is there a difference between elderly and medical?

Yes.

So, in Illinois, for example, can you qualify just on the basis of your age as opposed to your medical condition?

No.

In Illinois, we our our law, which, I can say this because I wrote our law.

Our law is too narrow.

[laughs] but it's still new.

So I, you know, Everything is a product of compromise.

So.

I'm going to give myself, some Right.

grace here and say that there's still hope that we can broaden it.

And in Illinois, the only folks who are eligible are folks who are either terminally ill, which means have a condition that will kill them, will most likely result in their passing within 18 months, which is a long window.

18 months is a long window, but still, or medically incapacitated.

So folks who need assistance with two activities of daily living.

So thinking about transportation feeding oneself, toileting, and the idea there was to make folks eligible who have really debilitating health conditions, even if those conditions aren't terminal.

And in the most effective rendition of legislation, if you could rewrite it or write it a new for the -Yes.

-nation or Illinois, would there be two categories, or would it be one category?

Would there be medical and then also elderly, you know, 70 plus or 75 plus?

Or maybe it's 65 plus?

-Would there be two categories?

-Yeah.

Or would one?

So, I think in in my dream world.

And why not live in my dream world?

Medical release would be broader to include chronic illness.

So it would not just be folks who are medically incapacitated, right?

But also folks who have chronic illness.

So we think about folks who are on dialysis.

They're not, they're often not incapacitated, but they have such demanding medical needs that the level of care that they need and the threat that they pose, the care is very high.

The risk is very low.

So I would expand medical release to include all chronic illness.

And rather than having a separate elderly track, I would create a track for folks to have their sentence reviewed at either ten years, or 15, or even 20 years.

And call that a compassionate track?

Or because often the elderly track has been called the compassionate track.

Call it something of that nature?

No, it'd be totally separate.

So if you think about in Washington, DC, folks who have served, I believe it's 15 years of incarceration, and who were sentenced before the age of 26 are eligible to have their sentence reviewed by a judge, and they basically have a resentencing, right?

They've been in for a long time.

The judge takes another look and says, does it still make sense that you're here?

I honestly, I'm embarrassed.

I should know this.

There was an effort to get rid of that age limit.

-Right.

-And I just don't know what past.

But rather than having an elder track, an elder parole bill, I would have a universal bill.

Right.

And that's what I meant.

-I mean, in saying -Yeah.

that this is a compassionate way of dealing with this, and shrinking the system and giving empowering people to live their lives outside of the system.

Call it what you will.

I'm calling a compassionate to review someone's sentence after ten years, 20 years.

But.

Sure, yes.

Jennifer, thank you for the work -Yes.

you're doing, and thank you for the helpful anecdotes and insight today.

Appreciate your time.

My pleasure.

Thanks so much for having me.

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