Rebuilding Lives. Strengthening Communities.

Chicago Takes the Lead
Under the leadership of Mayor Richard M. Daley, the City of
Chicago has been one of the first cities to take
significant steps towards tackling the challenge of prisoner
reentry. Demonstrating a strong commitment to address
this issue locally, the Mayor established a special position on
his staff in 2003 to spearhead the city’s reentry efforts and
develop meaningful, feasible measures. According to Cheri
Nolan, a Deputy Assistant Attorney General at the U.S.
Department of Justice, Mayor Daley was the first mayor in
the country to have created a position exclusively for this
issue.
Two years later, Chicago was supporting a variety of programs
and initiatives for formerly incarcerated individuals.
For instance, a city program called TIFWorks, which helps
companies defray the cost of training their employees, has
been modified to give special consideration to employers
who train or hire people with criminal backgrounds.
Chicago’s Alternative Policing Strategy office, also known as
CAPS, has been working closely with a neighborhood
church and local hospital in East Garfield Park to offer
health screenings, counseling supports, computer usage
instruction, and job training and placement services to
formerly incarcerated individuals. The Mayor’s Office of
Workforce Development has provided seed money to a
North Lawndale organization to build on the growing urban
agriculture movement, start a honey-farming social enterprise,
and help people with criminal records develop business
skills in beekeeping, food processing and sales and distribution.
The City also has awarded a capital grant to a
Near West Side organization to help build a new
education and employment center for their formerly
incarcerated residents. The Chicago Workforce Board has
held classes for parole agents to inform them about
available services for parolees at the five Chicago Workforce
Centers. These are just a sampling of recent developments.
MAYORAL POLICY CAUCUS ON PRISONER REENTRY
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Meanwhile, Governor Rod Blagojevich created the state’s
first Office of Reentry Management. He also made
substantial investments in two centerpiece initiatives.
Sheridan Correctional Center was reopened in 2004 as a
fully dedicated therapeutic community. It provides
prisoners with intensive drug treatment, cognitive skills
development, vocational education and job preparation in a
correctional setting and follows them in their reentry back
into their communities through extensive case management
and heightened parole supervision. Operation Spotlight is a
plan to fundamentally overhaul the state’s parole system.
This reform calls for doubling the number of parole agents
over a four-year period from 370 to 740, reducing caseloads,
increasing mandatory minimum contacts with parolees, and
providing parole agents with improved training on risk
assessment and case management.