An important first step toward justice reform in Illinois

While the protracted fight over the state budget has been discouraging, it takes place at the same time bipartisan agreement is emerging on reforms of the state's criminal corrections system.

The State Commission on Criminal Justice and Sentencing Reform, which includes legislators from both parties, recently agreed on its first set of recommendations toward an ultimate goal of a 25 percent reduction in the number of people in our overcrowded prisons by 2025.

The bipartisan agreement is an indication of widespread recognition that our overcrowded prison system is too expensive and doesn't make our communities safer. Over the past 40 years, Illinois increased its prison population sevenfold from about 50 to more than 350 prisoners per 100,000 Illinois residents.

Ever-increasing lengths of stay mean that, without action, Illinois' prison population will continue to expand - even if crime continues to fall. The state's corrections budget can no longer offer the quantity and quality of corrective services - addressing addictions, educational deficits or criminal thinking patterns - needed to effectively prevent future crime once individuals return to their communities.

Many men and women sent to prison have spent so long in local jails awaiting trial that by the time they are sentenced to prison, they have only a couple of months left to serve. Last year, three thousand inmates served less than four months. Housing them is expensive to taxpayers, and the time in state prisons too short to provide meaningful rehabilitative programs and treatment.

The commission's first set of recommendations would start to reduce the number of nonviolent offenders entering prison. These common-sense recommendations include:

• Assessing the risk of individuals to see if they are dangerous and need to be locked up or whether they can be diverted or treated in less expensive, rehabilitative settings;

• Giving judges discretion about whether people convicted of specific nonviolent crimes need to be sentenced to prison;

• Requiring judges to state on the record why a sentence to prison is appropriate for low-risk individuals who have no prior convictions for violent crimes;

• Improving the effectiveness of programs that help people transition from prison to their communities;

• Restricting terminally ill or incapacitated inmates to their homes or nursing homes;

• Utilizing more electronic monitoring; and

• Investing in rehabilitative programming that has been proven to work in and outside of prisons.

At the heart of the recommendations is a structural change that has significant long-term benefits. The commission suggests the creation of local Justice Coordinating Councils composed of judges, law enforcement, service providers and community members. With financial and technical help from the state, the local councils would diagnose the causes and cures for local crime and decide how to make their communities safer. This would reduce the reliance on prisons, which too often return people to their neighborhoods no different, and in some ways worse, than when they were sentenced to prison.

The commissioners should For details on the commission, see http://www.icjia.org/cjreform2015/index.html). Commissioners should be congratulated for taking this important first step and should be supported in efforts to implement the recommendations. The members of our coalition of more than 18 organizations are committed to do that.

The commission now turns its attention to the hard problems of the second prong of overcrowding - the lengthy sentences that drive prison crowding without delivering any public safety benefit and the recidivism caused by the consequences of having a prison record, which consign people to a life of poverty and - too frequently - committing more crimes. Members will look at whether long sentences are necessary, whether we should be locking people up for drug crimes instead of using options like drug courts, and the relationship between race and sentencing.

We look forward to receiving these recommendations, including how we bring to scale efforts that help reduce recidivism of those returning from prison and jail.

Victor B. Dickson, president & CEO of Safer Foundation, and Esther Franco-Payne, deputy director of the Illinois Justice Project, represent the Justice Coalition for Safety and Fairness.