Who We Are
Stories of People Incarcerated in Illinois with Life Sentences
Our state has taken the lives of thousands of people and doesn’t even know who they are. We know that two-thirds of these people are Black people. We know, too, that a majority of them were under 25 years old when they were ordered to spend the remainder of their lives behind bars.1 However, after sentencing these people to life-without-parole and de facto life sentences,2 Illinois has no process for considering who these people are as they grow, change, and endeavor to lead human lives, behind exit doors that have been shut behind them.
When Illinois introduced life-without-parole sentences 4 decades ago, legislators made clear that such extreme punishment was intended for rare and exceptional cases. But today, following several decades of proliferating “tough-on-crime” sentencing laws, our courts hand out life-without-parole sentences to hundreds of people yearly. Hundreds more are given sentences they are unlikely to outlive. If nothing changes, thousands of our mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, children, and loved ones will be forced to spend their prime years through their last breaths in prison, with no review of whether their continued incarceration serves any purpose.
Such extreme punishment has been sold to us by tales of “monster- criminals” who must be locked up indefinitely to protect the rest of us. Fueled by fear and racism, this story has turned Illinois prisons into human warehouses that are petri dishes of disease during pandemics, cost Illinois taxpayers nearly $1.8 billion annually, and sever thousands of people from the families and communities that need them.
– Shari Stone-Mediatore