• ​Prisons Do Not Make Us Safer: Incarceration is not an effective public safety strategy. Illinois already locks up more people than France, the United Kingdom, Canada and Portugal combined. Yet, we are not any safer.

 

• There is No Such Thing as a Trauma-Informed Prison: Isolation from support systems, loss of autonomy, unpredictability, and exposure to violence are fundamental features of the carceral system that negatively impact mental health.

 

• There is No Such Thing as a Gender-Responsive Prison: The vast majority of people incarcerated in women’s prisons have survived gender-based violence and are retraumatized by prison conditions that mirror the power and control dynamics in domestic violence relationships.

 

• There is No Such Thing as a Programming/Education Prison: In Illinois, state funding for post-secondary education fell 46% between 2000 and 2023, while the DOC budget increased 22% between 2011 and 2020 (despite a decreasing incarcerated population). Prisons weaponize every facet of life inside, including educational programs. The only place working poor people can access excellent and free higher education should not be in a prison.

 

• Prisons Siphon Our Tax Dollars from Life-Affirming Resources: Investments into so-called “rehabilitative prisons,” when these same services or free programs are denied to people in the world outside of prisons, make resources less available for non-incarcerated communities, particularly critical in 2025 as Illinois is losing federal funding for education, substance abuse treatment, and public health programs.

 

• Prisons Are a Matter of Racial and Economic Justice: Prisons disproportionately incarcerate people of color and poor and working-class people and then extract resources from socially marginalized communities, who shoulder the costs of communicating with, visiting, and providing financial support to incarcerated loved ones.

 

• Our Loved Ones Are in these Prisons: Every incarcerated person is someone’s sister, brother, father, mother, cousin, lover, auntie, or friend. The trauma of incarceration ripples outward, affecting children, families, communities, and the broader social fabric.

 

• Prison Guard Work is Not a “Good Job”: Working in a prison is harmful and traumatic. Prison guards experience shorter life expectancy and report high rates of depression, PTSD, anxiety, and self-harm due to their working conditions. These stressors spill over into guards’ families and homes, contributing to conflict and domestic violence.

 

• We Have Been Here Before: Decades of reforms, often pushed with “good intentions,” have landed the U.S. and IL in this current mess: inhumane conditions are the norm across IDOC prisons. Illinois has proved it cannot humanely incarcerate people.

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• We Can Do Better. We Can Be Creative. We Can Imagine and Build Something Different: Closed prisons can become farms, museums, sites for teaching and learning, or other kinds of anchors for multigenerational employment or community building. Land could be returned to Indigenous stewardship.

 

Rather than spend $900 million rebuilding prisons, Illinois should invest those funds into healthcare, counseling, drug treatment, housing, education, vocational supports, libraries, a dedicated reentry fund, guaranteed basic income programs, and creating a real social safety net. These investments will strengthen communities, decrease the number of people entering prison, and break the cycle of re-incarceration.