A Plan to Help

Returning Citizens
Succeed in Chicago

In Chicago we disproportionately arrest, punish and incarcerate poor men and

women of color. And each year, over 11,000 of these men and women return to
Chicago upon their release from prison.1 They return to places like North and South
Lawndale, neighborhoods that have suffered from historic disinvestment and which
experience staggering rates of unemployment and poverty.2 Many of these returning
men and women lack an adequate education and job skills, and upon their release
are likely to struggle with substance abuse disorders, limited housing options and
mental health issues. And because the city and state do not provide these men,
women and communities with the support, services and investment they need to
succeed, they return to prison at alarmingly high rates. The Illinois Sentencing
Policy Advisory Council (“SPAC”) estimates that of the people released from Illinois
prisons each year, 17% recidivate within one year and 43% recidivate within three
years. And those numbers continue to increase with time.
Recidivism has real costs, both financially and socially. SPAC estimates the total
financial cost for each recidivism event at $151,662, with one-third of the costs, or
$50,835, paid by taxpayers for law enforcement, court proceedings, sentencing and
incarceration. Recidivism has social costs, too, as young men and women cycle
through our neighborhoods. This can lead to constantly fluctuating populations,
stress on social service agencies and families, and further victimization of residents.
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It is imperative that we reduce recidivism by helping people and communities. This

means abandoning failed incarceration and rehabilitation policies and practices, and
turning instead to evidence based programs with track records of success and policies
that remove barriers to opportunity for people with arrest and conviction records. For
instance, we know that among all re-entry programs, employment training/job assistance
returns $20.26 on every dollar invested.3 We also know that recidivism rates decrease
significantly when returning citizens have access to employment and safe, stable, and
affordable housing.
Working with the state, community-based providers like Safer Foundation and CARA,
local and national businesses, affordable housing providers and philanthropic
organizations, we can dramatically reduce recidivism by:

1. Creating the Office of Returning Citizens Affairs and streamline reentry services
2. Supporting community-based social service programs
3. Advancing policies and legislation that remove barriers to obtaining housing
4. Restructuring city spending to address social determinants of health
5. Providing returning citizens access to affordable educational opportunities

1. C
 reate the Office of Returning Citizens Affairs and streamline re-entry services in
Chicago
City hall must play an active role in helping returning citizens successfully transition back into
our neighborhoods while also ensuring public safety. Cities like Los Angeles, New York, Boston
and Washington, D.C. have long realized this, and Chicago must, too.
As mayor, I will create an Office of Returning Citizens Affairs within the Mayor’s Office for
Public Safety that will be staffed with professionals specializing in all aspects of workforce
development, community outreach services, and case management. The office’s portfolio of
responsibilities will include:
• Streamlining and scaling up re-entry services throughout the city
• Coordinating with city agencies, social service providers and local businesses to assist
people with arrest and conviction records in becoming employed and productive citizens
• Advancing legislative, policy, program, spending and investment changes to help returning
citizens find housing, obtain education and training, healthcare and treatment
It is so important to our communities that families can be together, and I know that we must do
more to keep them together. By employing evidence-based strategies that are shown to work,
we can increase the likelihood returning citizens become self-sufficient, tax paying members
of our communities while reducing crime, drug abuse and addiction, and the amount spent on
incarceration.
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2. Support community-based programs that reduce recidivism

Community-based programs run by organizations like the Safer Foundation and CARA play a
critical role in reducing recidivism and providing returning citizens opportunities they need to
succeed. These programs give returning citizens structured environments and wrap-around
services that often are missing from their lives. They also provide job and skills training required
to secure a job and succeed in the workforce. Additionally, these programs benefit the larger
community because the men and women who complete them are more likely to find work in the
legitimate economy and are less likely to engage in risky behavior or associate with people who do.
As mayor, I will commit to supporting programs and organizations that provide returning
citizens with business-driven skills training and placement opportunities so they can become
credentialed workers in growing sectors such as advanced manufacturing, transportation,
construction, healthcare and technology. By training returning citizens in these growing fields,
we can create a path out of the cycle of recidivism while also training a valuable labor source at
a time when employers are struggling to find qualified workers. Programs that merge the needs
of the local, middle-skills employers and persons with arrest and conviction records have proven
effective. Locally, the Safer Foundation has shown that when this model is used to train formerly
incarcerated persons to fulfill the middle-skills labor gap in high-demand local industries, people
with records can secure and keep living wage jobs.
The city will also commit to supporting social enterprises that are designed to achieve a social
impact, environmental improvement and a profit. These enterprises generate the majority of
their income by selling goods and services made or provided by individuals with arrest and
conviction records. Profits are reinvested to advance the social aims of the business, such as
training and employing individuals with arrest and conviction records.
As my administration supports and expands access to comprehensive workforce development
models, we will also support programs that address the following three elements of workforce
development concerning returning citizens:
•E
 ngage employers. Mutually beneficial partnerships between the city, employers and
agencies working with diverted and returning citizens are integral to reducing recidivism.
In addition to helping employers identify qualified candidates for demand-driven career
opportunities, many employers require technical assistance to improve their hiring and
onboarding processes for new employees.
•E
 ncourage entrepreneurship. Diverted and returning citizens need tools and support
to become economically self-sufficient, tax paying citizens. One way to help is to provide
access to start-up capital. My administration will actively work with and encourage banks,
foundations, community development organizations and others with the capacity to grant
and lend diverted and returning citizens reasonably priced capital and/or provide business
planning resources and entrepreneurial coaching.
•S
 upport apprenticeships and “earn and learn” credentials. The Mayor’s Office of
Returning Citizens Affairs and City Colleges will support local businesses that provide
meaningful apprenticeship opportunities for diverted and returning citizens that lead
to a credential and gainful employment. We will target high demand industries to take
advantage of “earn and learn” credentials.
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3. Advance policies and legislation that help people with records obtain temporary,
transitional and permanent housing
Access to stable housing is critical to reducing recidivism. Nationally, more than 10% of
those coming in and out of prisons and jail are homeless in the months before and after their
incarceration.4 The lack of access to reliable housing places huge strains on returning citizens
and their families, depriving them of a necessary foundation for a stable life. Moreover, it has
significant social and economic costs as returning citizens become homeless, cannot find work,
re-offend and/or return to jail or prison.5
In an effort to increase access to stable housing, my administration will:
• Draft and work to pass a “fair chance” ordinance that prohibits landlords from imposing
blanket bans on renting to an individual based on his or her criminal record. Instead,
landlords would be required to conduct an individualized analysis of an applicant’s
conviction history, including whether the individual poses a threat to the public and the
community, the amount of time since the person’s conviction, evidence of rehabilitation
and other mitigating circumstances. Policies such as these not only make sense, but they
move our policies into alignment with the Fair Housing Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
• Reform Chicago Housing Authority (“CHA”) practices by prohibiting CHA from denying
housing to individuals based on solely arrest and conviction records, and evicting people
from CHA because of their records.
• Increase access to temporary housing so a person’s stay in jail or prison does not exceed
his or her sentence. Many people remain incarcerated after their scheduled release dates
simply because they have nowhere to go upon release. Rather than spend $143 per day to
incarcerate a person and prolong their separation from friends and family, the city should
work with Cook County and the state to invest this money into creating more temporary
housing.6
• Increase access to transitional housing so returning citizens who are waiting to get into
treatment, education and/or job training programs have a stable place to live. The city can
work with providers and other units of government to create and expand programs like the
University of Illinois Health and Hospital System’s Better Health through Housing Initiative,
which places people in “bridge units” until longer term housing arrangements can be
secured.7
• Improve access to permanent affordable housing. People with arrest and conviction
records often face barriers to securing permanent housing, even years after their release.
This issue will not be addressed until landlords and property owners are incentivized to
lease to people with records, or until incentives are given to prospective property owners
to purchase land or property specifically for mixed-use and mixed-income housing that
includes slots for people with arrest or criminal records.

4. Restructure city funding in order to address the social determinants of health

My administration will conduct an audit of all city programs to identify opportunities where
Medicaid can be leveraged to free up city funding to address issues that Medicaid does not
cover, such as housing, education, and transportation. Over the last several years, justice
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system stakeholders throughout the U.S. have shifted their approach to reform away from law
and order policies and toward a public health approach. This shift is due in part to Medicaid
expansion under the Affordable Care Act, which covers (for the first time ever) low-income
adults without dependent children. This has led to an unprecedented prioritization of Medicaid
funds and policies toward individuals involved in the justice system. Given the fact that people
with arrest and conviction records have traditionally gone uninsured and faced disproportionate
levels of addiction, mental illness, and chronic conditions, it has been recognized that Medicaid
presents an opportunity to reform the justice system by addressing the needs of individuals
whose unmet health conditions often drive their criminal behavior.8 Addressing these health
conditions improves both justice outcomes, through lower recidivism rates, and health outcomes
through fewer emergency room visits. These lead not only to an improvement in overall
outcomes, but also a significant reduction in costs.9
While this shift is welcome, there are significant barriers that make it difficult to leverage
Medicaid to provide needed extend services this population. These areas impact health
outcomes, but have little to do with healthcare on the surface. These social determinants of
health are defined by the Center for Disease Control as “conditions in the environments in
which people are born, live, learn, work, play, worship, and age that affect a wide range of
health, functioning, and quality-of-life outcomes and risks.”10 They include, but are not limited to
housing, education, transportation and justice system-involvement. Health insurance coverage
can be life-changing for some, but far too many never have the opportunity to take advantage
of its benefits due to these barriers. What remains to be done, and is certainly possible, is
restructuring grant dollars to supplement existing Medicaid-reimbursement streams to address the
social determinants of health. This includes a close examination of what the city currently funds
today and identifying items that can be shifted towards Medicaid. By doing so, funding can be
freed up and applied to other areas, like housing, transportation, education, and other needs.

Provide returning citizens access to affordable adult education.

Data strongly suggests that returning citizens who have at least a GED are more successful at
re-entering society than those without a GED. However, recent data suggest that less than one-
third of all prisoners participate in educational programming that leads to a GED.11 Technology
has shifted the education landscape in such a way that adults who have not received either
a high school diploma or a GED require more support than those that have a high school
diploma or GED. Current state and federal regulations make it difficult for people with arrest and
conviction records to access financial aid for higher education. Therefore, my administration will
work to establish that makes educational programs at City Colleges affordable and accessible to
returning citizens who want to obtain a GED or go to college.

A final note: I hope that this initial plan can be an important part of moving our city in the right
direction and also that it can spark an ongoing conversation about reducing recidivism and
helping people with arrest and conviction records return to Chicago and succeed. Please send
your thoughts and ideas to info@lightfootforchicago.com and we will build on this plan together.
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1 B
 usiness and Professional People for the Public Interest & Roosevelt University Policy Research Collaborative. (2018,
September). No place to call home: Navigating reentry housing in Chicago. Retrieved from Business and Professional People for
the Public Interest website: https://www.bpichicago.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/No-Place-To-Call-Home.pdf.

2 In North Lawndale, 47.4% of people live in poverty and the unemployment rate exceeds 23%. In South Lawndale the poverty
rate exceeds 36% and the unemployment rate is over 13%. See, e.g., Illinois Department of Corrections, Parole Snapshot (Mar.
12, 2018) available at https://www2.illinois.gov/idoc/reportsandstatistics/Pages/Prison-Population-Data-Sets.aspx

3 State of Illinois, Illinois Sentencing Policy Advisory Council. (2016). Illinois Results First: A Cost Benefit Tool for Criminal Justice
Policymakers. Retrieved from the Illinois Criminal Justice Authority website: http://www.icjia.state.il.us/spac/pdf/Illinois_
Results_First_Consumer_Reports_072016.pdf.

4 Langan, P.A., Levin, D.J. (2002). US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. Recidivism of Prisoners Released in
1994. (NCJ 193427) Washington, DC.

5 Couloute, L., Kopf, D., “Out of Prison & Out of Work: Unemployment among formerly incarcerated people,” July 2018, available
at https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/outofwork.html.

6 Cook County Sheriff’s Office. (2015). New law reduces length of stay for non-violent Cook County Jail inmates. Retrieved from
https://www.cookcountysheriff.org/new-law-reduces-length-stay-non-violent-cook-county-jail-inmates/

7 Bayne, M. (2016). This program could lower healthcare costs in Chicago. Retrieved from https://www.aha.org/news/insights-
and-analysis/2018-03-06-case-study-university-illinois-hospital-health-sciences

8 See, e.g., Wang, E.A., White, M.C., Jamison, R., Goldenson, J., Estes, M., Tulsky, J.P. (2008). Discharge planning and continuity
of health care: findings from the San Francisco County Jail. Am J Public Health, 98(12):2182–4; Biswanger, I., Redmond, N.,
Steiner, J., Hicks, L. (2012). Health disparities and the criminal justice system: Improving public health and safety. Journal of
Urban Health, 89(1), 183-190; Regenstein, M., Rosenbaum, S. (2014). What the Affordable Care Act means for people with jail
stays. Health Affairs, 33(3), 448-454; Steadman, H. J., Osher, F. C., Robbins, P. C., et al. (2009). Prevalence of serious mental
illness among jail inmates. Psychiatric Services, 60, 761–765.

9 Guyer, J., Bachrach, D., and Shine, N. (2015). Medicaid expansion and criminal justice costs: Pre-expansion studies
and emerging practices point towards opportunities for states. Retrieved from https://www.shvs.org/wp-content/
uploads/2015/11/State-Network-Manatt-Medicaid-Expansion-and-Criminal-Justice-Costs-November-2015.pdf

10 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2018). Social Determinants of Health. Retrieved December 17, 2018, from
http://www.cancer.ca/en/cancer-information/cancer-101/cancer-research/?region=on

11 M
 iddlemass, K.M. (2017). Convicted and condemned: The politics and policies of prisoner reentry. New York: New York
University Press.