Paula Wolff, The Illinois Justice Project

Q:                    Can you describe your job in two to three sentences?

PW:                  I am the director of an organization that works on development and implementation of policy reform in the criminal justice system..

Q:                    Thank you. Can you talk a little bit about your path to your current position?

PW:                  I worked in public policy and state government for many years and then I went off and did something else. I knew I wanted to get back into policy and was trying to figure out what was the most messed up policy in the state of Illinois, and high on that list was justice reform. This would have been in the year 2000.

Q:                    Is it significant that your work is located in Chicago?

PW:                  Yes, although the work that is done by our organization focuses on Chicago, Cook County, and Illinois.

Q:                    Got it.

PW:                  We're very opportunistic; wherever we think we can make a difference, we tend to jump in. And some of the things we do at the state level impact directly on Chicago.

Q:                    What are some of the things you are working on now?

PW:                  Right now, we're working on trying to make state government build housing for people who are leaving prison because we know that one of the things that is an obstacle to being able to be a productive citizen is not having any kind of stable housing. Another thing we're working on is trying to implement a set of recommendations that address the problem of youth with mental health issues, going into the justice system because of the mental health issues. A third thing we're working on is bond reform, trying to make sure that just because you're poor, you don't stay in jail, even before you've had a trial. And then another thing we're working on is an act that we think is going to be introduced in the General Assembly-- probably next week-- which creates a process by which state money for social services and economic development gets reprioritized and gets concentrated, more concentrated in areas where there is gun violence and lots of people returning from prison.

Q:                    Interesting. For you, what does criminal justice reform look like?

PW:                  I'm going to turn that question on its head.

Q:                    Okay.

PW:                  For me, the problem with the criminal justice system is that it is fundamentally inequitable and very complicated and, what's the right word, decentralized. So, the justice decisions are made at local, even at the community level-- like the police in Wheaton, at the county level, at the state level, and at the federal level. And they're also made in the executive branch, the legislative branch, and the judicial branch. There is really no central focus or single central focus of the criminal justice system; so in order to change it, one has to approach it from a whole bunch of different directions.

Q:                    I think that's one of the things I've come to learn in this process. Criminal justice reform isn't just one thing, it's so many things.

PW:                  That's one of the reasons I'm happy that I ended up being in this area. I hadn't actually realized how complex it is before I got into it. And that's one of the reasons we have things like our juvenile justice leadership council which is chaired by two Supreme Court Justices.

Q:                    What is that?

PW:                  That's a council we put together; we just invented it. And we asked two judges in the Supreme Court and the Director of the Department of Juvenile Justice to co-chair it. And we've invited about 60 to 70 people who play pivotal roles in the juvenile justice system from around the state to come together on a quarterly basis and look at various issues in the justice system. And it's the only place that I know of where the people with all of those different perspectives actually come together and learn about what happens in the justice system beyond their own domain, which seems to be one of the ways to solve the problem. People really don't understand what happens in the other parts of the system, so they can be doing something in their part of the system with all good intentions that ends up having ramifications at the other part of the system that is  really bad for people.

Q:                   What are some ways in which you or Illinois Justice Project has changed criminal justice reform?

PW:                  I think the most graphic example is one of the earliest things we did. We started by focusing on juveniles because we thought that we would have more traction making changes around that. We separated out the Division of Juvenile Justice from the Department of Corrections to make it a separate agency, because as long as the juveniles were in the Department of Corrections, they were being basically treated as part of the adult population and subject to  the adult punitive model. And we were arguing that because they're younger and the theory of the juvenile justice system is that juveniles are more likely to be rehabilitated, they should be treated differently, according to the rehabilitative model.

Q:                    That makes a lot of sense.

PW:                  Their brains aren't yet fully formed, so they shouldn't be held as responsible for their actions as older people whose brains are more  fully formed,. So that was one thing. And that has made an enormous difference in the juvenile system. We've gone from about 1600 to under 400 kids now in the state juvenile prisons. We've closed three juvenile prisons and part of that was just because no one was focusing on it and nobody really understood it because it was in this enormous department where there are 42,000 adults and you had this group of juveniles nobody was paying any attention to. Do you want another example?

Q:                    Sure, thank you.

PW:                  The other example that I think is powerful is something we created called Redeploy Illinois. Do you want me to talk about that?

Q:                    Yes.

PW:                  or do you know enough about it?

Q:                    No, I would love for you to talk about it.

PW:                  In looking at the justice system what we saw was that there were very perverse incentives. If you're a judge in McLean County and Person X comes in front of you for the fourth time because she's a truant or she's run away from home, or she's missed curfew--- things that if she were an adult would not be a crime, but because she's a juvenile, those things are a crime--- and you're the judge and you look at her and you say, “If you show up one more time, I'm going to send you to juvenile prison, I'm going to teach you a lesson.” And because her family's dysfunctional or she's got a substance abuse or an alcohol issue, she shows up in front of you for the fourth time or the fifth time and you send her off to prison. That costs the county absolutely nothing and it costs the state now, I saw the number yesterday, $178,000 to house a juvenile for one year. So, what we said to the judges and counties is: “If we will give you some money, will you design a plan to explain to us what you would do with Person X and the other juveniles who are getting in trouble in your county? Because it's better for them to stay with you and get the help they need than to go to the juvenile prisons, meet gang members, have access to drugs, have access to guns, because they're going to come back; and when they come back, they're going to be worse than when you sent them. Redeploy is a program where counties-- and now multiple counties within judicial districts-- can apply for money, and they get the money to provide the services that they need in order to keep juveniles in their community. In exchange for that, they have to reduce by 25 percent the number of juveniles that they send to the state prisons. The first four pilot sites reduced not by 25 percent but by 52 percent. And the number has stayed the same for the 14 years that it has been in existence. St. Clair County went from 86 to 11 youth in one year just because they didn't have the kinds of services they needed in their community to keep kids in the community. And we never talk about this, but from my perspective the underlying incentive here is to have the adults take ownership of the kids in the communities instead of sending them away to punish them: they actually take responsibility for helping them get better.

Q:                    That’s so interesting. Can you talk a little bit about bond reform, and what you guys are doing there?

PW:                  There was a coalition that was put together that we ended up joining. The idea behind the coalition was to basically bring this issue to the public's attention and then come up with solutions for the problem that 90 percent of the people who were incarcerated in Cook County Jail were there because they couldn't afford to get out on cash bond. And the irony is bond is established in order to make sure that people show up again for their court-appointed dates, to come to trial and also, to keep the community safe; but nobody was doing any assessment about whether or not the community was actually any safer for locking these people up. But what we do know from studies in New York, for example, is that if two people commit the same crime and the same criminal background and one end up being in jail before their trial, that person is much likely to end up going to prison and be found guilty than the one that is  sent home. It's just the mentality of the judges, of the state’s attorneys and the public defenders. First of all, we set about to establish some principles about why people should be kept in jail at all, and then why people should be let out. And there was a piece of legislation passed last year which did some things. Pressure was put on the Chief Judge in Cook County and he actually issued an order which changed how bond court was run, appointed all new judges in bond court. And the Chief Judge also placed an emphasis on an instrument to do a risk assessment so judges would know whether or not somebody actually posed a risk to the community rather than just saying, “Oh this person did X, Y, and Z, and therefore I'm going to lock  him up.” Or they were charged with X, Y, and Z, you don't even know if they've done it. The irony is many times the people who can actually afford bond are the people who shouldn't get it. They're the people who are trafficking in drugs and guns, and they are a danger to the community frequently. But they have plenty of money, so they can get out.

Q:                    Interesting.

PW:                  The people who do petty theft because they're hungry or because they're drug addicts and who really don't pose any violent threat to the community are the ones who couldn't afford to get out, so they're the ones who are in the jail.

Q:                    Is there someone you've met or someone you've worked with that has been particularly influential in shaping your views on the system?

PW:                  Oh, lots of people, because I didn't know anything about it. I still learn things every day. I think watching some of the youth who have been through the system has been extremely influential in talking about what's happened to them, talking about what they see the system was designed to do which seemed to me to be completely wrong. I mean their perception was probably right, but what they thought the system was intended to do is what I don't think the system should be doing.

Q:                    I agree.

PW:                  And the parents and the grandparents of youth who have been in the system and how frustrated they are and how confused they are and how frightened they are and angry at a system which ought to be about helping protect people and making communities stronger and individuals and families stronger.

Q:                    Thank you. Before we conclude, is there anything else you think I should know while learning about the criminal justice system?

PW:                  I think the big revelation for me, well there were two. The first was we talked about how complicated it is and how the interaction of the system is really what causes some of the problems. When I was first involved with this I was just angry at all of the people in the system because they were doing bad things. And I think what I learned was that everybody was doing what he or she was mandated to do, but the mandates were wrong. We were asking people to do the wrong things. So, part of the trick was in thinking about how to change the system and to figure out what are people being asked to do and why is that resulting in a system that is not improving public safety and not improving people's lives. And then the second big thing, which I was cynical about at the beginning, was the importance of research and data. We really did not know a whole lot about what was actually happening in the justice system. When I first got involved in justice work, I went online and started looking at all of the research and when the federal government was going into its tough on crime mode and putting 10,000 new police on the street, they also put out a lot of money to do justice research. And I started looking at that and most of it was very, very narrow, very oriented toward why we need to make the system harsher, and really didn't get to the questions of what was happening at the local level. It was pretty academic and esoteric. And so, it was really hard when we were thinking about how to reform the system to know what changes to make because we didn't really know what was happening in the system. So among other things, we created the Sentencing Policy Advisory Council which is a group in Illinois who looks at exactly that data. You should look into that.

Q:                    I will look at it. Thank you.

PW:                  We call it SPAC but it's the Sentencing Policy Advisory Council. We chose a name that we thought was a little bit whimsical so that people wouldn't be scared to pass the bill. We didn't want a sentencing commission. But they put out a lot of interesting research that might be helpful to your project and they do it in a pretty smart and graphic way.

Q:                    I would love that, thank you so much for everything.