Chicago City Wire

On Nov. 17, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot signed an executive order establishing a council to address the challenges that formerly incarcerated people face.

The executive order, titled “A Roadmap for a Second Chance City,” will establish an Interagency Reentry Council which will work to remove barriers that former convicts face when looking for employment, housing, and healthcare, according to a press release. 

The matter has personal significance to the mayor after her older brother was incarcerated for more than ten years.

"I know all too well the incredible challenges people face when trying to rebuild their lives after exiting the criminal justice system," Lightfoot wrote in a Nov. 17 Twitter post. "For many in our community, including my own brother, we have failed to create opportunities for them to have meaningful and productive lives post-incarceration. This has hurt communities and families throughout our city, particularly in Black and Brown neighborhoods. We’re working to change that."

The Cook County Department of Corrections is one of the largest jails in the country, with an average of about 6,100 inmates each day. Every year, around 100,000 inmates circulate through the jail.

"In the Chicago Recovery Plan, we invested $10M in a three-year reentry workforce program for training and wrap-around supports for residents to attain employment and stabilization, and $3M in community legal services like expungement and record sealing," Lightfoot added. "There is still much work to be done, but these are steps in the right direction to build a truly Second Chance City."

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, a study on recidivism followed 401,288 state prisoners who were released in 2005. Within three years, approximately 68% of them were arrested again, and 83% of them had been arrested again within nine years by the time the study concluded.

In 2020, 875 people were killed as a result of gun violence in Chicago – the highest number in decades, according to ABC 7 News.