Chicago neighborhood at the heart of a new report that reveals recidivism cost Illinois taxpayers over $1B in two decades

CHICAGO -- When does punishment truly come to an end for those formerly incarcerated?

“Many people think they might be getting off pretty well with just probation or five years instead of 15 behind bars and yet what they often discover is that upon release, they find themselves locked in a permanent cage with invisible bars,” Michelle Alexander, lawyer and author of 2010’s “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,” said in Juneteenth Productions’ latest documentary, “Civil Death.”

A new report by UIC research hub Great Cities Institute reveals the reach of incarceration in Chicago's North Lawndale community.

After examining economic trends, crime patterns, and reentry outcomes in the West Side community between 2000 and 2024, the institute found that recidivism costs Illinois taxpayers over $1 billion. Its analysis of Illinois Department of Corrections data showed 28,715 formerly incarcerated individuals from North Lawndale had a 92% rate of recidivism.

The North Lawndale Employment Network (NLEN), a workforce development organization, commissioned the report and has worked with returning citizens for years to reverse the punishments that follow them after prison.

NLEN hosts initiatives like the job readiness training program U-Turns Permitted and employs and trains justice-impacted individuals through Sweet Beginnings LLC — a honey-based skin care company that makes and sells products under the “beelove” brand.

Led by CEO and President Brenda Palms, NLEN’s wraparound support services aim to reduce recidivism through a “learn and earn” model for those with limited work experience. NLEN’s efforts show a community’s well-being is linked to who lives and thrives in it.

“A lot of this is stuff is stuff we’ve been talking about for 20 years,” said Clifford Nellis, president and CEO of the Lawndale Christian Legal Center. The nonprofit provides restorative-justice-based legal services to youths from North Lawndale involved in the criminal justice system.

His organization partners with NLEN and other North Lawndale entities to reverse the effects that discriminatory systems and practices have had on the community for generations.

“We’ve looked at different numbers,” Nellis said, adding that nationally, $445 billion is spent annually — and a report out of Washington University in St. Louis found that, including the loss of jobs, family breakdown, healthcare costs and indirect associated costs with criminal justice problems, it’s $1.2 trillion.

“Whether it’s $445 billion or $1.2 trillion, one of the things this (Great Cities Institute) report highlights is that there is an abundance of money we are already spending; we’re just not spending it very effectively.”

The Great Cities Institute study shows that NLEN’s community-based reentry and social enterprise programs yield better societal results at a fraction of the cost than reincarceration. Great Cities Institute data shows only 4% of clients who worked at NLEN’s Sweet Beginnings returned to prison between 2007 and 2018, compared to double digits statewide.

A core message of the study, which took a year and a half to complete, is that as a society, we can’t keep investing in incarceration while underinvesting in the opportunities that rebuild people’s lives, according to Teresa Córdova, director of the Great Cities Institute. “Repeated incarceration is not inevitable,” she said.

“A billion dollars associated with North Lawndale over 20 years. … Imagine if we took even a portion of those resources and invested them in employment and community development,” Córdova said. “We all benefit from not wasting money on incarceration. We all benefit from healthy individuals living inside healthy communities, which helps create healthy cities, which help create healthy regions. … It builds out. That’s one of the most important things we learn from this (report).

Leslie Williams was incarcerated for almost a quarter of a century. At age 19, she was a mother of two with one on the way and in a domestic violence situation that she kept secret when she became a justice-impacted individual. When the rest of the world was dealing with anxiety around Y2K, Williams was fighting for her freedom. But then her father died. Her mother followed him months later.

“Those were my soldiers … the people that were rooting for me. After they were gone, it was just me to fend for myself,” Williams said. “After that I gave up and said I’m going to sit it out. I went to the penitentiary.”

Looking back, Williams talks about incarceration as her way out. “If I’m being honest, jail actually saved my life. I wouldn’t wish anybody to go there, but who’s to say if I would have been alive had I still been free? Because I was being beaten on a day-to-day basis.”

When released, Williams had to learn how to navigate a world that she was not a part of. She came home to the West Side and found work wherever she could — in food and sanitation, a speaker company, and cleaning machines at a bakery. Then someone she was incarcerated with mentioned NLEN. Williams joined their programs, which helped her with her credit score and her first apartment.

Now in her late 40s, Williams, an Austin native, is an entrepreneur. Equipped with a business license and an employer identification number, she is making inroads on her residential and commercial cleaning business.

“When you come home, they tell you what you are limited to — what you can’t do,” Williams said. “You are not gonna tell me what I can’t do. I’ve been out going on four years, and I am a business owner, I hold down a 9-to-5. My plan is to employ people like me, who came from where I came from, and have been through some of the things I’ve been through. You can do it.”

The North Lawndale Employment Network represents what should be happening in local communities, according to Rashawn Ray, a sociologist and executive director of the American Institutes for Research’s Opportunity Fund, a 10-year, $225 million initiative focused on addressing persistent disparities in education, workforce development, public safety and community health. The fund has given $100,000 to NLEN since it began collaborating with the group in 2022.

According to the Great Cities Institute’s report: For every 10 individuals enrolled as NLEN clients who avoid reincarceration, $405,000 in annual incarceration costs are diverted for Illinois taxpayers. NLEN clients achieve a 92% job retention rate after six months, with 85% reporting improved income and credit profiles. And Illinois spends about $45,000 per inmate per year in correctional cost, whereas NLEN’s social enterprise programs cost $9,000 to $14,000 per client (depending on age, prior skills and certifications).

“They are proving their concept and what they are doing is working,” Ray said. “North Lawndale serves so many people, but imagine if they had more resources.”

The North Lawndale Employment Network, which serves 2,000 people annually, is but one part of the reentry ecosystem in the city and state.

Illinois has pursued justice reforms that include decriminalizing marijuana, eliminating cash bail, and enacting Ban the Box laws (as of 2015, employers in Illinois were prohibited from including questions about criminal convictions on job applications). This year, Gov. JB Pritzker signed the Clean Slate Act, which automates sealing of eligible nonviolent records after completion of the sentence and a waiting period.

“Remember the impact is not just the impact of that individual, but the halo effect around them — their kids, the people they go to church with, the people they kick it with on Saturday, their neighbors, their family,” said Maria Kim, president and CEO of Redefine Alliance, a national venture philanthropy organization that invests in businesses that hire, train and support people facing barriers to employment. “When people see Person X step into their new beginning, it’s contagious in all the positive ways. Those are the kinds of ripple effects we need in our society to heal.”

The Great Cities Institute report lays out the North Lawndale Employment Network’s recommendations for local, state and corporate leaders to continue breaking the back-to-prison cycle statewide, including embedding justice-involved populations as target demographics in workforce strategies and economic development plans; streamlining and removing restrictive barriers for individuals with felony records seeking professional licenses; and expanding programs like Illinois R3 (Restore, Reinvest, Renew) that reinvest a portion of cannabis tax revenue into communities most affected by the long-term consequences of systemic racism and the war on drugs.

“We cannot achieve full freedom, justice, and liberation for all through purely political strategies, power struggles, and smart analysis alone — all of that is needed, but it’s not enough,” Alexander said in “Civil Death.” “An awakening is required — an awakening to the dignity, value and ultimately the sacredness of all life. If we don’t come to see that we belong to one another. … If that shift in consciousness has not occurred, these systems will continue to arise again and again.”