At 46 years old, Raúl Dorado is 26 years into a life sentence at Stateville Correctional Center.

But that hasn’t stopped him from learning, or fighting against what he believes to be an inhumane system of mass incarceration.

“All of us who formed this nonprofit, we all either had a life without parole sentence or we had a de facto life sentence, or virtual life, which means you have so much time, you can’t outlive your sentence,” he said before his Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project (PNAP) class in Stateville’s education building.

The nonprofit he’s referring to is Parole Illinois, formed by men who are incarcerated in Illinois prisons.

They’re working to reinstate the parole system after it was abolished in the state in 1978.

“It’s just so inhumane to require people to grow old and infirm, and to have to die in prison, when we’ve got literally mountains of data to inform us that lengthy prison sentences yield nominal returns on public safety,” Dorado said. “There’s no deterrent value to lengthy sentences. They create an elderly and infirm prisoner population that no longer pose risk to public safety.”

Current Illinois law calls for determinate sentencing. That means if someone is sentenced to six years, that person serves the entire six years. Time can be shaved off that sentence for good behavior or participation in classes and training.

Once that time is earned, the person is released from prison on mandatory supervised release, or MSR, where they still have to follow plenty of rules and check in with a supervising officer regularly. That part is still very similar to parole.

But the difference is the mechanism for release from prison.

Under parole, once a person has served a certain amount of time in prison, they can make their case to a parole board. Dorado and other advocates refer to it as earned reentry.

“What we’re proposing is not a get-out-of-jail card,” Dorado said. “We’re advancing an earned reentry bill, and it requires people to spend 20 or more consecutive years in prison before they’re eligible. And it’s a review process. After 20 years, you can present the best version of yourself before the Illinois Prisoner Review Board. And they’re professionals, they’re not gonna just dupe them. It’ll be up to them to determine if you can safely release and successfully reintegrate into society.”

The earned reentry bills — House Bill 3373 and Senate Bill 2129 — create a review process, that after 20 to 35 consecutive years of incarceration, individuals are given the chance to make their case before the parole board.

The Illinois Sentencing Policy Advisory Council shows that as the bills are written, 438 people in Illinois Department of Corrections prisons would be eligible for release in the first year of effectiveness. That number would grow to nearly 4,000 by the third year.

State Sen. Seth Lewis (R-Carol Stream) isn’t opposed to the idea of bringing back parole, but questions whether it should be a priority for IDOC.

“That whole system needs to be improved before we go wholeheartedly into a parole system,” Lewis said. “It has to come together, because giving someone the opportunity to leave prison and then not support them while they’re here — I think we’re setting them up for failure to go back.”

He argued the whole system needs other cures for long-running ills — like addressing root causes of crime and providing rehabilitation for those incarcerated.

“And we also have to bring in victims and victims’ families, making sure that they feel a part of the process or at least have a say,” Lewis said. “They may not like the outcome of a person who has been rehabilitated and not want to provide forgiveness. But at the same time, they need to be a part of it.”

One such victim was 11-year-old Jayden Perkins, a young dancer who was killed while protecting his mother from a man just released from prison on mandatory supervised release.

Dorado argued the public misuse of the word parole in the case of the suspect hurts his efforts.

“This man was not on parole; he was on MSR,” Dorado said. “In fact, he had violated the terms of MSR, and his MSR was reinstated. He was not on parole.”

“If there was a parole system,” Dorado continued, “he would’ve been forced to undergo this transformational process of personal growth before he would’ve been released.”

Advocate Shaneva McReynolds is a relative of a victim.

Her first husband was murdered 16 years ago. A suspect was never arrested.

“Whoever it is that is responsible for my late husband’s death, I don’t think they need to sit in prison for 30, 40 years just to realize what they did or caused to my family,” McReynolds said. “But also, it’s not going to make their family whole either, right? It’s going to tear their family apart the same way it’s torn mine apart.”

“So how can we not advocate for second chances when we know that human beings by nature, they do change?” McReynolds said.

McReynolds now works for the nonprofit Families Against Mandatory Minimums, or FAMM. She married her current husband, Jeffery, while he was incarcerated in an unrelated federal case.

“He was convicted and sentenced to 20 years to life for a non-violent drug offense in the federal system,” McReynolds said. “So he would’ve had to serve all that time. He technically should not be home until 2029.”

But her husband is out of prison now, through a change in federal law.

McReynolds argued a change in state law could do the same for men and women in Illinois. She said a parole system would’ve created a safety valve for men like Jimmy Soto, who was exonerated after 42 years in prison.

“Had this bill passed, if parole was reinstated, he might not have done all (that time) — we’re talking decades of time,” McReynolds said. “He would’ve had a second-look mechanism that would’ve given him the opportunity to show the prison review board, the carceral system that he will continue on in his innocence. But look what he did over time. That’s what it’s about.”

Soto was among the first cohort of men to graduate with a bachelor’s degree from the Northwestern Prison Education Program. While incarcerated, he worked to secure exonerations for several other incarcerated men.

In the meantime, Dorado spends his time preparing for the day he gets his chance.

“I’ve undergone that transformational personal growth, that process,” Dorado said. “I gladly carry this heavy burden, I know that I don’t just speak for myself. I speak for every incarcerated person in IDOC … and I particularly speak on behalf of every person, of more than 5,000 people who are sentenced to die in Illinois prisons.”