Stories by brandis friedman

Author and university professor Michael Eric Dyson is known for his rapid-fire commentary — threading hip-hop lyrics with Bible verses in his signature alliteration to make points about politics, pop culture and racial justice in America.

Executive clemency is designed to extend mercy and restore opportunity for people who were convicted of crimes and have demonstrated successful rehabilitation. But in Illinois, advocates say that grace has been slow to come for people with criminal records, some of whom are still in prison.

Barbara Taylor Bowman is known not only for her lifelong work in the field and for co-founding the Erikson Institute, but also as the mother of Valerie Jarrett, an advisor to former President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama.

Parole Illinois was 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.

To this day, Chicagoans live in a fairly segregated city. And that segregation didn’t happen by coincidence but by design. WTTW News Explains how redlining worked in Chicago.

Anthony Gay spent more than 20 years in solitary confinement. He also became an advocate against the practice. He had just been granted compassionate medical release from federal custody, just days before his 51st birthday. He died of lung and liver cancer.

Benard McKinley is preparing to begin law school at Northwestern’s Pritzker School of Law. He graduated from college while serving 22 years in prison for a crime he committed when he was 16 years old. 

In the last 20 years, Illinois has released a spate of inmates who were wrongfully convicted, some after it was determined they were tortured into giving confessions. In fact, the state was faced with so many claims of torture that it created the Torture Relief and Inquiry Commission in 2009.

The play about a Black political Illinois family is brand new — so new that cast members didn’t even have a complete script when WTTW News sat down with them.

The exhibit at the National Public Housing Museum in River North is inspired by the Pulitzer Prize-winning book “Evicted” by Princeton sociologist Matthew Desmond.

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump is responsible for making household names out of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and others.

Rapper, actor and activist Common was in Chicago this week to talk about his latest book, “And Then We Rise: A Guide to Loving and Taking Care of Self.” The Chicago native sat down with WTTW News to talk about the book and some of his activism.

In December, Jimmy Soto saw the sunrise over Lake Michigan for the first time in 42 years. He is now discovering a completely different world from the one he left.

Last week, the Northwestern Prison Education Program graduated its first cohort of students. The graduates are the first in the country to earn bachelor’s degrees from a top 10 university while incarcerated.

For the last two years, Illinois has had a law that allows people who are in prison and are dying of a terminal illness or are physically disabled the opportunity to petition for compassionate release. However, few of the releases are granted. 

About 50 people gathered Thursday to protest the city’s process for deciding to use a Chicago Park District facility in Edgewater to shelter asylum seekers. The city has been under a state of emergency for months as it seeks to house the 11,500 migrants who’ve been bused or flown in from Texas.

Free Spirit Media is a nonprofit that works with young people 11 to 25 years of age from the West and South sides of Chicago. Staff members work to teach students to create media arts projects, like short films and news stories, to amplify their own voices.

More than half of IDOC inmates serving a life sentence are 55 or older. Caring for an aging prison population is a costly endeavor, advocates say, and the health care elderly prisoners do receive often falls short. That’s why some are calling for a new parole system.

In 1978, Illinois shifted from an indeterminate to a determinate sentencing system — effectively eliminating parole as most people are familiar with it. Now some advocates are calling for changes to allow inmates over 55 the chance to be paroled.

The town is also home to Pontiac Correctional Center, one of only three maximum security Illinois state prisons. Just outside the prison’s doors is a neighborhood of single-family homes and a playground.

The conditions that come with Pontiac Correctional Center’s age are just part of the reason inmates and advocates call it inhumane. Another reason is the climate inside. WTTW News details the issues facing the maximum security prison. 

Among Pontiac Prison’s challenges is its status as the most short-staffed facility in IDOC. But former director Rob Jeffreys said having a lower incarceration rate could work in the agency’s favor.

From Ukraine to Highland Park, twin sisters Ellie and Natanya Sterling have taken their parents on the ride of a lifetime.

Brian Wallach and his wife, Sandra Abrevaya, founded I AM ALS to find a cure for the disease and to advocate for those who have the progressive neurodegenerative disease. 

When people are incarcerated in Illinois prisons, they cannot vote until they are released and re-registered to vote.

One of the legal system’s goals should be finding ways to reintegrate people back into society after they have completed their sentences, says Patrick O’Brien.