SPRINGFIELD — Despite garnering strong bipartisan support from lawmakers, legislation that would make significant changes to the state’s embattled Prisoner Review Board was not called for a vote in the Illinois House before the chamber adjourned for the summer on Wednesday.
After earlier passing the Senate without any no votes, the bill passed 15-0 through the House Judiciary Criminal Committee on Tuesday night. But Jaclyn Driscoll, a spokesperson for House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch, said lawmakers ran out of time to consider it in a full vote while focusing on priorities including a $53.1 billion budget.
But even if it had been called and passed, it’s uncertain whether Gov. J.B. Pritzker would have signed it into law. He’s indicated that while he supported parts of the bill, he took exception with the way it was written.
“There are aspects of that bill that are fine and some aspects of it, frankly, that are just unacceptable. It’s not about transparency to be honest with you. It’s about what’s actually possible, what’s doable,” Pritzker said Wednesday about six hours after the House concluded its spring session. “Also, funding. There was no funding for any of the things that they suggested that we should do.”
Pritzker in March suggested there could be changes to some of the board’s practices after the panel released a parolee, 37-year-old Crosetti Brand, who authorities say then killed 11-year-old Jayden Perkins and attacked the boy’s mother, with whom Brand once had a relationship. The woman had also accused Brand of being violent to her years earlier. Days after the March 13 killing of Jayden and attack of his mother, the board’s chairman, Donald Shelton, and board member LeAnn Miller, who drafted the order authorizing Brand’s release, resigned.
The bill would require the board to publish on its website information for victims about how to submit victim-impact statements for the board to consider in its deliberations. This would apply to victims of domestic violence who’ve filed orders of protection against their abusers, who may be considered by the board for early release.
The bill would also require the board to make more hearings available to the public via live broadcast on the board’s website, where recordings of the hearings would have to remain available for at least 18 months. This would include mandatory supervised release revocation hearings, which could run to hundreds or even thousands of recordings each year.
By July 2025, a task force put together to improve the review board would report to the governor and legislature “on whether additional open meetings of the Board shall be available to the public for live broadcast along with an implementation plan to accomplish this.”
Jordan Abudayyeh, a Pritzker spokesperson, has said the proposal would be difficult for the review board to manage “given the volume of work they are expected to process every month.” She said the governor’s office supports increasing transparency at the board and is working on an executive order to incorporate some of what’s in the legislature’s proposal.
As of Wednesday, the bill had more than 70 House sponsors. Supporters included conservative Republicans and progressive Democrats, an unusual show of unity between two parties on a high-profile criminal justice issue.
The bill’s main House sponsor, state Rep. Kelly Cassidy, called it “a disgrace” that the legislation could not be passed during the spring session and said Jayden’s mother’s struggle to be taken seriously by the legal system leading up to her son’s killing and her attack “is actually unbearably common.”
“We as leaders and lawmakers had an obligation to take action. Instead, we abandoned victims, once again,” Cassidy, a Chicago Democrat, said in a statement. “I am aware that the Governor’s office expressed concerns with the language of the Senate amendments that I believe could have been addressed through the task force proposed in the bill. We should be convening that task force this summer and doing the detailed work that two weeks at the end of session can’t accomplish.”
“Instead, we have to wait until we reconvene in the fall to try again to make meaningful and lasting change that will actually make us safer,” Cassidy said. “Everyone claims to support victims and survivors. Everyone claimed to stand ready to take urgent action to ensure Jayden’s death wouldn’t be in vain. I urge our leaders to prove to victims and survivors that those were not just empty platitudes.”
The measure in its initial form passed 106-0 in the House on May 20 before sailing through the Senate six days later in a 58-0 vote, the same day the Senate adjourned for the summer. But due to changes made to the legislation in the Senate, the bill had to again go through the House.
Driscoll acknowledged on Wednesday the legislation could still be considered by the House when it returns for its fall veto session later this year.
