Students, faculty and community members gathered in McGowan Hall at DePaul University’s Lincoln Park Campus Wednesday April 12 to discuss the epidemic of mass incarceration in America and what “re-entry” into life after prison really means. 

Greeted by cheers from friends and supporters in the crowd, a five-person panel of experts and formerly incarcerated people spoke about their work toward prison and post-prison rehabilitation. 

The panel was sponsored by Chicago PBS station WTTW and organized by DePaul Professor Judith McCray’s social justice reporting class. 

Antonio Pizarro, a panelist who served 17 years in prison for a crime he claims he did not commit, questioned the term re-entry in the context of being released from prison. 

“How can we re-enter a society we were never really a part of?,” Pizarro said. 

He pointed to decades of what he called legal slavery that implicates the justice system by keeping men and women of color at the bottom of society. 

“There is a lack of life-affirming resources in correctional systems that leads to more crime and demonstrates little effort to get to the root of the problem,” said panelist Grace Siegelman, president of DePaul’s Students Against Incarceration.

The panelists who had been negatively impacted by the justice system suggested an emphasis on trauma-centered care in communities with high rates of violence as a way to create equity in governmental resources. 

Panelist Marcos Gray spoke from nearly three decades of experience in the corrections system drawing connections between poor mental health in underserved communities and drug addiction that often leads to illegal behavior. 

“I was basically an alcoholic at 16,” Gray said. “It was a form of self-medication because there was no access to mental health services.” 

Gray, who said he is still trying to “decompress” from his time in the prison system, believes mandated therapy must be part of the re-entry and rehabilitation process for formerly incarcerated people to manage trauma and develop coping mechanisms. 

“Someone that suffers from mental illness is not really diagnosed after he’s in prison,” said Javier Reyes, who attended Wednesday’s event. “The focus is on the crime that he committed, not where he came from.”

Reyes is an ex-convict turned advocate and founder of Challenge II Change which provides wraparound services for men and women who are coming out of prison.

“The system is not broken; it is designed to keep Black and brown demographics down,” Reyes said. “We lost an entire generation of Black and brown kids because of the 1994 crime bill.”

The 1994 crime bill established stricter rules about the length of prison time by setting mandatory minimum sentences and three-strikes laws, creating a prison pipeline for communities of color. 

Reyes said Challenge II Change is part of a larger coalition of seven states that are drafting legislation to repeal and replace this bill. 

The panel agreed that educating all citizens about incarceration legislation promotes civil responsibility.

Christina Rivers, panelist and DePaul political science professor, discussed the importance of understanding legislation and rights. 

She said Illinois has permanent punishments for felony convictions, but a permanent restriction on voting is not one of them. This means that convicted felons who are released from jail are able to re-register to vote. 

The bad news, she said, is that many people do not know this and therefore, do not reclaim their rights. 

“Just because there is low voter turnout among ex-convicts does not mean there is lower interest in voting and political engagement,” Rivers said. 

She took pride in St. Vincent DePaul’s legacy as a minister to incarcerated people of France for more than 40 years.  

“This work is central to our Vincentian mission, and we should own that,” Rivers said.

Siegelman encouraged students to take Rivers’s Inside Out Prison Exchange classes that are offered each quarter with Stateville Prison.

She also told students to sign the petition to “Ban the Box,” which is an effort to erase the question about criminal history from DePaul’s application process. 

Siegelman said this movement is a step towards equality in re-entry.

The integral role of the next generation of activists was the panel’s closing message.

“Young people have a lot of power because we are up next,” Siegelman said. 

According to Reyes, when lawmakers hear from young advocates about their concerns and grievances, they see longevity that cannot be ignored.

“Legislators don’t normally hear from our younger counterparts that are doing this work and when they see the youth in these buildings, it really scares them,” Reyes said. 

Re-writing the narrative on life before, during and after prison does not happen overnight, but with the involvement of younger generations, the panelists agreed the fight becomes stronger.

“We know how the story ends when you go to prison, and this has to change,” Reyes said. “The way the story ends has to change.”