Carmaletta Jones wants her partner to get a second chance at life outside of a prison cell and an opportunity to show he can be a productive member of society.
Her partner, Brian Willis, was convicted on two counts of murder in 1996 and sentenced to natural life in prison when he was 18 years old.
At a news conference outside Cook County Jail in Little Village on Wednesday morning supporting a new parole bill, Jones and other advocates, including musicians Chance the Rapper and Common, talked about the importance of giving people with a long prison sentence the opportunity to be released.
“Twenty years is long enough,” Jones said. “Trust me, he’s been there 25 years since he was 18 years old. He is not the man he was at 18, he is at 43.”
House Bill 2399 and Senate Bill 2333 both would bring back the opportunity for prisoners serving life sentences to go before a parole board after serving 20 years.
The bills are unlikely to pass during the state legislature’s veto session, which only is expected to run for four more days, state Rep. Carol Ammons, who sponsored the senate bill, said. But she plans to present the proposed legislation again in the spring, and said continuing to educate the public on the importance of parole helps push the conversation forward.
Ammons said the bill would not guarantee prisoners will be released. As someone who has been a victim of crime and whose son has been a victim, she said she understands potential concerns from victims and their families worried about a prisoner’s release.
“It is a procedural process that will allow for review. It does not guarantee that a person will be released,” Ammons said. “And I think that that’s something that I would share with the family members who might say, ‘I don’t want this person to ever get out.’ “
State Sen. Celina Villanueva, who introduced the Senate bill, said she’s keeping hope alive as the legislative session comes to a close. But she said she’s also prepared to reintroduce proposed legislation in spring.
Villanueva said the bills would continue to give people in prison hope and encourage them to continue improving themselves.
“We want to change the way that we think of our criminal justice system as a system that just penalizes, but instead as a system that rehabilitates and actually encourages people focusing on reflecting on their actions, owning up to their actions, trying to change because of those actions, and recognizing that they’re not the same people that they were,” Villanueva said. “And that they want to be contributing members that are coming back into society.”
At the Wednesday morning news conference, Chance recalled a time in 2019 when he went to Stateville prison in Joliet to perform for a group of incarcerated men who were graduating with bachelor’s degrees. He said his experience seeing the men shackled and knowing they would go back to their daily life in prison after graduating was “eye-opening.”
“We need to understand incarceration for what it is, it’s torture,” he said. “And we need to start pushing and transforming our criminal justice system and sentencing laws with this reality in mind. That means pushing for policies like parole.”
Bringing back parole is “the floor,” but it’s a step in the right direction as communities reverse course from tough-on-crime policies that have disproportionately affected Black and brown communities, Chance said.
“We need a criminal justice system that reflects the values we want to see in this world — compassion, care, restorative justice and transformative justice,” he said.
Common, who has been an advocate for criminal justice reform since he formed the nonprofit Imagine Justice in 2018, said he started learning about how focusing on reducing prison populations could help reduce violence on the streets of Chicago. He said a conversation with Michelle Alexander, author of “The New Jim Crow,” opened his eyes to the importance of criminal justice reform.
“I met some of the most enlightened and inspiring people in prison,” Common said. “You know, one gentleman said to me, ‘Imagine being trapped in one act for the rest of your life, the worst for the rest of your life.’ I’ve thought about that. If that happened for me, I wouldn’t be up here with you all.”
Despite being sentenced to life in prison, Willis has gotten a master’s degree and several certifications and has never lost hope that he might someday be given a second chance, Jones said.
“Brian has proved to me personally that change is possible in any and everybody,” Jones said. “And so we want to push for this bill to get passed so that people like Brian can show the world that ‘I can be a strong point here. I can teach these boys that you have more to live for,’ because we don’t have a lot of motivation in our neighborhoods.”
Jones said cyclical trauma has plagued neighborhoods especially on the South and West sides of Chicago, and has led youth to normalize and sometimes eventually commit violent crimes.
“When you’re beat down and told something repetitively, every day that you are nothing, what else are you gonna amount to?” she said. “People like Brian can come out here and help these kids.”
She said many of the men in prison, people she’s befriended in her work as an advocate and through Willis, have worked hard to get degrees and to better themselves.
“These guys are lawyers, professors, doctors, therapists, they’re not just people that are incarcerated,” Jones said. “They are somebody. All of them are somebody, you know, and it’s time for us to give them an opportunity to be somebody.”
Jones teared up when she talked about her experience sitting inside a cell when she toured a women’s prison. She described the toilet cellmates have to share right next to a desk where she imagines Willis sits down to write, and the bed within arm’s reach of the desk. When she sat at the desk, while working as a volunteer for a Halloween event a few years ago, she thought about Willis having to live with a cellmate in that small space.
“We used to sit up and talk about our future, how we’re going to get out of the ‘hood, and how we’re going to do all these great things,” she said remembering her conversations with Willis when they were teenagers.
She brought Chance to tears, and others in the crowd agreed with and encouraged her, chanting “That’s right!” and “Speak!” as Jones shared her story with the crowd of about 50.
Children growing up surrounded by violence have been desensitized to the sound of gunshots, she said. What they need is mental health resources and hope, Jones said.
“They will never be somebody different if you don’t give them this shot at redemption, at rehabilitation, at therapy,” she said. “Some of these people need real-life therapy. We come from trauma.”
Pablo Mendoza spent 22 years in prison. Since being released, he has joined several boards that promote social services for communities and learn about problems in communities and find solutions, he said. He has also started an undergraduate program and works to connect those who are incarcerated with their communities.
“I advocate for parole, because I see myself as an extension of these guys that are behind these walls. Those guys shaped who I am today,” Mendoza said. “It is not the Hollywood narrative where we’re in there finding ways to destroy our community. These guys are looking for avenues to reach their communities in a positive light, even when they have no hope of freedom.”
