How Political Games Hamstrung Illinois’ Parole Board—Trapping Thousands in Prison

There isn’t much Michael Simmons can do but hope and wait. The 46-year-old has spent more than two decades in Illinois Department of Corrections custody. If he’d taken the plea deal prosecutors offered him, his sentence would already be over. But he went to trial instead—where he was found guilty and handed a half-century behind bars. Now, he’s trapped waiting for answers as Governor J.B. Pritzker spars with state Republicans, who have ground Illinois’ clemency and parole processes to a near halt.

Simmons is caring and pragmatic. His mom, Rosie Thompson, remembers he was the quietest of four children, but he always had a way of taking things in stride. Like his mom, Simmons loves to cook. He’s a bookworm, too. While in prison, he earned a master’s and teaches online classes at Lewis University, a small Catholic college in Chicago’s southwestern suburbs.

In 2020, Simmons asked Pritzker for a commutation. With one signature, Simmons could be free. Clemency powers and policies vary from state to state, but in Illinois, the governor has virtually unchecked power to change or modify a person’s sentence as they see fit. For many people, clemency offers a final shot at freedom. It’s where you turn when you’ve exhausted your appeals and the reality of growing old—or dying—behind bars sets in.

But the process is long and winding. Years pass without updates, applications are considered in no apparent order, and deliberations are shielded from public view. 

“We don’t know if one day he’ll get out,” Thompson said of her son. “We don’t know if one day, after all this waiting, the governor will say no.”

While Pritzker has the final say on matters of clemency, the bulk of the work falls to the Illinois Prisoner Review Board (PRB). Four times a year, the 15-member body hosts public meetings where loved ones and defense attorneys converge with victims and prosecutors to make their cases for or against a person’s freedom. Each application that comes across Pritzker’s desk contains a confidential recommendation from the board.

For decades, board members were primarily former cops or prosecutors. They upheld a mandate from both Democrats and Republicans to enforce a system of punishment and vengeance. But a movement to grind down some of its roughest edges had been building in Illinois for some time. Sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic, Pritzker appointed a team of reformers to the PRB, ostensibly tasked with helping reform the prison system by releasing people who were no longer threats to society. 

But, in politics, shirking the status quo puts a target on your back. By the spring of 2022, a backlash campaign from state Republicans ground the PRB’s work to a halt. 

So far, the attacks have worked: In the first three years of his term, Pritzker commuted the sentences of 100 people, according to Pritzker spokesperson Alex Gough. In the years since Republicans successfully kneecapped the PRB, he’s granted just 23. Pritzker didn’t grant any commutations in 2022 and has given just four in 2024.

Through interviews with incarcerated people, their loved ones, and advocates, along with public records, The Appeal found that this political battle has left imprisoned people and their loved ones trapped waiting without answers—sometimes for years. 

“While there is always more work to do, the Governor is a leader in taking clemency action, with numbers of petitions considered and petitions granted significantly exceeding governors in other states,” Gough told The Appeal via email. He said Pritzker “remains open to all perspectives for how to continue to improve the functioning of the PRB, and welcomes the partnership of the legislative branch in that process.”

Thompson wonders what it will take to bring her son home. 

“Not hearing ‘no’ is the only comfort that we have,” she said. “But, then, I’m afraid to ask for anything because I don’t know what that may lead to.”

As of October 8, almost 2,100 clemency applications were pending in Illinois, according to PRB data analyzed by The Appeal. Gough told The Appeal that the board had sent about 900 of those to the governor. Many have been on Pritzker’s desk since 2021.

It’s also unclear how the governor decides which cases to take up. The time between application and response varies, and applications are often considered out of order. Pritzker has ruled on some clemency bids within days—while others languished for months or years.

Gough did not answer a question regarding the order in which Pritzker considers applications. 

“Because clemency decisions involve careful consideration of lengthy materials, they involve a significant amount of time to evaluate and assess,” Gough said. He added that Pritzker strives to make decisions “as quickly and fairly as possible.” 

Sherrie Phipps, a PRB spokesperson, said, “the timing and order of review is within the Governor’s discretion.”

PRB hearings occur four times a year. The application deadline is about 75 days before each meeting. After hearings, Phipps said it takes 90 to 120 days for the board to process applications. The PRB then sends the entire docket to the governor’s office.

The log of clemency applications reviewed by The Appeal also appears to document errors and messy record-keeping. Three entries from January and December 2020 list a date the governor sent his decision to the PRB—one as far back as March 2022—but are still listed as pending. 

In response to questions about the delay from The Appeal, Phipps said, “Unfortunately, there was a system glitch. However, the issue was resolved, and all Petitioners were properly notified.” 

The data also shows the board received dozens of applications between May and October 2020 that it says weren’t sent to the governor’s office for more than two years, until February 2023. Almost two dozen applications from 2021 hadn’t been sent to the governor at all. 

In one case, the PRB held a hearing in April 2023 for an application it received in July 2022. But the PRB has yet to send the case to Pritzker. Phipps told The Appeal staff should have noticed the application when recording votes. 

“We are currently working to clear this petition to ensure it be sent up to the Governor’s office for a final decision,” she said.

Phipps added that the PRB considers applications on a case-by-case basis, but “there are a few cases that have not been forwarded to the Governor’s office on the usual schedule for some reason.” Phipps said this is often because applicants “change course between a public and nonpublic hearing.”

The Appeal also identified numerous instances in which the PRB incorrectly recorded the date an application was received—sometimes making it appear as though it was more than a decade old. Phipps confirmed that there are “inaccuracies in the information in the spreadsheet” and provided documents confirming the errors.

Worryingly, the PRB also sent The Appeal a spreadsheet containing the Social Security numbers for every clemency applicant. The column was hidden but not removed. Phipps said the PRB “inadvertently provided this information” and is “in the process of taking appropriate steps and the steps required by law to alert the designated government entities and any impacted individuals of this inadvertent disclosure.”

In April of this year, Pritzker selected Jim Montgomery to serve as the board’s first executive director—weeks after two board members, including the chair, resigned amid a conservative-led media controversy. In an interview with The Appeal, Montgomery said Pritzker hired him to provide leadership and administrative support. Montgomery oversees the budget, manages staff, and meets with the governor and other agency heads.

Montgomery said the “whole process takes usually over a year because of the volume, and the amount of information, [and] the hearings.” He added that it “can take a couple months to, in some cases, several months” for the PRB to send its recommendations on clemency applications to the governor. 

“It is a very complex process that does take time,” he said.

Edith Crigler, a former board chair, told The Appeal, “I don’t think the public nor the General Assembly understands the depth and breadth of the work that board members have to do.” Crigler, a former social worker, served as chair from 2022 until Pritzker decided not to renew her term in 2023. She says each board member is assigned between 10 and 20 cases every docket cycle. An application could be as few as 20 pages or as many as 2,000. 

“It’s a lot of work,” she said. “A lot of reading to do.”

For Benny Rios, it’s not knowing that’s the hardest. He first asked Pritzker to commute his 45-year sentence, handed down when he was 25, in early 2020. By October of that year, Rios’s application reached Pritzker’s desk. By January 2021, it was denied. 

“I didn’t mind that,” Rios, 46, emailed The Appeal. “I’d prefer a quick denial than a delayed one.”

In a short and generic letter, the PRB told him it didn’t make the decision lightly and had spent considerable time reviewing his file. However, the PRB’s recommendations, which would give the public valuable insight into what board members look for, are confidential. 

“Never is one informed as to why they were denied or what could be done to improve a favorable decision next time around,” Rios said. (Gough said the law and state constitution require confidentiality.)

Rios tried again in mid-2022. By then, he’d earned a master’s degree, taught GED classes, and was a published writer, artist, and poet. He had a robust and loving support system that was ready for him to come home. Rios’s brother flew in from Texas for his PRB hearing in early 2023 and stopped by to see Rios later that day. It was the last time Rios saw his brother, who died unexpectedly later that year.

Since then, Rios’s application has sat unanswered for two years. It’s a frustrating purgatory. He wonders if he’ll receive another chance at freedom—and what it would take to get him there.

“It gives one hope that there’s a chance of being granted clemency the longer one waits,” he said. “The downside to that is if one gets denied after waiting so many years, one is not eligible to file another clemency petition until a year after the denial.”

Rios has built a life of transformation—not because of the prison system, but despite it. 

“If all of this is not enough for a commutation of my sentence, I don’t know what is,” Rios said.

“No matter what,” he added, “I won’t stop living a life in service to others.”

The cascading events of the COVID-19 pandemic and uprisings against police violence in 2020 presented a unique opportunity to move the needle on criminal legal reform. 

Poorly ventilated and densely populated, prisons and jails were breeding grounds for the deadly virus. More than 29,000 incarcerated people—the size of Illinois’ entire current prison population—were infected. Eighty-nine people in state prisons died. At the same time, communities across the U.S. rose up to demand an end to state violence. Conversations about prison and police abolition broke into the mainstream.

But a reform movement had built steam in Illinois for years before the floodgates broke open in 2020. Pritzker cruised to an easy victory over incumbent Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner in 2018. A month into his term, Pritzker’s administration launched the Justice, Equity, and Opportunity Initiative to unite the administration and justice reformers. In the early hours of February 22, 2021, lawmakers passed a package of laws that made sweeping changes to the state’s legal system, from ending cash bail to nearly eliminating felony murder. 

On the PRB, a small contingent had already begun to tug on the seams of what was possible. Journalist Ben Austen wrote in his book Correction: Parole, Prison, and the Possibility of Change that PRB members “are like a jury without a judge, civilians appointed to decide whether a long prison sentence should or shouldn’t come to an end.” They decide when someone has been rehabilitated, a person is no longer a threat to society, or freedom would no longer diminish the seriousness of the crime.

It’s inherently partisan. No more than eight people from any one party can serve at a time. Each member can be removed for “incompetence, neglect of duty, malfeasance or inability to serve”—broad categories that effectively let governors hire or fire whomever they want. This subjects members to the ebbs and flows of public opinion. The board’s decisions are also political: Discussions over the future of crime and punishment occur in front of the PRB daily. The board’s choices set the tone for the state’s entire system of mass incarceration. 

Pritzker appointed Oreal James and Eleanor Kaye Wilson in April 2019. Both had strong social justice credentials. In 2021, he chose Max Cerda for the post. Cerda was the first formerly incarcerated person to serve on the PRB. Those three joined others, such as Crigler and Lisa Daniels, who’d pursued restorative justice initiatives after her son’s murder. For the first time, the PRB had people who shared backgrounds with those whose cases appeared before them. 

The pandemic’s urgency kicked things into gear. Crigler called this period the PRB’s “years of Camelot.” The panel helped free people sentenced to life under Illinois’s three-strikes law—people who, until then, had very little chance of freedom. They convinced Pritzker that if he wasn’t going to commute someone’s life sentence outright, he could change it to life with parole and let the PRB handle the rest.

“When I first came on in 2010, it was a very conservative board,” Crigler said. “And I saw with the years, it got more and more progressive, more liberal—if those are the words you want to use—or had more compassion. And it was only for those very few years—we did quite a bit when we had that more compassionate board.’

In the eyes of the left, the PRB was no panacea to the ills of mass incarceration, but the board helped ease some of the pressure on a bloated prison system. To the reactionary right, however, it was the perfect arena for a political showdown.

In April 2020, eight Republican lawmakers wrote Pritzker a furious open letter.

“We have learned through the media that you have reduced the sentences of some violent criminals,” they said. 

A day earlier, the Chicago Tribune reported that the governor had quietly commuted the sentences of 17 people, including seven convicted of murder.

“While many of our state’s businesses have had to keep their doors closed,” the lawmakers wrote, “why are you allowing the doors of our prisons to be opened for murderers and violent criminals?” Conservatives kept up their complaints for the next year. 

Pritzker’s appointees to the PRB are subject to Illinois Senate approval. But a quirk in the law allows them to serve as soon as they’re appointed. If the Senate doesn’t approve an appointment within 60 days, the governor can pull a person from consideration and reappoint them, allowing them to serve unconfirmed indefinitely. Republicans, namely State Senators Jason Plummer and Steve McClure, complained about this issue throughout the 2021 session. (Neither Plummer nor McClure returned requests for comment.) Both men served on the Senate Executive Appointments Committee and wanted unconfirmed PRB members to answer their questions. Plummer tried to force the issue on the legislature’s last day, but Democratic Chairperson Laura Murphy adjourned without taking them up. 

In late December 2021, the Illinois Senate Republican Caucus released a dossier listing the full names of whom it called “controversial parolees,” as well as details from decades-old crimes. But the politicians didn’t include, for example, that Joseph Hurst was 77, had Parkinson’s, an enlarged prostate, and suffered from the complications of a stroke when the PRB granted him parole. Nor did they mention that during George Peter’s more than 50 years behind bars, he used the prison grievance system to fight mail censorship, expand library access, and ultimately force the Illinois Department of Corrections to let prisoners receive books in the mail.

By February 2022, lawmakers were back in Springfield ahead of a contentious midterm election with crime on the center stage. Amid rumors that he was prepping for a presidential run, Pritzker caved to the right. On March 14, Pritzker told Cerda he was off the board. The following week, Jeff Mears failed to earn the Senate’s confirmation. Wilson suffered the same fate on March 28. And James submitted his resignation letter to Pritzker that same day.

Within weeks, the PRB was down to just six members. Without a quorum, it couldn’t meet. A note posted to the PRB’s website on March 29 noted that, due to “unforeseen circumstances,” clemency hearings scheduled for mid-April 2022 were indefinitely postponed.

Pritzker ultimately filled the vacancies. But when the board returned to work, it was a far more discerning and hopeless place. The episode left a mark on the PRB—it showed future board members what would happen if you stepped out of line.

“They’re voting the way they think the General Assembly wants them to vote,” Crigler said. By that time, she’d been on the board for 13 years. “That’s why you can’t get any more progressive people on the board.”

“It worries me because it seems that having a spot as a PRB member trumps giving a transformed person a favorable recommendation,” Benny Rios told The Appeal via email.

The conservative backlash to landmark legal reform efforts ultimately worked. 

“When [the board] works, it can work, man, if you let it do what it was designed to do,” Cerda said in an interview with The Appeal. “But when you start adding political pressure, political bias, political attacks—for two weeks, I was on the news, and all they talked about was when I was 16 years old.” He called the PRB “a political pawn.” 

Aviva Futorian is a longtime lawyer who has closely watched or represented clients before the PRB for years. She’s hopeful public sentiment will turn. But she’s “very disappointed” in Pritzker and members of the legislature’s Black Caucus for acquiescing instead of fighting back. 

“It’s a pretty easy position to be ‘tough on crime,’” she said. “But then why have a Prisoner Review Board?”

Gough, the Pritzker spokesperson, said via email that the governor “agrees that the PRB is designed to do its work without politicization and that recent politicization has been harmful to the PRB’s ability to do its work as fairly and justly as possible.” He added that Pritzker is evaluating new candidates for the board’s four vacancies, including the chair.

It’s been four years since Mike Simmons asked Pritzker for clemency. “It’s been a scary process,” he told The Appeal in a message, “and although there have been some bright spots, I’ve seen so many people denied clemency.”

For now, he’s still holding out hope.