Public Act 103-0397, which was passed and signed into law in 2023, expands the remit of the OIJO to cover not only youth housed in Illinois’ five state juvenile prisons but also its 16 county-run juvenile detention centers. Protecting the rights of youth in custody and ensuring they have access to a trusted adult/office who can help them both understand and assert their rights and get assistance when needed is critical to the safety and well-being of this vulnerable population.

For many years, JHA has been asking IDOC to make its agency policies publicly available in order to increase prison system transparency. We are pleased to see that there is now a place on IDOC's website to house administrative directives, with 299 currently available (as of February 2022).

The DCRA requires that basic information be publicly reported about who, where, when, and other circumstances surrounding a death in custody. This information enables family members and other stakeholders to hold agencies accountable for the treatment of people in their custody, thus safeguarding the constitutional rights of Illinois residents.

JHA championed the fight to modernize Mandatory Supervised Release, or MSR, in 2021. Every person sentenced to prison in Illinois is required to serve a term of MSR in the community after they complete their term of imprisonment. Approximately 24,000 Illinoisans were on MSR in early 2021.

HB94 was signed into law by Governor Pritzker in August of 2019 and is a significant step forward in our effort to reform Illinois’ counterproductive and inhumane overreliance on incarceration. 

In 2019, JHA successfully led the effort to abolish the $5 medical co-pay that incarcerated people in Illinois must pay to see a doctor.

JHA led the legislative effort to pass a new law which requires the Illinois Department of Corrections to collect and publicly report critical data about incidents of violence within its facilities.