Anyone interested in learning more about the Pretrial Fairness Act or how to join the fight to end money bail, should check out this Virtual Townhall scheduled for Saturday, January 16th, 2021. The virtual town hall will inform our community on the progress being made to end wealth based pretrial detention.
Join us in learning more about pretrial detention, the Pretrial Fairness Act, and what you can do to help end the unjust practice of money bond in Illinois.
Prior registration is required for this event. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
I recently discovered that additional cases of COVID-19 in the McLean County Jail occurred back in late November. Since the story broke, there has been no announcements from the Sheriff’s office about whether there are any current cases, how often testing is occurring, and what’s being done to mitigate spread.
I am calling on the County Board to pass a resolution asking the Sheriff to report all COVID-19 cases in the jail promptly & accurately. This should be the bare minimum, but apparently it needs to be specified.
Because of the Illinois constitution, County Boards have very little actual authority over the Sheriff’s Office. This allows the Sheriff to operate with almost impunity. However, the board members have a duty to the tax-payers to be fiduciary shepherds for the jail; which they can’t do that if they don’t have the proper information. It’s time for them to prove they are concerned about a transparent & accountable government. While they cannot force the Sheriff to cooperate, a resolution requesting that information shows a clear message.
We should all be able to agree that transparency is key to effectively overcoming this pandemic. The people demand accurate and prompt information, especially regarding tax-payer funded liabilities like the jail. It is unfortunate the Sheriff has chosen to conceal & prevaricate on such an important issue.
Contact your county board members & ask them to pass a resolution seeking transparency & accountability at the jail. I encourage you to e-mail the County Administrator for public comments at both the McLean County Health Committee & Justice Committee.
Email public comment statements to County Administration at admin@mcleancountyil.gov. E-mailed Statements will be placed in the official minutes, even if the statement reads longer than the individual/group time limit (5 minutes for individuals or group spokesperson). All requests will be taken in the order in which they are received, and the total time allowed for public comment at Committee meetings per County Board rules is 30 minutes.
Substance, quantity, relation, quality, time, place, position, having, doing, affection. If you don’t know about the categories of Being, what are you even talking about?! Check out the thrilling conclusion of how a young Alexander the Great learned how to take over the world.
If you don’t know about the categories of Being, what are you even talking about?! Check out the first part of a two-part series on how a young Alexander the Great learned how to take over the world.
Two Peoria-area teens will likely be spending the rest of their lives in prison:
(Left) Zaveon Marks (circa 10-years-old); (right) Jermontay Brock
Zaveon Marks, 15, was sentenced to 45 years in prison for the 2019 murder of 16-year old Zarious Fair. Zaveon was charged as an adult. Circuit Court Judge Katherine Gorman made the legal finding that the 15-year old was particularly depraved and beyond the possibility of rehabilitation.
“I hope you prove me wrong, Mr. Marks, and that you take advantage of the opportunities that you will have while in custody,” Judge Gorman said.
The next day, Jermontay Brock was sentenced to 60 years in prison for the murder of two people at a Bradley University party in the summer of 2018. One of the victims, Nasjay Murry, grew up on the southside of Chicago, and chose Bradley University in Peoria because she thought she would be safe from the violence that plagued her neighborhood.
Both of these cases involved minors committing senseless acts of violence that ended in the tragic deaths of people. Both judges in these cases found the teens to be particularly depraved and therefore beyond the possibility of rehabilitation. This legal opinion is necessary in order to charge minors with anything over 40 years. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that life sentences for juveniles violated the 8th Amendment; and, the Illinois Supreme Court has found anything over 40 years is considered a life sentence and would not include juveniles except in cases where a legal finding is made that the juvenile is beyond the possibility of rehabilitation. However, both will be eligible for parole after 20 years.
Incarcerating juveniles for life is especially expensive. It costs $38,000 a year to incarcerate a person in Illinois. After the age of fifty, the cost typically doubles.1 If Zaveon Marks serves his full sentence he’ll be released at age 60, and will have cost the taxpayers $2,090,000. If Jermontay Brock serves his full sentence he’ll be in his mid-70s by the time of his release and will have cost taxpayers $3,268,000.
According to a FOIA I received yesterday, the number of inmates infected has risen to 5 as of August 6th, 2020.
“As of August 6th, we have… had 5 positive tests on inmates.”
When I first read this, I initially thought of all tests done on inmates five returned back positive. Of course, that is not what I asked for: I specifically requested the number of inmates who had tested positive, not the number of positive tests performed on inmates.
I contacted the jail FOIA officer, Mary Lou Allman, to clarify. She told me this is the information she received from medical staff so it must mean the numbers have risen to 5 inmates. Hopefully, this was a mistake but considering how lax Sheriff deputies and jail staff are about wearing masks, I wouldn’t doubt if the number continues to rise.
Furthermore, it confirms the jail did not start properly testing until the Pritzker administration required it in order to transfer inmates to IDOC.
How do you convince Peorians in Districts 4 & 5 to care about poor people in Districts 1, 2, & 3?
This question may be as old as neo-liberalism in Peoria, and Marc Supreme of 90.7 FM during his Mayoral Mini-Series: A Candid Conversation with the Candidatesdesperately asked this question over & over of Mayoral candidate Chama St. Louis. I say desperate, because the answer seems so far-fetched as to be fatalistically impossible to answer in any concrete way. We can only respond in the typical abstract homilies about “education” & “community” we’ve heard from Mayor Jim Ardis and At-Large District Councilperson Rita Ali.
But, this question isn’t some antimony or impasse in logic itself.
Let’s try, for a moment, to get out of the neo-liberal austerity that haunts Peoria like a specter.
District 1-3 have largely been disinvested over the last several decades.3 Minorities already have a significantly lower median wealth than people of a colonial complexion, so they’re already paying less in taxes. People who are impoverished and have been robbed of educational opportunity4 are more likely to engage in alternative economies (i.e., non-taxable economies),5 which again, means less tax revenue. All of this leads to higher taxes for District 4 & 5 (especially to pay for bloated PPD budgets which enact Broken Window policing in District 1-3). As taxes in District 4 & 5 get yuuuuuuuuger, there’s more population decline which creates a declining tax revenue and a positive feedback loop of ever-increasing taxes.
Now, instead of spending tax revenue on bloated police budgets,6 say you put that money towards making sure poor folks in District 1-3 have their basic needs met7 so poor folks don’t have to engage in alternative economies to survive (cause people gotta eat); and, say we find a way to raise property values in these districts without displacing residents on fixed incomes; those yuuuuuuuge taxes on District 4 & 5 start to go from being hefty, hefty, hefty to wimpy, wimpy, wimpy.
There’s only one way to find out and the current way Peoria has been doing for four decades hasn’t been going so well, has it? Just cause you live in District 5, and you got your kids going to Dunlap schools, don’t mean crime on the Southside, the Taft, and the East Bluff doesn’t effect you. There’s just more degrees of separation between your privilege & their poverty,8 but you can’t have a privileged person without an impoverished person.
