Fully Free:
The Campaign to End Permanent Punishments

Everyone deserves to fully participate in society as a free person—to access housing, education, employment, and opportunity. And yet, Illinois leaders have continued to restrict the basic human and civil rights of people with records. They have told people with records to rebuild their lives, without help, while continuing to pass laws that impose impossibly high hurdles to doing so.

Permanent punishments are the barriers that deny or restrict rights and opportunities for people with a record—creating a “prison after the prison.” Although they are often called “collateral consequences,” they are not. These permanent punishments are barriers intentionally set up to restrict people’s rights.

In Illinois, 3.3 million adults have been arrested or convicted of a crime since 1979, which is widely thought to be the beginning of mass incarceration. Right now, there are 1,189 permanent punishment laws and regulations in Illinois that restrict people with records, often indefinitely.

The criminal legal system targets and oppresses Black, Indigenous, and people of color—especially people experiencing poverty—at every step. Therefore, they experience the harshest impacts from arrests to conviction to sentencing. As a result, families and communities of color continue to be burdened the most by permanent punishments. For example, our research shows that of the 1.2 million adults convicted of crimes in Illinois, nearly 35 percent are Black—a rate over two and half times as high as the percent of Illinois adults who are Black.   

The Fully Free Campaign—the first of its kind in the nation—is bringing together diverse people from across Illinois to push for bold policy change, eliminating permanent punishments and providing hope and opportunity to people with records. The Campaign is:  

• Centering the expertise of people who have been directly impacted by the criminal legal system and supporting their leadership;

• Working with a strong, diverse coalition of advocates;

• Pursuing a multi-year advocacy strategy to eliminate permanent punishments; and

• Grounding its strategy and communications in original, person-centered research to help change the narrative about people with records and educate people about the need to end permanent punishments.