Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot signed the "A Roadmap for a Second Chance City" executive order on Nov. 17. | Twitter/Lori Lightfoot
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot signed the "A Roadmap for a Second Chance City" executive order on Nov. 17. | Twitter/Lori Lightfoot
A newly created council that will address challenges that formerly incarcerated Chicago residents have with employment opportunities, healthcare and housing will convene no later than March of 2022.
The Interagency Reentry Council, created by an executive order signed on Nov. 17 by Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, will use recommendations from the publication “A Roadmap for a Second Chance City” as the cornerstone for its work, according to a press release.
The 2021 Returning Residents Working Group compiled the recommendations in “A Roadmap for a Second Chance City.” The Interagency Reentry Council will publish annual reports.
“For many in our community, including my own brother, we have failed to create opportunities for them to have meaningful and productive lives post-incarceration,” Lightfoot tweeted. “In the Chicago Recovery Plan, we invested $10M in a three-year reentry workforce program for training and wrap-around supports for residents to attain employment and stabilization, and $3M in community legal services like expungement and record sealing. There is still much work to be done, but these are steps in the right direction to build a truly Second Chance City.”
Among recommendations in the publication are those involving improving economic mobility and opportunity, which includes developing and implementing “a meaningful ‘Second Chance Hiring Pledge’ that increases employment of returning residents in government positions in the City of Chicago.”
“A City government-wide hiring pledge should require all City of Chicago departments and sister agencies to identify meaningful positions that lead to career pathways,” the report said.
Incarceration due to the commission of crimes is a prominent reality in Chicago, where in the first eight months of 2021 there were 2,344 shootings and 524 homicides, WTTW News said. On an annual basis, approximately 100,000 inmates go through Cook County Department of Corrections, one of the largest single-site jails in the country, according to the Cook County Sheriff Office’s website.
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