Systems of policing and incarceration harm Black, Brown and poor communities.
White supremacy and capitalism work together to exploit Black, Brown and poor people, depriving entire communities of investments and opportunities and creating the conditions for crime and violence. Policing and incarceration further traumatize people who are struggling to meet their needs.
Investing in people, not punishment, makes everyone safer.
There is no proven correlation between policing and safety. Community safety is achieved with good jobs, safe and affordable housing, excellent schools, robust public transit and universal access to essential health services.
Government should serve people, not corporations, and should spend money on things that improve racial equity and actually make us safe. It’s outrageous that Cook County spends $600 million a year on punishment but doesn’t have a single mental health clinic in the south suburbs.
Ultimately, we want to live in a world where all people and communities have what they need to thrive and where police and jails no longer exist. That’s why we’re fighting for resources to be spent on things that will actually make us safer.
By taking money away from the Cook County Jail, we can reduce harm and invest in the good jobs, mental health care, safe housing and resources that allow Black, Brown, and poor communities to thrive.
The Cook County Budget for Black Lives outlines the types of investments we believe would begin to promote real community safety and to defund incarceration in Cook County.
The Cook County jail population has gone down by more than 50% since 2013, but the budget for the jail has actually increased by 26% since then.
Here’s part of the backstory on why the Cook County Jail population has decreased significantly in recent years: Cook County holds thousands of people for ransom each year through the use of money bonds, which require people to pay for their freedom before their trial occurs. The Coalition to End Money Bond won reforms to Cook County money bond policy which direct judges to set money bonds that a person facing charges can actually afford to pay. Because most people in the Cook County Jail are there BEFORE TRIAL, this reform helped significantly reduce the number of people there on any given day. Years of community organizing went into this victory, but because judges have a lot of discretion, some are still setting money bonds that people cannot afford to pay. So we’re also working on banning money bonds at the state level.
Ending money bonds and divesting from the jail to invest in communities are complementary pathways to dismantling Cook County’s system of mass incarceration. Thank you for supporting the Budget for Black Lives.
A proposal to divest from incarceration and invest in communities
On November 24th, the Cook County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to pass the $6.9 billion county budget for 2021. This budget was approved amidst a historic public outcry for a budget that truly prioritizes Black and Brown residents of Cook County.
In the end, the Cook County Board of Commissioners passed a budget that met some of our demands but did not go nearly far enough to divest from the Sheriff’s office and reinvest in the community. The budget that passed cut a mere $25.9 million, or 4.2% from Sheriff Tom Dart’s budget. It did, however, invest an additional $42 million into the community resources we called for in our proposal, including $20 million over the next two years to fund restorative justice and reentry support through the Justice Advisory Council and $20 million for housing and other services to be distributed by the Bureau of Economic Development.
How did we get this far and where are we headed?
In June of 2020, amidst one of the largest racial justice movements in our generation, communities across the nation called to Defund the Police. The Budget for Black Lives Coalition was formed by SOUL, The People’s Lobby, National Nurses United, The Shriver Center on Poverty Law, the Chicago Community Bond Fund and was joined by more than 40 endorsing organizations to bring the Defund the Police demand to Cook County decisionmakers. We partnered with Commissioner Brandon Johnson to write and pass the Justice for Black Lives Resolution that put 15 commissioners on record supporting the idea that safety is achieved through investments in community, not incarceration.
In preparation for the budget process, the Coalition, Commissioner Johnson, and community members advocated tirelessly for the Budget for Black Lives, which called for $157 million in divestments from the Sheriff’s Office to be redirected toward investments in housing, jobs, mental health, and reentry services among other resources. To some system stakeholders, our demand seemed radical, but it was, in fact, conservative given the magnitude of historic and racist disinvestment in communities.
While we are clear that this budget did not go nearly far enough in divesting from cages and investing in communities, we are proud to say we’ve begun to reverse the troubling trend of ballooning resources to incarcerate our community members.
We are proud of the wins we achieved and so incredibly proud of the way that YOU, our community, showed up to demand better for Black and Brown Cook County residents. Without YOUR support, calls, social media posts, and presence at direct actions and in meetings, we would not have seen the wins that we did with the 2021 budget. And these wins are just the beginning.
Though this budget cycle has ended, this work is far from over. We won’t stop until Cook County has a Budget for Black Lives and until Black and Brown residents can thrive in the communities they’ve built and kept alive with their heart and resilience on a daily basis.
More Background on the Budget for Black Lives Campaign
SOUL, The People’s Lobby, Chicago Community Bond Fund, National Nurses United, and the Shriver Center on Poverty Law are calling on the Cook County Board of Commissioners and President Toni Preckwinkle to invest more money in public services that promote community health and safety equitably across the County, especially in the Black communities most impacted by violence and incarceration. The Budget for Black Lives campaign simultaneously calls on the County Board to divest money from the failed and racist systems of policing and incarceration that have caused immense harm and failed to keep our communities safe.
2021 Detailed Budget for Black Lives Proposal
During the 2021 Cook County Budget process, we proposed cutting the Cook County Sheriff’s budget (which includes funding for the Cook County Jail) by $157 million and redirecting this money to public services in Black and Brown communities that are not administered by law enforcement. This changes would:
— Decrease the Cook County Jail budget to account for the 50% reduction in the number of people locked up over the past 7 years;
— Move money out of policing systems that harm Black communities and do not keep Cook County residents safe;
— Provide significant increases in funding for critical public services in Black and Brown communities that will expand community health, safety, and sustainability; and
— Offset proposed cuts to the Public Defender’s Office and the Cook County Health system that are unacceptable, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Physical & Mental Health and 9-1-1 Diversion
$1 million enables the County to begin creating a mental health emergency first responder program so that trained mental health workers, rather than police, can respond to people in mental health emergencies.
$8.5 million adds mental health care program staff at all Cook County Health community clinics, especially those in Black communities, so that people have the option of mental health care in neighborhoods that currently lack sufficient access.
$6.2 million increases staffing more broadly at Cook County Health community clinics and reverses some of the disinvestment from those clinics that has happened over the past few years.
$39.7 million offsets the $55 million in proposed cuts to the Cook County Health system budget, which are unacceptable given that Black people in Cook County disproportionately rely on Cook County Health and are especially vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Restorative Justice & Violence Prevention
$5.5 million expands funding provided by the Cook County Justice Advisory Council to nonprofit community organizations that are engaging in anti-violence work, providing services to formerly incarcerated people to reduce recidivism, and creating restorative justice programs that create real community accountability for people who have done harm to others.
$5 million creates a new Office for Community Health, Safety, and Restorative Justice within the Department of Public Health so the County can learn from the restorative and transformative justice practices developed by community-based organizations and scale up those practices in an accountable way using the county resources and public workers.
Housing
$10 million expands reentry housing options for people returning from jail and prison.
$3 million enlarges Cook County Health’s investment in housing for medically vulnerable people.
$47 million increases rental assistance subsidies provided by the Housing Authority of Cook County to reach an additional 2,500 families, with fewer restrictions than the federally funded vouchers and more flexibility to focus on Black communities with housing needs.
This total of $60 million in housing spending would bring the County’s expenditures on housing to just 1% of the County’s budget.
Cook County Public Defender’s Office
$7 million prevents the Cook County Public Defender’s Office from being subject to any cuts to its already underfunded budget as the County seeks to address the revenue shortfall caused by COVID-19.
$250,000 allows the Cook County Public Defender’s Office to improve compliance with Padilla mandated by the US Supreme Court, improving access to immigration-related legal advice and services for non-citizen clients.
Jobs
$5 million creates a pipeline for training and placing people from communities impacted by incarceration in non-law enforcement public sector jobs.
Broadband Internet Access
$5 million provides broadband internet access for Black and Brown communities who do not currently have adequate access, which is especially important to enable remote work and remote learning.
Move services and programs for incarcerated people to Cook County Health and community-based organizations
$3 million moves mental health services that are currently funded through the Sheriff’s Office budget into the budget of the Cook County Health system so that services are not redundant to those provided by Cermak Health and people’s access to services is not dependent on being incarcerated.
$10.7 million moves other “inmate services” from the Sheriff’s Office to community-based organizations.