Criminal Justice Reform Panel

There was a Criminal Justice Reform panel discussion at the Champaign City Building earlier this week. On the panel: State Representative Carol Ammons, County Board Member Mike Ingram, Cunningham Township Supervisor Danielle Chynoweth, Dr. Thomas Moore of the NAACP, and First Followers reentry program had director Marlon Mitchell and member Marcell McNutt. Tatianna Ammons, candidate for County Board district 11, chaired the panel.

Full video of the panel is available here on Carol Ammons' facebook page. She included a link to her website that had additional criminal justice reform materials here. Those materials included open letters from various organizations to Sheriff Heuerman. The Sheriff explained why he didn't attend the event in a WCCU article this week:

He said he originally planned to go until he saw derogatory Facebook comments made on the event's page about the proposed jail relocation from downtown Urbana to the satellite jail at 502 S. Lierman Avenue.

"It was pretty evident that whenever I started seeing some of those comments that there was not going to be an open-minded conversation last night and I would rather have a conversation in the public that has diverse views on both sides," Heuerman said.

The Sheriff's role came into the question about how much control he has over reform in the county jail...

Heuerman said he's still open to discussing pretrial and criminal justice reform with leaders and the rest of the community.

He would like to see the state's attorney and county judges involved as well.

That full article here. The event's discussion section currently appears empty and closed. Other coverage of the panel are available at WCCU here and WAND here, both with short video segments. The WCCU article highlights the media framing of the jail issue recently discussed at the County Board's Facilities Committee as inaccurate:

It was a packed house Thursday night in the city council chamber for its criminal justice reform meeting.

After Thursday's discussion, most agreed instead of spending more money on a jail, more resources should be spent on the people inside them.

Right now, there's a $47 million proposal to relocate the county jail from Urbana to the satellite jail at 502 S. Lierman Avenue in Champaign.

The Champaign County Board endorses the proposal due to the deteriorating status of the current jail.

That full article here. More on the recent Facilities meeting where this framing in the media is viewed as inaccurate and in need of correcting at this previous Cheat Sheet post. The study where the $47 million dollar figure comes from was of the most comprehensive option in a recent study on jail consolidation options. I have a Cheat Sheet post on that study here with my initial impressions. I can't say if my wording would pass the board's muster either.