Risk Assessment

Court Asked to Order Illinois to Assess the Risk of Releasing Longest Serving Prisoners

More than two years after missing a statutory deadline to implement a comprehensive risk assessment of state prisoners, a lawsuit has been filed seeking a court order directing Illinois prison officials to assess and consider paroling the longest serving prisoners.

The lawsuit, which was filed in Cook County Circuit Court, seeks to force the Illinois Prisoner Review Board (IPRB) and the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) to abide by the Illinois Crime Reduction Act, which took effect in 2010 and gave those state agencies three years to prepare for and begin using a standardized risk assessment tool no later than January 2013.   

The class action suit was filed on behalf of all still-incarcerated prisoners sentenced for crimes committed before 1978 when Illinois switched from a system of indeterminate sentences to sentences with a fixed length of time. More than 170 men are serving indeterminate sentences and appear periodically before the IPRB to request parole. 

Read the complete press release (pdf)

Chancy v. IPRB (pdf)

Updated 1/28/15