A new report finds that the repeated incarceration of residents of one Chicago neighborhood has cost Illinois taxpayers more than a billion dollars. Analysts say, however, that there is a simple way to break the cycle.
A new report from the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) says recidivism, meaning people returning to prison after an earlier release, has cost the North Lawndale community a billion dollars. “They made a mistake, served their time and returned to society, but they can’t find work,” says Brenda Palms, president and CEO of the North Lawndale Employment Network. “It’s not that people don’t want to work. They simply face serious obstacles to finding employment,” she said. Palms added that over the past 25 years, the North Lawndale Employment Network has trained more than 20,000 job seekers who have left correctional facilities, all through its “Sweet Beginnings” program.
Palms is well acquainted with the barriers revealed by UIC’s Great Cities Institute. The institute analyzed more than two decades of data on employment, incarceration and economic conditions in the North Lawndale neighborhood. It found that from 2005 to 2024, recidivism among North Lawndale residents cost Illinois taxpayers at least a billion dollars. During that period, North Lawndale’s recidivism rate was 92 percent, one of the highest among all Chicago neighborhoods. The average cost of incarceration was about $45,000 per person per year.
“I think we don’t fully grasp the financial consequences of incarceration,” said Teresa Córdova, director of the Great Cities Institute. On Tuesday, at an event at the City Club of Chicago, she and her team presented the findings. The research focused on how investments in local employment programs, social enterprises and support for people returning to society after serving their sentences can yield exceptionally high returns.
For example, the “Sweet Beginnings” program shows a much lower recidivism rate, below 10% among its participants. The analysts also found that every dollar invested in programs of this kind generates about $5.60 in social and economic value. “In the long run, it will save us, the taxpayers, money. So those funds are better used when they are reinvested in local communities,” Córdova said.
The report’s authors say that nearly 40% of people released from Illinois state prisons return to Chicago, often to the West Side and South Side neighborhoods, which were already underinvested and neglected.
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Source: Polski.FM
