CHICAGO, IL – Today, IEMI attorney Joan Steffen provided testimony before the Illinois Public Safety-Appropriations Committee on how to reallocate state funds so that they are invested in local communities instead of prisons.
Joan, who works closely with grassroots campaigns challenging the construction of new prisons through IEMI’s Carceral Infrastructure Project, was invited to testify as an expert in the Subject Matter hearing. She appeared alongside the No New Prisons IL Coalition, which is leading an effort against spending $900M to build new prisons in the state.
Joan’s testimony, supported by meaningful research assistance from several students in the Institute to End Mass Incarceration clinic at Harvard Law School, helped inform committee members about how the $900M in allocated funds could be legally reallocated in the budget for other projects that actually support local communities instead of harming them.