JLUSA leaders kick off Live Free Decarceration Fellowship

Last weekend, Leading with Conviction™ (LwC) graduates kicked off the 2nd Cohort of the Live Free Illinois Decarceration Leadership/Organizing Fellowship Program for 15 recently released returning citizens selected in partnership with the Illinois Department of Corrections.

Live Free Fellowship Manager Alexander Brown (LwC 2024) oversees the fellowship program alongside Live Free Illinois Executive Director Ciera Bates-Chamberlain (LwC 2021). Guest speakers included JLUSA board member Willette Benford, Marlon Chamberlain (LwC 2019), and Paul Rothschild (LwC 2024), who also assisted cohort members with basic computer literacy skills.

The Decarceration Fellowship aims to improve individual outcomes and opportunities for recently returning citizens while also building future leaders who will use their skills and experiences to challenge overly punitive and racially charged criminal justice policies and practices. Live Free Illinois’s current program theory holds that providing recently returning citizens with an intensive, highly structured, and paid leadership and community organizing training curriculum within the critical first months of release will help program participants achieve greater health and well-being, improve reentry outcomes, and grow into community leaders who are able to leverage their voices and lived experiences to mobilize their communities and influence justice reform policy change.