Gregory Chambers

Gregory Chambers currently serves as the Director of Policy at the Illinois Coalition to End Permanent Punishments.

In 1986, Gregory joined the Chicago Police Department as a police officer. A set of unfortunate circumstances led to a major disruption in his life resulting in a criminal conviction and a rather lengthy term of incarceration in 1993. He was released from the custody of the Illinois Department of Corrections on September 22, 2020, at the age of 56.

Gregory served the final two years of incarceration at the Kewanee Life Skills Re-entry Center. Prior to confinement, he served as a member of the Constitutional Rights Foundation, the Fraternal Order of Police, and an elected judicial board member for the student government at Eastern Illinois University.

Gregory successfully completed barber school, culinary arts, and earned an associate degree. He also created and pursued efforts to establish a “Restorative Sentencing Act” (Senate Bill 2054), which would give offenders currently ineligible to receive Earned Program Sentence Credit (EPSC) an opportunity to earn EPSC for the successful completion of programs designed to restore them to useful citizenship.

Working for Live Free Illinois, Gregory led a campaign for Live Free Chicago to bring Independent Monitoring to county jails to create a transparent inspection process that will hold jail administrators accountable for the conditions of its jails and the treatment of its detainees.