Long-Term Prisoner Policy Project (www.lt3p.org)
The Long-term Prisoner Policy Project (LT3P) is comprised of people and organizations concerned with how we treat long-term prisoners in Illinois. Although it began as an independant project, the LT3P is now a project of the John Howard Association.
LT3P's mission is to ensure that prisons are humane, to recognize that even long-term prisoners deserve opportunities to be rehabilitated and should not be warehoused, and finally, that sentencing prisoners to life without parole is a human rights violation.
The need for this Project is clear: Over 5,000 prisoners in Illinois will spend the rest of their lives in prison, either because they have life sentences or because their sentences are so long, they will never get out of prison alive. In our tough-on-crime culture, these may seem like logical sentences, but the reality suggests that such long sentences are not sensible. Our current system warehouses long-term prisoners in maximum-security prisons where there are no programs - educational or otherwise, limited access to jobs and where prisoners are in their cells 23 hours a day. The resrtictive nature of these warehouses makes prisons less safe for prison staff and prisoners, and ultimately has an impact on public safety as well.
While LT3P does general advocacy on policy issues, works with the Illinois Department of Corrections to implement changes which make the system more humane and restore focus to rehabilitation and constructive use of time, we also do more specific advocacy work, including: administering the C# Representation Project in conjunction with the Campaign in Support of C# Prisoners; providing significant support to the grassroots organization, Citizens for Earned Release, and; responding to requests for help for long-termers from family and friends of incarcerated people. Finally, we reach out to the media whenever issues affecting our constituency arise, and advocate for our constituents through public education campaigns, including speaking at forums and participating in panels at conferences. If you would like someone from our organization to speak at your event, please contact us.
Our work is funded by the generous support of the Open Society Institute, the Crossroads Fund, the Illinois Bar Foundation, Illinois Humanities Council, and individual donors, as well as with the generous in-kind support of Sonnenschein, Nath and Rosenthal LLP.
We invite you to learn more about the LT3P by visiting our website, www.lt3p.org, educate yourself on the issues of long-term prisoners and let us know if you have questions or want to help us change Illinois' policies and sentencing laws as they effect long-term prisoners.
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