A film screening this week at Bloomington Public Library aims to raise awareness about barriers that continue to punish people who've served their time in prison.
Ronnie Carrasquillo was incarcerated for 47 years for a crime he committed as a teenager. He was released in 2023 and is the subject of a documentary being screened at the Bloomington Public Library.
In Their Hands: One Man’s Journey to Parole airs at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, July 24 in the library’s second floor community room, with a Q & A with Carrasquillo afterward. The event is free, though attendees are encouraged to RSVP.
The screening is presented by the McLean County Reentry Council, a volunteer-led organization formed in 2021 to assist people during and after incarceration with transitioning to life on the outside. The council also advocates for lowering barriers to fully reintegrating in society — something board president Toy Beasley knows all about.
“I got locked up in February 1991. I got out in February 1999,” said Beasley. “I was never locked up for the crime I committed. I was locked up because of childhood trauma and untreated trauma. That’s the part that people don’t understand. People go through things before they get there.”
Beasley said prison was a wake-up call.
“When I got locked up, I was like, man, how did I end up here? I began to look at the things I went through in life, and I began to get the help I needed while I was there,” he said. “Having this film will help educate people that if Ronnie can recover, anybody can recover.”
Roadblocks to success
McLean County Reentry Council hosts community pop-ups and a monthly coalition call with stakeholders in and outside the criminal justice system, aiming to address roadblocks that, according to Beasley, drive up recidivism.
The council distributes a flyer to people in custody in McLean County Jail and the Illinois Department of Corrections to make them aware of reentry resources before they get out. And they encourage employers, landlords, banks and insurance companies to consider policies that make it more possible for people to successfully rejoin society.
“I think the recidivism rate in McLean County is around 42%,” Beasley said.
That number depends on how you define and calculate recidivism. According to McLean County Trial Court administrator Will Scanlon, recidivism “is difficult to track.”
Illinois’ decentralized system means McLean County wouldn’t necessarily know if someone released from McLean County Jail today is arrested in Peoria tomorrow, for example. Statewide data indicate that 3/4 of the people released from prison in 2018 and 2019, were not arrested for a violent crime within three years.
What is clear, however, is that access to resources in and outside of jail or prison help. And Beasley said barriers are higher and more numerous in more rural, more conservative communities like McLean County.
“If you can’t get a job, if you can’t get a place to stay, you recidivate,” Beasley said. “I’m talking about gainful employment. We can get a job at McDonald’s, Hardee’s and all that. I’m talking about State Farm. Country [Financial]. The government.”
Advocates point to Illinois’ Clean Slate Act as one way to open up employers to people with a prior felony. Another is more employers being willing to hire them.
“If our community on the employer side and the landlord side would give people opportunities, nine times out of 10, they won’t go back — because they have an opportunity to live and support their family,” said Beasley.
He also suggests the criminal justice system itself could reduce recidivism by hiring people with felony records to deliver mental health or substance abuse programs in jails and prisons. In a July 2024 report to the McLean County Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, the Stevenson Center at Illinois State University, which tracks trends within the jail population, said half of those detained have a mental health condition.
“The jail remains the largest mental health and behavioral health provider in the county,” said the report.
Beasley sees that as an opportunity.
“They’re short-staffed in corrections,” he said. “But there’s a lot of people that have been impacted by the criminal justice system that fit the criteria to go work in programming. Again, the recidivism rate is high because people are not getting the education they need on the inside.”
