Inside-Out Students and Alumni in Action

DePaul Behind the Walls Law and Participatory Civics Collaborative. This legislative and advocacy think-tank emerged in 2016 out of an Inside-Out course taught at Stateville Correctional Center. It consists of students and the instructor in that course, along with staff from the Chicago Votes and the Chicago Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights. The think-tank engages in policy analysis and advocacy on issues of concern to incarcerated people. The group has drafted several state bills; one of them, the Re-Entering Citizens Civics Education Act, was signed into law in 2019. Current bills would grant voter eligibility to incarcerated citizens in Illinois, and would fully restore the state’s parole system.
Legislative internships. In 2023, DePaul’s political science department piloted a legislative internship program with Stateville students and state senator Rachel Ventura. It provided rich opportunities for policy engagement; Senator Ventura assigned substantive tasks such as legislative analysis and content reviews of relevant policies and scholarship. The following year she expanded it to three more interns.
Virtual, live participation in national and regional conferences, including the Inside-Out 25th Anniversary Conference, the annual conference of the American Criminology Association, the National Conference of Black Political Scientists, and the Sentencing Project’s Civic Power conference.
Training and certification of incarcerated peer educators to conduct civics workshops in Illinois Department of Corrections facilities.
Training volunteers to facilitate civics workshops for eligible voters at Cook County jail. This training builds on DePaul service participation since 2016 with the Chicago Votes voter registration drives at the jail. A 2019 state law then made Cook County jail an official electoral precinct and mandated voter education workshops to prepare voters . Voter turnout there has been robust since then.