How people in Illinois prisons lead peer-led civics education courses on voting rights

This March, during Illinois’ primary election, Brian Beals voted for the first time since 1988. He’d spent 35 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Beals was exonerated last December.

After being disenfranchised for so long, casting his ballot felt gratifying. And he was prepared, particularly because he spent his final few incarcerated years as a peer-educator helping teach civics to other people in prison.

It’s through the ‘Re-Entering Citizens Civics Education Act,’ which went into effect back in 2020 to provide civics education to people in Illinois prisons before they’re released.

“My credibility was on the line!” he said. “I was in prison, talking to guys about civic responsibility. and now it’s my turn to actually get out and do it and back it up, put my money where my mouth was.”

Beals was asked to be a peer mentor in the program at the Dixon Correctional Center back in 2021. He’d been a peer-educator for other programs previously, so he was a natural fit.

Soon after, he was trained by representatives from Chicago Votes & the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights. They’re non-partisan civics groups who helped develop the plan along with incarcerated people.

Cliff Helm is senior counsel with the Chicago Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights.

“We do monthly or near-monthly peer-educator training sessions,” said Helm.

He says those virtual training sessions can include up to 40 people from a handful of different prisons.

Since launch, they’ve trained over 250 peer-educators like Beals. State reports show over 6,000 people have completed the program within a year of their release. Chicago Votes says they’ve also received over 4,000 anonymous survey responses from folks in the course. There’s also a version of the program at the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice.

Helm says the peer-led civics program includes three different courses that take 90 minutes each.

“They cover the power of voting,” said Helm, “which includes a conversation on the history of voting in the country and voting procedures as they’ve developed over the history of the country. Voting 101: registration, what does voting look like? What’s the primary? Things like that. And then there’s government 101.”

Beals remembers spending hours in a unit with two other peer educators preparing presentations. His Dixon classes were small, sometimes only three people. Then, he was transferred to the Robinson Correctional Center, where he was leading weekly classes with 20 students.

His classes built a voting rights timeline and filled out sample registration forms. They talked about the impact of the war on drugs and taxes. They discussed voting discrimination like poll taxes and even had students take a Jim Crow voting literacy test.

“I think out of the 39 times that I actually did the literacy test, no one ever passed it,” he said. “It just shows how unfair and unjust politics was back in the day, especially for the minority and Black folks around the country.”

Outside of the history of voting, Beals says it’s also important to make sure incarcerated people know what their voting rights are today. He says many don’t know that they can register to vote in Illinois immediately after their release.

“I think, generally across the population, there’s a lot of misinformation,” he said. “A lot of guys just didn’t know.”

It’s partially because those laws look very different from state to state. Through the program, they also hand out voting information handbooks to those leaving prison.

Alex Boutros, program director at Chicago Votes, says not every Illinois facility offers the civics courses weekly, as Robinson does.

“Some institutions are doing weekly sessions, some institutions will do them ad hoc, when needed,” she said. “And a couple of institutions haven’t even started.”

The Department of Corrections releases an annual report detailing participating in the civics program at each facility. The 2023 report shows only 11 of the state’s 28 prisons had students enroll in and complete the peer-led civics courses.

Shalandra Burch is the assistant chief of programs for the Illinois Department of Corrections. She says the numbers in her department’s report don’t fully reflect how many people are actually enrolled in or completed the course.

“We do have the program established in all of our facilities,” said Burch. “We were working with updates in regards to our technical side and getting the data entered, and that causes some of the data to look a little different.”

A footnote in the report says numbers will be more accurate in future reports.

The former-peer educator Brian Beals says the civics course is one of the best programs running in the system right now. But not every peer educator has had as good an experience.

Anthony McNeal was a peer-educator for several years, most recently while incarcerated at the Centralia Correctional Center. In March 2023, he was teaching a course about Jim Crow poll taxes and literacy tests and how they were used to discriminate against Black voters.

Then, according to a lawsuit filed by McNeal earlier this year, prison staff allegedly cut him off and told him not to talk about racism. The suit claims that, after McNeal refused and told them it was part of the curriculum, he was fired from teaching the civics course.

Advocates including Boutros at Chicago Votes and Brian Beals support legislation to expand the civics program, so it’s not just limited to folks within a year of going home, but available to people as soon as they’re incarcerated.

“Just having that education in the beginning,” said Beals, “can actually change the way you do your time.”

He says this knowledge can motivate people to invest in themselves and their education so they’re in a better position to live, work, and — once they get out — vote.