Source: chicagoreader.com 4/23/25
ll Ed Cetwinski could think was, “God, I’m out of prison. I can live my life a little bit.” He had just been released from Taylorville Correctional Center after five years behind bars. But even though he’s free from his prison cell, he’s still not free.
Most criminal convictions in Illinois include a period of mandatory supervised release (MSR). It’s like parole, but it’s served as part of a prison sentence rather than in lieu of it. People on MSR must adhere to a litany of conditions, like curfews enforced by electronic monitors. For most people, it lasts from one to three years, but for Cetwinski, it’s not clear how long his MSR term will last.
People convicted of certain sex offenses, like Cetwinski, are required to be on MSR for anywhere from three years to the rest of their lives. But there’s an issue: a permanent address is a requirement for supervised release, and Illinois’s housing banishment laws make it nearly impossible to find housing.
Because of his conviction, Cetwinski cannot legally live within 500 feet of a school, park, or day care. This includes home day cares, which can serve as few as three children and are scattered everywhere, especially in poor and affordable neighborhoods. If a person down the block decides to open their own home day care, legal housing can suddenly become illegal, meaning banishment zones are always in flux. Collectively, whole swaths of the city have been made illegal.
Taken together, the period of indefinite supervision compounds an already dire system that forces people into homelessness. “Just tell me up-front, now, that [the monitor] is never coming off,” Cetwinski says. “This not knowing, this sitting in limbo—it’s worse than sitting in prison. It affects my family. They see me, they know I’m out of prison, but they know I can’t do anything.”
Think the Gov in Springfield will do anything to help? Nope, too busy reading his own press clippings thinking he is the party front runner for ’28. Let’s hope others working tirelessly locally there in IL will be successful in their efforts to ease the restriction for those impacted by it.
How long before ICE starts coming for us?
“Eighty percent of the people made homeless by housing restrictions are Black men from the south and west sides of Chicago, according to the group’s research. This leaves many people who have completed their MSR but are nonetheless unable to find housing homeless and sleeping at a bus stop, on the Blue Line, in their car, or under a viaduct.” This needs to get out, and be spread to more Democratic politicians. It’s an own-goal: The Democratic Party prioritizes Black Americans, the poor, and the homeless, and here we have a policy in a Democrat-leaning state that hurts all three groups at once, and for no reason! Right now, when voters close their eyes and imagine who is on the registry and who it is hurting most, they think it’s Harvey Weinstein (largely thanks to shows like Law and Order: SVU), instead of the reality: Regular people, many of them poor and minority, are hurt the most.
Thank the Illinois Supreme Court for upholding this law last year. The governor likes to tout Illinois as the most liberal state in the Midwest, but when it comes to clean slate, housing banishments, and other issues that would help reduce recidivism, he’s quiet. There are much more conservative states that have much better registry laws than Illinois and I’ve honestly about had it living here.