Illinois Senate Republican leader critical of continued parole board
vacancies
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 [April 19, 2024]
By Greg Bishop | The Center Square
(The Center Square) – Pending Illinois Senate confirmation, there’s a
new executive director for the Illinois Prisoner Review Board. But there
are still other vacancies on the board.
A leading Republican in the Illinois Senate says more needs to be done
to bring transparency to the PRB.
Last month, a member of the PRB resigned when it was revealed a recent
parolee was accused of stabbing a pregnant woman and killing an
11-year-old child. Later that same day, the executive director of the
PRB also resigned.
“I think that the changes that are necessary here are evident in the
fact that the panel didn’t take into consideration enough the domestic
violence history of this particular prisoner, and the fact that there
were reports by the victim of that person … knocking at her door, being
around her apartment building, etcetera,” Gov. J.B. Pritzker said last
month.
Weeks later, Pritzker appointed a new executive director in James
Montgomery.
“This new leadership position will be responsible for overseeing
administrative board operations, including the facilitation of
additional domestic violence prevention training and other important
equity-based trainings for board members,” Pritzker’s office said in a
statement Monday. “The creation of the executive director position
reduces the workload placed on the PRB chair and allows for the chair to
focus more closely on leading casework.”
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Illinois Senate Minority Leader John Curran, R-Downers Grove. -
Catrina Petersen / The Center Square
Illinois Senate Minority Leader John Curran, R-Downers Grove, said much
remains unknown about the case behind the recent shakeup.
“We need a full transparent accounting here of what occurred and we have
not gotten that yet from the governor,” Curran told The Center Square.
“The governor should also be leading on actually reforming and raising
the standards at this board.”
There are other vacancies Pritzker needs to address, Curran said.
“Right now, he is leaving vacant four positions that are, that have to
be non-Democrats and he is artificially weighting this board towards his
favor, what he wants to see which is more releases, a higher release
rate and obviously we’re seeing some pretty bad results because of
that,” Curran said.
On the PRB now, are seven members with Democrat affiliations, three with
Republican affiliations and one with Independent affiliation. There are
four listed vacancies on the board.
Board members get nearly $97,000 a year. The chairperson gets nearly
$108,200 a year.
Catrina Petersen contributed to this report.
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