History & Context
Build Communities Not Prisons (BCNP) was created in response to the tragic death of Michael Broadway at Stateville Correctional Center on June 19th, 2024 due to the egregious, inhumane prison conditions, a reflection of the daily life-threatening circumstances of tens of thousands of Illinois residents caged behind bars. James Soto, a classmate of Michael’s in the first-ever Bachelor’s cohort of the Northwestern’s Prison Education Program (NPEP) and himself recently released and exonerated after being wrongfully caged for 42 years, convened a town hall hosted at Northwestern School of Law to give voice to those impacted by Michael Broadway’s death, centering the voices of formerly and currently incarcerated people and their families. The Build Communities Not Prisons campaign was born from this town hall.
BCNP works with local organizers, educators, legal workers and community leaders at Chicago-area universities, non-profits, grassroots collectives, and prison education programs. In July 2024, following the town hall, the campaign mobilized a car caravan to Stateville Prison and a press conference in front of the State of Illinois building in Chicago demanding the closure of Stateville.
Our Campaign
In June 2024, Governor Pritzker released a statement that not only Stateville but also Logan Correctional Center, one of only two women’s prisons in the state would be closed and allocated $900 million to rebuild both facilities. Only a few days later, Michael Broadway passed away due to the terrible conditions of heat–exacerbated by the climate crisis–and inadequate care at Stateville Prison. Indeed, Stateville Correctional Center was closed in October 2024 due to a lawsuit alleging the conditions were too inhumane. Logan remains open today, despite similarly unlivable conditions, for example, IDOC is currently seeking a new boiler for the facility in the middle of winter. It is not known when it will be closed. However, these events have all preceded without dedicated input from the people most impacted by these decisions—the tens of thousands of Illinois residents locked up in state prisons.
The voices of current and formerly incarcerated people are demanding the closure of inhumane prisons and the creation of pathways to release for people who have been sentenced to die in prison. In a time where marginalized Black and brown communities are more under attack than ever, we need to bring our people together to fight against more families and communities being torn apart through mass incarceration, and instead fight to bring our incarcerated loved ones home.
Our leadership
​​Exonerated after 42 years of incarceration, James "Jimmy" Soto is a human rights advocate, community organizer, and artist. He is a paralegal at Northwestern Law School's Bluhm Legal Clinic and a Community Justice Practitioner Fellow with the Beyond Prisons Initiative at the University of Chicago's Center for the Study of Race, Politics & Culture. He is the founder and director of Build Communities Not Prisons Illinois and is the President of Walls Turned Sideways' Board of Directors.
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Jimmy earned his bachelor's degree from the Northwestern Prison Education Program, graduating magna cum laude. Jimmy was an active member of the Prison Neighborhood Arts/Education Project Think Tank when he was incarcerated at Stateville and is part of the Humans of Life Row project.
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Uniquely among formations fighting mass incarceration in Illinois, Build Communities Not Prisons centers the leadership and voices of currently and formerly incarcerated people, through not only Jimmy Soto but the connections he and other team members have inside and outside the prison walls.