Rights and Restoration Law Group, LLC

09/29/2021

National Expungement Works (NEW) launched its fourth annual Week of Action and Awareness – a week dedicated to uplifting the efforts of organizers and advocates across the country working to provide access to records relief, opportunities, and equity. Tap into some of these events scheduled throughout this week https://newxnow.org/events

Join us Sunday, September 26th at 12pm PT / 3pm ET for the dinner table conversation that is often swept under the rug. 

05/26/2021

Applying for a professional license when you have a criminal record can be confusing and discouraging. But it doesn’t have to stop you from achieving your goals. What many people do not know is that there is an appeal process that allows for an individual review. This allows the applicant to tell their story, and show the licensing agency that they are more than just their record!

04/27/2021

We are so excited for tomorrow's launch of Redefining the Narrative! This report, created by the Statewide Women's Justice Taskforce of Illinois, proposes tangible strategies to cut the women's prison population by 50%. We want to give a big congratulations to everyone at The Women's Justice Institute - WJI who worked tirelessly on this effort.

We honored to have been able to make a small contribution to this report, and can't wait to see the final product.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/redefining-the-narrative-tickets-148498112853?fbclid=IwAR0GHllE4L4OY8g8d25y1xTPAdOBrvD4ZyvNSYKlD1JmmEMsXo5DV1LvVNw

Redefining the Narrative: A Historic Event to Launch the Final Report of the Statewide Women's Justice Task Force of Illinois

04/14/2021

Illinois has one of the most expansive sealing laws in the country. Not only are most class X felonies sealable, but so are almost every type of felony and misdemeanor conviction! But none of this means anything if you are not equipped with information about your rights under the law.

02/18/2021

We are honored to have collaborated with the Collateral Consequences Resource Center on their project analyzing barriers to petition-based sealing of felonies in a number of different states. Learn more and see our report on Illinois:

Currently, 33 states authorize the expungement or sealing of at least some felony convictions.i However, recent research has shown that only a small percentage of eligible individuals actually complet

02/02/2021

The Illinois General Assembly starts back up this month, but traditional advocacy and lobbying will be impossible given the constraints forced upon us by COVID-19.

Join Restore Justice to review the basics of how bills become law in Illinois, and to learn new techniques for engaging the legislative process and influencing legislation in this hyper-digital world.

The FREE training is open to individuals and organizations interested in advancing change in our state through the legislative process in Springfield. While our focus is on criminal legal reform, we try to make our training useful for any issue. REGISTER: https://bit.ly/2MhdJF2

02/01/2021

The official site of Illinois State Senator Napoleon B. Harris, III

02/01/2021

Tune in tomorrow to learn more about what the new criminal justice legislation does and does not do!

Join our office tomorrow, along with Sen. Robert Peters, Sen. Robert Martwick, Rep. Margaret Croke and Rep. Ann Williams, on February 2 at 12pm for “Fact vs. Fiction: What the Criminal Justice Bill Does and Does Not Do.”

RSVP here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdntJ7-D0ZCbac_scmimqrI9ygtgwPgWjkR2Ob4yJWHFD0o7g/viewform.

12/31/2020

Happy New Year from us at Rights and Restoration Law Group!

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Alt text:

Slide 1: Rights and Restoration Law
Happy New Year!
-Company Logo at the bottom

Slide 2: In a year riddled with so many difficulties, we are grateful for the opportunity to be working on the issues we are passionate about.
We are also grateful and appreciative of all our community partners: Heartland Alliance, Safer Foundation, Danu Center for Strategic Advocacy, Collateral Consequences Resource Center, Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, Illinois Collaboration on Youth, Amplify Chicago, Firehouse Community Arts Center of Chicago.

Slide 3: We thank our clients, supporters, colleagues, community partners and fellow advocates inside and outside the prison walls who are working hard to break down the current system so justice becomes a reality.
Beth, Courtney, and Nikki
-Picture of Courtney, Beth and Nikki (left to right) in right upper hand corner

12/18/2020

This week’s Legal Breakdown focuses on Benard McKinley, whose sentence has been reduced by an appellate court. We focus on the implications of this decision on both the state and national level.

Check out our Instagram or Facebook stories for the complete analysis!

The Illinois Appellate Court, in a rare step, amended a 16-year-old offender’s sentence finding that Cook County Circuit Judge Kenneth Wadas had not properly considered the teen’s youth at the time of the incident.

12/11/2020

This week’s legal breakdown will focus on the dual pandemics of pre-trial detention and COVID-19, looking at the recent data analysis by the Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice (link is below).

Check our Instagram or Facebook stories for the complete analysis.

Today, we would also like to honor the life of Brandon Benard, who was federally executed on death row. May he rest in power and peace.
As we have stated many times before, there are deep inequalities and injustices in the criminal legal system, particularly for Black, Indigenous, and other people of color. We will continue fighting for a more just world.

As we embark on the ‘third-wave’ of the pandemic in the United States, we have tragically learned many things. First and importantly, we have learned that the best and only truly effective way to prevent the spread of this airborne virus is by physically distancing ourselves from others. We have...

12/04/2020

We are back with another Legal Breakdown, and this week we focus on Illinois’ s*x offender registry and its effectiveness in keeping us safe and well as its implications for registrants.

Check out our Facebook or Instagram story for complete analysis and details!

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In recent years, policy makers and advocates, both for offenders as well as victims, have been raising questions as to whether the s*x offender registry, and the rules around it,