Dawn is breaking and the Home Depot parking lot in Chicago’s Chatham neighborhood bustles with life. A coach bus pulls up and tens of kids clamber up the tall steps. Behind them is Sandy Hall — “Ms. Sandy” to everyone — lugging boxes of books, cookies and oranges for the three-hour drive from Chicago to Decatur Correctional Center, the minimum security women’s prison in central Illinois.
“Some hard fast rules!” she says jokingly after getting on the bus. “No snoring, no talking in your sleep and definitely no slobbing.”
Ms. Sandy has helped with family reunification events through the Women’s Justice Institute for several years. The organization is a Chicago-based nonprofit dedicated to ending women’s mass incarceration and reducing harm perpetrated by the carceral system.
“I’ve seen children grow up on the bus,” she said. “They start when they’re twelve or thirteen. Now they’re bringing children of their own to see their mothers, grandmothers.”
For more than a decade, the organization has been coordinating the Reunification Ride, a program that provides transportation to children visiting their mothers in prison each month. For the past three summers, they’ve organized Family Fun Days — an outdoor field day with games, face painting and ice cream — at Logan Correctional Center, a women’s prison in Lincoln, Illinois. This Family Fun Day is the first held at Decatur Correctional Center, with 21 families reuniting, some after more than a year.
According to the Prison Policy Initiative, as of 2022, more than half of women incarcerated in U.S. prisons are mothers, while in jails, four out of five women have children.
Colette Payne is the director of the Women’s Justice Institute’s Reclamation Project, an initiative aimed at helping women reclaim their lives after being incarcerated.
It’s an expensive and often long trip to get to central Illinois from many parts of the state, Payne said, which can make it hard for families to bring children to see their mothers. From Chicago, there are occasionally Greyhound buses to Decatur, with tickets ranging between $30 and $150 each, depending on the day.
The organization’s reunification events are crowdsourced, and don’t receive any state or federal funding; all the treats, games and transportation provided to the children are purchased by the organization.
Events like Family Fun Day also make it easier for families to bond, Payne said.
“In the visiting room, you have to sit across from each other. You just get one hug,” she said. “During our rides, you get to hug all day long if you want to,” Payne told the Reporter. “We break bread together as a family, and I consider these people to be family.”
Bonding over games
Lakeisha Johnson sits in a plastic chair in the corner of the gym watching her three grandchildren play basketball. This is the second time she’s seen them in over a year and a half, she says.
Brandy Harness is visiting her stepdaughter Chelsea. Harness has also brought Chelsea’s son, who is playing catch with his mom. Every time he catches the ball, she cheers.
They’d never visited a prison, Harness said, and didn’t quite know what to expect.
“He was a little leery about coming here and just visiting in general because it’s ‘prison,’” she said of her stepdaughter’s son. “When the lady got ahold of me about coming and told us about all the games and activities that they’re going to be doing, it eased his mind.”
When the children entered the gymnasium for the Family Fun Day — now indoors, due to the rain — there were shouts of joy.
“My baby!” gushed one mom as she ran across the gym to her son.
“You’ve grown so tall!” exclaimed another, as she and her son grabbed a ball and made space to play catch.
Only one adult per family is allowed in the prison, and all visitors have to undergo a background check. Some family members don’t pass the background check, said Kathleen Allen, who has been incarcerated at Decatur for several months. She said that she wishes more family members could come, maybe even nieces and nephews of women who don’t have their own children.
“I just wish that they were able to do things like this more often,” she said. “Or just be able to have more events in similar surroundings, so our families can see us in not a prison setting.”
Kathleen Allen’s mother, Victoria Allen, is visiting Decatur with Kathleen’s son, Joseph. Victoria and Joseph aren’t able to visit that often, she says, because of gas and lodging expenses.
“It was amazing to be able to get to have him and see him in an environment where he’s able to be a kid,” Kathleen Allen said. “I speak to him on the phone almost every day, but he’s gotten bigger. When it’s been that long without seeing somebody it’s refreshing and it’s emotional as well. You’re happy, but it’s a bittersweet happiness.”
Ice cream and accountability
Amidst shouts of “ice cream!” families lined up at noon for a lunch of hot dogs, chips and fruit. Serving the food were other incarcerated women, many of whom said that they volunteered. One woman said that she hadn’t had rocky road ice cream in four years — the same length of time that she’s been incarcerated at Decatur. But not to worry, she said as she slid a scoop of ice cream into a bowl, the prison staff promised that she could have some as a reward for helping with the event.
As families ate, some kids trickled out of the room to once again take over the gym.
“He said he’s gonna whoop your son in basketball,” one mom jokingly said to another as their sons faced off on the court.
Sandra Brown, a senior advisor for the Women’s Justice Institute, stood off to the side as families played. Before her advocacy days, Brown said that she was incarcerated at Decatur and often relied on outside organizations to help her see her son. The reunification event takes her down memory lane, she said.
“We would spend the whole day together, and it would give us a chance to connect to talk about things that I couldn’t talk with him about because there were so many issues with access to the phone at the time,” Brown said. “These moments were critical. They kept me and him connected.”
Payne’s time incarcerated at Decatur has also brought her to the Women’s Justice Institute’s work.
“I don’t expect [systems] to save me or save our communities,” she said. “That’s something that we have to do and this is part of it right here.”
Payne said that one of her biggest goals is to get families who ride the bus engaged in policy changes. She hopes that family members will share their stories, show up in court for one another and advocate in Springfield for prison reform.
“We have got to hold systems accountable for the harm that they have caused, for the harm that is still being caused by separation,” Payne said. “The state never has money for anything except to build a new prison.”
In 2024, Governor JB Pritzker and the Illinois Department Corrections announced the building of two new prisons to replace Logan and Stateville Correctional Centers. In 2025, $900 million of the state budget was allocated to their construction in Crest Hill, Illinois. According to the Department of Corrections, the new facilities “will include visitation spaces, access to communication, and re-entry focused programming” though no additional details are provided.
In 2026, the state allocated around $2.2 billion to the Department of Corrections.
Goodbyes and see-you-laters
Before getting to Decatur, Payne had said that the hardest part of the event is saying goodbye.
Moms wrapped their arms around their children as the words “I love you,” “I’m so proud of you!” and “Bye, baby!” rang through the gym.
There were hugs, kisses, pep talks and tears as families left the room, led by prison staff.
“My daughter’s here as well as my grandchildren. So being able to get together and then even socialize with some of the other inmates and their families, it’s rewarding,” said Stephanie Bell at the end of the event. “We are all family. That’s what it feels like — a big family coming together.”
Sinnamon Washington, who hadn’t seen her kids in a year, agreed with Bell.
“We played games and we made good memories, even though we’re in jail,” she said. “It don’t stop us.”