2023 is the year Illinois ended cash bail.

The Faith Coalition for the Common Good, which campaigned for this, is now helping some of the beneficiaries. Members spent Friday morning at a Springfield church, assembling care packages of snacks, water, toiletries, and leaflets full of resource information into backpacks.

The coalition’s transformative justice chairwoman, Vanessa Knox, is asked to define “transformative justice.”

“Making change,” said Knox. “It’s truth over tradition.”

The coalition’s goal is to distribute eighty backpacks to those who are freed from jail awaiting trial.