They served their time. Now they want to be released from Illinois’s ’murderer’ database.

Every November, Donte Quinn grows restless. His shoulders tighten. He becomes irritable. He finds himself brooding over the nearly 15 years he spent in prison, the time lost with his eldest daughter, and the Chicago courtroom where, before his mother and a crowd of strangers, he was sentenced at age 18 to three decades behind bars for his connection to a 1992 nonfatal shooting.

Now 50, Quinn’s annual distress is caused by more recent interactions with the criminal legal system. 

Since his release in 2007, Quinn has had to register with a police database. The most recent iteration is called the Illinois Murderer and Violent Offender Against Youth database. It requires Illinois residents like Quinn who’ve been convicted of violent crimes, including those involving gun violence, to regularly check in with police or risk reincarceration. Depending on the crime, some people have to register for ten years following their release or—like in Quinn’s case—the rest of their lives. 

Illinois is one of at least five states that publicly posts the names, photos, and addresses of people who are convicted of violent crimes. In Illinois, the list includes first-degree murder or other violent crimes, mostly when they’re committed against people under age 18. In a statement to the Trace, the Illinois State Police (ISP) said that the registry enhances their work by providing a list of past offenders to investigate in incidents with no obvious suspects. Quinn, however, is working with advocates from the Chicago Torture Justice Center on a campaign that seeks to abolish what they call the “murder registry,” arguing that it creates additional barriers in the already challenging reentry process and ultimately fuels crime rather than deters it.

“All it’s doing is pushing a person back to another life of crime,” Quinn said, “because you can’t get where you want to be in life. It’s gonna force you to the other side of the streets.” 

In a state like Illinois, where nearly 84 percent of homicides are caused by gunfire and most incarcerated people will eventually return home, the fight to end the list raises an existential question: How should the state treat people who’ve been convicted of gun violence after they’ve served their time? 

For Joseph Mapp, the director of the city’s Office of Reentry, the answer is simple: People are more than their worst mistakes. 

“If you’re saying individuals are paying their debt to society through incarceration, then when is that debt no longer redeemable?” Mapp asked. “If we want to become a society that creates opportunities to heal and learn from past mistakes, we have to create opportunities that support individuals coming back so that they can be integrated into their communities in ways that support healing.” 

“It’s throughout your entire existence.”

Every year since the registry’s launch in 2006, hundreds of Chicagoans have visited one of the city’s two registration sites to provide police with information on their home address, place of employment, school, and vehicle. They must inform police of any changes within five days, or they can be rearrested and their time on the registry restarted. 

In the name of public safety, the ISP is required by law to make some of this personal information publicly available online. Registrants must pay fees and take time off work, which reduces their earnings and complicates employment.

In the weeks leading up to registration, the database is all Quinn can think about. He plans registration day down to the smallest detail—always choosing a day with bad weather. Rain or snow means the lines outside the south-side office will be shorter, the street traffic slower, and the inquiring eyes fewer. And on busier days, it’s not unusual for people to be turned away because of limited capacity. He grabs a raincoat large enough to feel like a disguise, double checks that he has cash to pay the $10 fee, and makes the 20-minute drive to the police office, hoping the process goes smoothly. 

“Registering is not just one day, it’s throughout your entire existence,” said Angel Pantoja, the reentry policy coordinator at the Office of the Illinois Lieutenant Governor. Like Quinn, Pantoja is also required to register for the rest of his life because of a murder conviction. 

“When you walk into Belmont and Western (police station), you have to get patted down,” Pantoja said. “Unless you’ve experienced what it means to be patted down, and everything that comes with being arrested, then you don’t understand the feelings that sort of well up inside you. It’s humiliating, it’s degrading, and that’s just going inside.” 

“How does this benefit anyone?”

Quinn grew up in Englewood and, at age 16, survived being shot in the back. In 1993, he was convicted based on accountability theory—a legal mechanism the state uses to convict people for crimes they’re connected to but didn’t directly commit—for his connection to the nonfatal shooting of a child. In 2000, after Quinn appealed his conviction, a federal judge concluded that while Quinn was connected to the shooting, “the evidence strongly suggests” that he did not pull the trigger on the shot that blinded a child. But he was punished as if he had.

“It’s basically like I’m still incarcerated,” Quinn said. As long as Quinn and others have to register, he added, “you are still incarcerated.”

In 2023, the Chicago Torture Justice Center released a report arguing that the murder registry disproportionately targets poor people of color by locking them “into extended cycles of punishment and state surveillance,” which the authors say complicates reintegration, creates safety risks, and does little to increase public safety. 

“It’s perpetual punishment for people who have completed their time, and are trying to find work, trying to find housing, and who are worried about their own safety,” said Naji Ublies, a case manager at the Chicago Torture Justice Center. Ublies is helping lead the campaign to end the list. In recent months, he’s held more informational sessions for participants and worked to garner political support from lawmakers in Springfield. “Where’s the harm reduction? If you’re trying to bring people back into society, you have to reduce the harm that they’re going to be faced with.”

Former police commander Patty Casey, who oversaw the registry within the Chicago Police Department before retiring in 2021, agreed that the current system isn’t working as well as it could. Casey suggested that police add more registration sites to speed up processing times and raise public awareness about the registries. Currently, the Chicago Police Department doesn’t notify community members when someone on the registry moves into their neighborhood, which Casey says can undermine its public safety benefits. She also recommended that the Illinois Department of Corrections adopt a case-by-case approach for determining who should be on the registry and for how long. 

Despite these flaws, Casey maintained that abolishing the registry would be a “mistake” because it’s an “important tool” that allows police to solve crime. 

“I know that some registrants probably don’t reoffend, but for those that do, it becomes a useful tool,” Casey said. “When the type of crime that they’re registering for occurs, you can look at the persons nearby that are on registries, and it doesn’t mean the police are going to go kick down every door and interrupt their lives, but it does mean that the police will be able to pull up a picture of them and put them in a photo array to show a victim.” 

In an email to the Trace, an ISP spokesperson said the registry fosters public safety by allowing community members to identify registrants who “may be residing in or moving into a community, which allows for heightened awareness and monitoring,” while also providing victims with “geographical information to maintain their personal safety.”

While research on the link between public conviction registries and Chicago’s gun violence is limited, studies show that people who’ve served long prison sentences rarely return to prison for new violent crimes. 

“The question should be: How does this benefit anyone?” said Mapp, Chicago’s reentry director, who himself is also on the registry because he was convicted of a murder he was connected to via accountability theory. “Who does it benefit to know if someone is convicted of a murder, especially since the recidivism rate for those with murders is in the single digits?”

Moving forward and back

Quinn says he’s worked hard to build a positive life for himself. Though he admits he’s had some “slipups,” he started a business flipping houses. A recent trip to Dubai served as a reminder of the beautiful experiences life still has to offer. Through his community violence prevention work, he also mentors kids from his neighborhood. He emphasizes how quick gun violence often is, how it can alter a life in seconds. 

“Nobody never told me that five seconds can cost you the rest of your life,” Quinn said. “Pulling a gun out and shooting someone takes nothing but five seconds, less than a minute . . . look at how much time you lose for one minute.” 

Quinn is focused on making up for the time he lost with his eldest daughter. He longs for a future when his past is no longer a phantom that costs him jobs and relationships, when he can finally join his youngest daughter in her school activities, when the registry is behind him. 

After more than 17 years of registering, Quinn has now spent more time on the registry than he was physically incarcerated. His total time being involved with the prison system has now exceeded the 30-year sentence he was originally given. 

He frequently questions the morality of a justice system that recognizes that he likely wasn’t the shooter yet still punishes him for the rest of his life. Thinking about the years on the registry that lie ahead, Quinn often asks himself and anyone willing to listen: 

“When am I going to get my life back?”