It is a wet, dreary day in Chicago when a group of thirty-five people gather at Precious Blood Church on the southwest side of Chicago to make the long drive to Menard Correctional Center. The prison is at the southern end of the state, a six- or seven-hour drive from Chicago, depending on traffic.

Julie Anderson has made the trip, on her own, with a friend or with her husband, five times a month — the maximum number of visits a prisoner is allowed — every month for the past twenty years. Her son Eric was fifteen when he was convicted of a double homicide and given a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

“I never knew my life was going to be like this,” Julie tells me. “What I once thought of the criminal justice system has completely changed. I used to believe in it — I don’t anymore.”