When Lisa Creason was a 19-year-old single mom, she robbed a Subway shop. Or, at least, she tried to. One evening in 1993, she walked in without a plan, without an ultimatum, and demanded money from the cash register. When she was denied, she took off.

That spontaneous decision, which she said she made out of desperation to provide for her baby girl, would cost her for the next two decades.

But it never defined her.

On Thursday, Creason, now a 43-year-old mother of three and a nursing school graduate, stood tearfully beside Republican Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner. She watched as he signed a law that would give her the second chance she’d been working toward since she left prison.

Creason served just a year on a felony charge for attempted robbery, but in ways she couldn’t have known at the time, it turned out to be closer to a life sentence. The conviction would be on her permanent record, and by state law, it would bar her from work requiring a professional license.

It didn’t matter that after leaving jail, Creason volunteered to talk to at-risk youths, warning them about the repercussions of their actions. Or that she started a nonprofit to help kids who lost parents to gun violence after her fiance was killed by a stray bullet while sitting on their front stoop in 2002. Or that she did those things while holding down restaurant and cashier jobs to support her family.

In Illinois, about a quarter of all jobs require an occupational license, yet at least 118 of those licenses can be denied to people with a felony record, said Bryant Jackson-Green of the Illinois Policy Institute. That includes not only health-care work but also jobs in cosmetology and geology. Also on the list: lottery ticket agent, bingo conductor, dance hall operator and athletic trainer. 

More than 300,000 people are released from Illinois prisons in a given year. Nationally, close to 75 percent remain unemployed a year after they’re released. Nearly 50 percent return to prison within three years, Jackson-Green said.

“It’s hard enough to find work with a criminal record without the state and local government basically blocking you from doing a job,” Jackson-Green said. “You can’t keep them out of the job market and keep crime down. This is a no-brainer. We need to encourage more work and more employment after incarceration, not discourage it.”

She was at work at the nursing home on May 26 when she got a text to turn on the live-stream of the State House proceedings. She watched, surrounded by her co-workers, as her bill passed 71 to 40. Then she broke down in tears.

She cried again Thursday as she watched the governor put pen to paper and make that bill law, a law that will allow her to take her board exams and find a job as a nurse. The signing was held at Richland Community College, where she earned her nursing degree.

To read Colby Itkowitz article, please click here.