Pritzker creates new parole board post to ramp up domestic violence prevention training after killing of 11-year-old boy

Amid two exits from the Illinois Prisoner Review Board after the murder of an 11-year-old boy, Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Monday announced the appointment of an executive director who will help oversee board operations and provide members with additional domestic violence prevention training.

The appointment of James Montgomery, a former central Illinois mayor and public administrator, comes three weeks after chair Don Shelton and board member LeAnn Miller resigned. Miller oversaw the decision to release on parole Crosetti Brand, who then allegedly stabbed his ex-girlfriend and killed her son Jayden Perkins. Shelton announced his resignation hours after Miller.

Officials have struggled to explain why Brand, 37, was released from the Stateville Correctional Center on March 12 — a day before the attack — after he had been sent back to prison earlier this year for menacing the woman while on parole. The board did not say why they did not find Brand in violation of his parole, given Brand’s criminal record and his past experience with the woman.

Montgomery served as mayor of Taylorville from 1997 until 2005 — and most recently served as director of administrative services with the Suffolk County Sheriff’s department in Massachusetts.

The executive director position is newly created, and the governor’s office still plans to fill the vacancies left by Miller and Shelton. Montgomery’s appointment must still be approved by the Illinois Senate.

The executive director, whose salary would be $160,000 if confirmed, would be responsible for overseeing administrative board operations, including additional domestic violence prevention training and other equity-based training for board members, the governor’s office said. The goal is to reduce the workload placed on the chair.

Last month, Pritzker said Miller ultimately made “the correct decision in stepping down.”

“It is clear that evidence in this case was not given the careful consideration that victims of domestic violence deserve, and I am committed to ensuring additional safeguards and training are in place to prevent tragedies like this from happening again,” Pritzker said the day of Miller’s resignation.

The governor on April 1 told reporters he wants board members to receive enhanced domestic violence training “to make sure that this never happens again.”

Vickie Smith, president and CEO of the Illinois Coalition against Domestic Violence, said she is hopeful that board members will be better informed about the backgrounds of those with domestic violence or sexual assault histories.

“They may be in prison for one act of violence, but they may have a whole history of violence that has escalated over time — in personal relationships against children, against others, that are somehow connected to some personal relationship that they had,” Smith said. “Training on domestic violence is nice. It’s helpful. But really understanding a pattern that someone has of being abusive and in the many ways that that might occur, whether there’s a clear-cut case against a particular person or not, I think would be very helpful.”

Senate Republicans are pushing for reforms to the board, including a requirement for appointees to have served at least 20 cumulative years in the criminal justice system as a prosecutor, a criminal defense attorney, a judge, a probation officer or a public defender.

They also want enhanced criminal penalties for those violating a protection order — raising a first-time violation from a misdemeanor to a Class 4 felony. Republicans also want a written public notice issued within 24 hours when a decision is made to release someone who has violated the conditions of their mandatory supervised release.

Beyond the criminal enhancement, the governor’s office has said much of what Republicans are proposing is already “standard practice.”

Illinois Senate Republican Leader John Curran, R-Downers Grove, said he welcomed any additions to the board to improve public safety but said, “a new staff position is not going to make up for an activist Governor appointing unqualified board members who operate with little to no transparency.”

“Structural reforms such as raising the experience standards for PRB Board Members, increasing transparency requirements for hearings, and timely release notification for crime victims and their families, are still desperately needed to improve public safety,” Curran said.