Head of Chicago-based legal aid group retires after decades with the nonprofit

CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) — The head of the Uptown People’s Law Center (UPLC) is retiring after four-and-a-half decades with the nonprofit, which provides legal help to prisoners and the poor.

Alan Mills joined the UPLC as a law student intern and became the group’s executive director 10 years ago.

“Many of our prisons are now much older and deteriorating than they were at the time that I started this work, so in some ways, things have gotten worse,” Mills said. “I do think, however, that but for our work, things would be even worse than they are, and some things have improved.”

He credited one of the center’s class action suits with helping bring changes to how state prisons treat people with mental illness.

“While it is nowhere near where mental health care should be, it is no longer true that all we do is put people in solitary and give them medication,” Mills said. “Everybody has a treatment plan, and some people are actually doing quite well. Many are not, but some people are.”

Those kinds of suits are possible, he said, thanks in part to the state giving more money for civil legal aid. Judgements from those suits have also helped the center grow from a staff of four and a budget of roughly $260,000 — to 21 people and $2 million.

As Mills’ time at the center began in the 1980s, the state was in the midst of an explosion in its prison population, which has since declined to about 30,000 people.

“When we were at 50,000 people, it meant that there was literally not a bed anywhere in the state,” he told WBBM. “We were housing people in warehouses; we were housing people in basements; we were housing people in a number of spots that were never intended for human habitation.”

The center also defends people who are being evicted and have been denied Social Security disability.

It has hired a firm to conduct the search for Mills’ replacement.

After his official retirement, Mills said he’ll continue to help with the center’s legal challenges, including four class action suits over how the state treats inmates with mental illness, the use of solitary confinement and more.

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