Katrina Baugh

Katrina Baugh resides in Wheaton, IL with her husband where they run a transitional housing program for formerly incarcerated folks called Radical Hospitality Ministries. They founded this non-profit in 2020 when all volunteers and loved ones were kept out of the prisons because of the pandemic. It was this prohibition from entering carceral facilities across the country that led to the dissolution of the first non-profit Katrina founded, the Justice Debate League.

Beginning in 2016, Katrina started coaching debate teams in juvenile and adult prisons in Illinois before receiving calls asking for the same thing to happen in prisons nationwide. The Justice Debate League expanded operations to train debate coaches across the US in how to set up and run successful debate teams behind bars. Of all the teams the Justice Debate League was running, the team Katrina was coaching in the now-condemned Stateville Correctional Center was especially driven and brilliant. The team worked together to pull off a public debate in the prison auditorium which was attended by two dozen Illinois state legislators. During the debate, the members of the team argued against one another about the best way to bring a parole system back to the state of Illinois. Many legislators learned for the first time that Illinois does not have a parole system. Some of them even picked up the bill the team wrote and filed it in Springfield. Katrina was promptly banned from all prisons in the state.

This kicked off Katrina’s new career in advocacy, community organizing and lobbying. She began to work with Parole Illinois, the non-profit which was founded by members of the Stateville Debate Team after the success of their public debate. She pushed their legislation forward, connected with the team members’ loved ones on the outside and brought them into meetings with legislators, as that was something she could no longer do for her students.

Since that time, Katrina has trained as restorative justice practitioner and spent three years working as a community organizer with The People’s Lobby. There she led the western suburban push to protect the Pretrial Fairness Act, leading to Illinois becoming the first state to end the use of money bond. She coordinated the court-watching campaigns in three counties before and after the law’s implementation to first prove the need for the law and then its success. She is ready to take on the next big challenge in transforming the criminal justice system!

Katrina could not be more thrilled to join FAMM’s team now and become a small part of the powerful force that is deeply committed to second chances, including parole for her students, and that shares her driving belief that all people are worthy of humane treatment.