There are few moments in life more vulnerable than the days after losing someone you love. Families are grieving, exhausted and asked to place extraordinary trust in strangers whose duty is sacred: to care for a loved one’s remains with dignity.

That trust should never be betrayed. Yet in Illinois, families have encountered repeated failures in a system that is supposed to protect them. They deserve to know why those failures were allowed to happen and what must change so no other family is put through the same pain.

When my office shut down Heights Crematory in 2025, we documented our findings and urged, on the record and by name, that the people responsible be investigated and stopped. Fifteen months later, 56 decomposing bodies were found at their South Chicago Chapel.

I am appalled by what these families have endured. Every family whose loved one was in that building deserves justice. They also deserve a clear explanation of why the system failed them again.

Illinois has a death care business regulatory structure that is inherently flawed. My office of the comptroller regulates crematories and oversees preneed sales of funeral services and merchandise. The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation licenses funeral directors and embalmers.

But the physical funeral home — the place where a loved one’s remains may be held — is not regulated by any state agency. That is not a gap. That is a chasm. And people with no conscience have walked right through it.

Maggots, rat feces and a body in a bathroom: Records detail decrepit conditions at South Side funeral home

We have made recent progress, yet I am heartbroken that it has not come fast enough to prevent more families from being harmed. In 2023, my office led the first major overhaul of the Crematory Regulation Act since 1993, requiring for the first time that human remains be refrigerated and that crematory operators undergo regular education, license renewal and meaningful background checks.

This spring, I pushed for legislation that passed unanimously in both chambers. Beginning Jan. 1, the law will allow my office to immediately suspend a crematory license when public safety demands it and to inspect premises and records upon complaint. Under the new law, crematories will be required to notify my office and the local coroner if remains have not been cremated within 30 days of delivery.

These are measurable steps. They are not enough. I have done everything within my authority. The General Assembly must act on three essential reforms as soon as this veto session to protect Illinoisans when we are at our most vulnerable.

First, Illinois must consolidate death care regulation under a single central state agency or independent commission, as is the case in other states. The split between the comptroller and IDFPR is an inherently flawed system that allows bad actors to fall through the cracks, and they have.

One agency. One chain of accountability. No more finger-pointing between departments while families wait for answers.

Second, it’s time for a civilian oversight board with real authority, and that board must include a representative of families who have been directly harmed by death care misconduct. These families have been failed by the regulatory system once already. They deserve a permanent seat at the table where reforms are designed and enforced. Government bodies should have more power to oversee this industry and accountability to the people most affected by its failures.

Third — and I want to be absolutely clear — Illinois must make the mishandling of human remains a Class 3 felony, at minimum. Right now, this form of neglect is not a criminal offense. A person can disregard the remains of dozens of families, evade repeated warnings from state regulators and still face no criminal charges under Illinois law. That must change.

The owners of South Chicago Chapel, Clark and Johanna Morgan, have not been charged with a crime. Not one. The Illinois General Assembly must fix this. Mishandling human remains should be a felony with real prison time. Pass it and enforce it. Without criminal consequences, operators who profit from desecrating the dead have nothing to fear. A $10,000 fine is not a deterrent. We will not deter this conduct until we treat it with the full gravity it deserves under the law.

Accountability in the death care business is long overdue. The families whose loved ones were left to decompose in a funeral home on Chicago’s Far South Side did not fail their loved ones. The inherently flawed system failed them.

We must resolve to fix that, not with another interagency memo, but with state law, with civilian oversight and with consequences that make any operator think twice before they ever treat a human being’s remains with anything less than the full dignity they deserve.

Susana Mendoza has served as Illinois comptroller since 2017.

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