Lane repeated the same warning in 1986 and 1987 as well, even conducting a series of prison surveys that documented the problems of overcrowding and advocated for changes. Between 1988 and 1994, the state’s prison population rose by 73.3 percent, further worsening an already troublesome situation.
In the past, when the state had too many prisoners, it would simply build more prisons. Between 1980 and 2004, Illinois opened 21 prisons, adding 20,318 beds to the system’s statewide capacity. But budget problems have curtailed that strategy, as evidenced by the underutilization of Thomson Correctional Center, a 1,600-bed facility that has sat nearly empty due to underfunding since completion in 2001.
When Gov. Pat Quinn announced in December a proposal to sell the Thomson prison to the federal government, he cited overcrowding in the federal prisons as a good reason to unload the nearly-new, state-of-the-art facility.
But Anders Lindall, spokesman for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Council 31, points out that Thomson is mostly unused while most other state prisons are over capacity.
“We think the state Department of Corrections should be more concerned with the state Department of Corrections and the state prisons,” he says. “Overcrowding in the state prisons is exactly what Thomson was built to relieve.”
Responding to the question of whether overcrowding is a concern, IDOC spokeswoman Januari Smith said the department “has adequate bed space for the current population.”
“The IDOC population has remained stable over the past decade,” she says, “and there is no expectation that it will increase under current criminal justice system practices.”
True, the population has stabilized from its massive growth in the late ’80s and early ’90s, but bed space is hardly the only issue when it comes to overcrowding, and the recent halt to early release programs in Illinois may cause the population to increase once more. Increased costs, reduced prison effectiveness and violence seem to go hand-in-hand with overcrowding, and the correctional officers who patrol state prisons say circumstances are getting worse.
Side-effects may include…
Steve Slocum, president of AFSCME Local 46 at the East Moline Correctional Center, says the guards he represents are racking up overtime hours because of understaffing. There are not enough officers to watch all of the inmates, Slocum says, forcing the guards to collectively put in 200 to 300 hours of overtime per week on each of the prison’s three shifts.
“There’s just no way we can cover it,” Slocum says. “We’ve got multiple posts on overtime on a daily basis for each shift. Sometimes it is mandatory, sometimes it is voluntary. We just did a staffing analysis last week, and the state determined that we are short 35 correctional officers. We say we’re down even more than that.”
That much overtime costs the state more money for wages in the short term, as well as larger pension payouts in the long term.
“There’s so much overtime that these guys are padding their retirements,” Slocum says. “You’re paying retirement on a correctional officer who would normally make $55,000 a year, but because of overtime you’re going to end up paying them retirement for $90,000 to $100,000 per year.”
Januari Smith at IDOC says the department has hired nearly 500 additional correctional officers since July 2009 to address overtime costs.
“We are working to increase staff and decrease overtime department wide,” she says.
Working so much overtime is expensive, but it is also dangerous.
“Let’s face it, when you’re working double shift after double shift, you’re not alert. You can’t be,” Slocum says. “It’s not safe for you or for the inmates because you’re not attentive. You can’t be after a certain point.”
Slocum says a recent rash of violence in Illinois prisons shows the problem is getting worse. On Dec. 14, 2009, an inmate at Pinckneyville Correctional Center took an employee of the prison library hostage for seven hours, and a fight at Illinois River Correctional Center in Canton left one guard with a broken eye socket.
“I’ve been in the Department of Corrections for 24 years, and in the last two years, the couple of hostage situations are probably more than I’ve seen in the previous 15 to 20 years,” Slocum says. “That’s not to mention staff assaults and that stuff; they’re also going to increase.”
However, Smith disputes that notion, instead saying incidents of violence in Illinois prisons are actually down.
“The first priority of IDOC is safety and security of its staff and inmates,” she says. “IDOC staff do a job that most people would not and could not do.”
AFSCME also says overcrowding undermines efforts at Sheridan Correctional Center, a facility that, according to IDOC, is totally dedicated to substance abuse treatment. Anders Lindall says 300 general population inmates sent to Sheridan last year are negating reform efforts there.
“Sheridan works on the model of the therapeutic community. The idea is totally immersive, so everyone in the facility is part of the program,” Lindall says. “Inmates are taught skills and techniques for working with one another, a lot of self-policing things, supporting one another and keeping one another in line with the program. But now, at work, in the yard, at meals, practically everywhere in the facility, they’re being exposed to general population inmates who may not be in that mindset and certainly have not received the counseling and training to have those techniques. The impact of that has been to jeopardize the success of that program, because you don’t have that therapeutic community anymore. It’s not immersive.”
Money and drugs Overcrowding in Illinois prisons is the byproduct of a few factors. Some are relatively simple: the state’s underfunding of Thomson Correctional Center prevents operating the prison at capacity, meaning other prisons continue to overflow with inmates that could be moved to Thomson. But there are other, more complicated factors that can’t be solved with a budget bill.
With the growth of the illegal drug industry has come increased crime, substance abuse and associated law enforcement costs – not to mention the heavy toll on society. In response, lawmakers nationwide adopted a “tough on crime” stance that beefed up laws and put more people behind bars. From the 1971 Illinois Controlled Substances Act and Cannabis Control Act to the 2005 Illinois’ Methamphetamine Control and Community Protection Act, state lawmakers have passed law after law to create new crimes, lengthen prison sentences and stiffen parole conditions.
“...it’s going to take the deaths of God-knows-how-many people to get something done in the Department of Corrections.”
As a result of that stance – or in spite of it, depending on whom you ask – the crime rate in Illinois has dropped in recent years. Since the early 1990s, the state’s reported crime rate has seen a steady decline – from more than 6,000 incidents per 100,000 people in 1990 to about 3,500 in 2007, according to the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority. And yet, the state’s prison population has risen from 27,516 in 1990 to about 46,000 currently, according to IDOC numbers.
Why did the prison population rise while crime went down? Chicago civic group Chicago Metropolis 2020 says the answer is in the way crimes and prisoners are counted, but that explanation only further illustrates the problem. The group released a study explaining that nonviolent drug offenses are not counted in the state’s reported crimes index, but the prisoners who committed those offenses are counted in the prison population. The difference between the two figures illustrates the large role nonviolent drug offenders play in the burgeoning prison population.
“In 2005, 40 percent of all prison admissions in Illinois were for drug-related crimes, up from 8 percent in 1985,” says Chicago Metropolis 2020. “Not all drug offenses are nonviolent, especially if linked to gang activity or if they represent a plea bargain from a more serious charge. However, more than half of Illinois drug prison sentences are for simple possession of small amounts of drugs. Holding those convicted of nonviolent drug offenses in prison costs Illinois taxpayers an estimated $240 million a year.”
Public worries about early release programs have also fueled overcrowding, according to a 2009 report from the Illinois Taxpayer Action board.
“In 1983, the state discontinued a policy of ‘forced release’ which had been instituted in 1979 to control the prison population,” the board wrote. “Under forced release, a significant number of offenders were released from prison prior to serving their full sentences, a practice which had effectively slowed the growth of the prison population. In the 10 years after the policy was repealed, the prison population more than doubled.”
The recent flap over the early release program halted in December 2009 is a repeat of the public outcry in the early ’80s that resulted in the stoppage of the previous release program and a larger prison population. With the most recent early release program possibly on the chopping block, the inmate population could increase again.
Once prisoners are released, they are subject to Illinois’ parole system, intended to monitor felons and provide access to rehabilitation resources. But the system is often too rigid, says Pete Baroni, director of the CLEAR Initiative, a group of criminal law experts and legislators revamping the Illinois Criminal Code. Illinois has an estimated 51.3 percent recidivism rate and 33,000 parolees, meaning that about 17,000 released inmates will return to prison. Baroni says it’s partly because parolees are often scooped back into prison for technical violations of parole.
“One of the conditions of being on parole is you can’t associate with other convicted felons,” he points out. “But there are some neighborhoods in Chicago where the percentage of felons is so high, you can’t walk down the street to buy a loaf of bread without running into a felon. You can be put back in prison just for that.”
That may sound extreme, but it shows how easy it is to violate parole, whether by committing another crime, hanging with the wrong crowd or simply forgetting to update an address. Baroni also says parolees often don't receive the rehabilitation they need to reintegrate into society.
“You’ve got a guy leaving prison, going back to the same neighborhood, with the same pressures as before,” Baroni says. “He’s going to run into the same friends, who may be dealing drugs or committing other crimes, and so this guy falls into the same patterns. … We have to deal with this problem, or they’re just going to keep going back to prison.”
But Januari Smith says many inmates aren’t in prison long enough to receive rehabilitation services.
“When low-level, nonviolent offenders are sent to prison for six months or less, they are not provided with the necessary programming
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