* WGLT…

The final report from a consulting firm hired by the state has found three of Illinois’ 27 prison facilities, including the Pontiac and Logan correctional centers, approaching “inoperable,” and a list of more than $2.5 billion in overdue repairs in aging institutions across the state.

CGL Companies warns in the report initially released in May that the existing price tag of “deferred maintenance” at Illinois prisons could double in five years if unaddressed. Significant deterioration was reported at all prisons, with only three of 27 prisons ranked in the “fully operational range,” and the remainder in the “impaired operation range.” Pontiac, Logan and Joliet’s Stateville were categorized as nearly inoperable.

About 9,600 prisoners, or 20% of the state’s prison population, are still housed in prisons dating back to the 1800s. Facilities constructed between 1970 and 2000 house 30,486 prisoners, about 65% of the overall prison census.

The report notes Pontiac’s history as the second oldest prison in the state, with two cellhouses built in 1892 when the facility served as the State Reformatory for Youth. With $235 million in needed repairs, the Livingston County prison is near the top of the list for deferred maintenance. Pontiac also has the highest operational cost of $65,800 per inmate, double the agency’s average, according to the report.

* Recommendations in the CGL report…

• Address Deferred Maintenance Backlog. Without significant progress in addressing existing deferred maintenance, the deterioration of IDOC physical plant will accelerate, impacting its ability to safely manage its facilities and meet its objectives. At nearly every correctional facility, IDOC’s mission and goals as well as safety and security are negatively impacted by its worsening conditions. A substantial increase in capital funding will be needed to avert future facility crises.

• Replace the Dixon Psychiatric Unit: The Dixon Psychiatric Unit (DPU) does not effectively support the treatment and supervision of IDOC’s most difficult to manage and vulnerable population. The DPU’s X-House design is nearly identical to the facilities IDOC opened in the 1980’s and 1990’s to house general population, medium security incarcerated males. This unit should be replaced with a purpose-built design that provides appropriate housing for a severe mental health population along with adequate treatment and staff space in a design that creates a supportive environment. Estimated Cost in today’s dollars to build a 215 bed Secure Psychiatric Unit: $58,634,249 - $72,271,582 depending on location.

• Add Mental Health Treatment/Staff Spaces across IDOC: The lack of appropriate space for mental health professionals and mental health treatment is a substantial concern and impedes IDOC’s abilities to meet its operational goals. The department’s existing facilities were never built to manage the size of the existing mental health caseload or provide office and treatment space. The result has been that IDOC has had to make do with whatever space it could find, even at the detriment of other services. Many health care units were packed with staff and valuable exam rooms, x-ray rooms and other areas had been converted to mental health offices. […]

• Consider Reducing Pontiac’s Capacity. Given its age, outdated/inefficient design, extensive physical plant needs, high cost to operate, and difficulty in recruiting and retaining staff, consideration should be given to reducing Pontiac Correctional Center’s capacity. During the course of this master planning effort, the population at Pontiac was reduced due to its high staff vacancy rate through the closure of its Medium Security Unit (442 beds). That left an August 2022 rated capacity of 778.
From a purely fiscal standpoint, Pontiac remains the most expensive facility in the state to operate on an annual basis with an annual per capita cost over $65,000 and has $235 million in deferred maintenance. Given these issues, and the excess male maximum security capacity in the system, additional capacity could be taken offline reducing agency expenses. This should improve facility security and allow Pontiac to focus its resources on the remaining population and their service needs.

Click here to read the full report.

* WBEZ in July…

While the state-commissioned report focused on infrastructure issues, it also highlighted other problems that make the situation even more urgent — an elderly prison population and extreme short staffing, with around a quarter of positions vacant.

According to the report, the staffing crisis can be blamed in part on the remote, rural location of some prisons.

In September 2022, the executive director of the union for prison workers sent a letter to the head of the Department of Corrections warning that prisons were dangerously short staffed, according to documents obtained by WBEZ. She reported officers were “working to the point of exhaustion — 16 hours straight is all too common” and employees were suffering both mental and physical trauma, including some who had died by suicide.

Almost every aspect of the prison system is impacted by the extreme short staffing. There isn’t enough staff to transport people to outside healthcare appointments. Incarcerated people are left in their cells, unable to go to the dining hall for meals or outside for recreation because there is not enough security staff. One facility has about 40% of its guard positions unfilled.

* In August, Governor Pritzker defended keeping the prisons open…

Brian Mackey: I talk to advocates who say, as you pointed out, the Department of Corrections population peaked at more than 49,000 individuals 10 years ago. Now, it’s fewer than 30,000 this spring. It was even lower than that in the pandemic. We could have closed several prisons, many units within prison facilities. As you said, some of which date back to the 1800s. An advocate I was speaking to said, it doesn’t seem all that complicated, right? Population’s down, staffing is down, $2.5 billion is needed to fix these facilities that are unsafe and inhumane. Why not close them down?

Governor Pritzker: If you assumed that every prisoner was like every other prisoner? Yes, it sounds like a reasonable focus that we would just simply — let’s close some and push people into others. And we’ll have a perfect system. The reality is that we have a lot of different kinds, we have people who are in maximum security with people who are in minimum security, you know, we have facilities that are made more for older populations, we have women’s facilities. It’s just not as easy as I think people would like to think that it is, number one. Number two, we have to think a lot about location. Where are these prisons located across our state? Because as we’ve seen in our healthcare system in, for example, psychiatric hospitals; our need for nurses in developmental disabilities hospitals, and so on. We can’t find the kind of workers that we’re looking for in some parts of the state. That’s not a knock on anything, it’s just that when you get more rural, there are fewer people to choose from; there maybe are fewer people that got the kind of specific training that you need there. And it’s true in in our corrections facilities, too. So I think this has all got to be a public conversation. And it’s one that I think is accelerated by the study that we commissioned, and it’s now been delivered that everybody can read. […]

Brian Mackey: How do we get from here to there? How do we get to you’re making a future budget proposal that says we should have X fewer facilities? We’ve had the public conversation, how do we get from this study to there?

Governor Pritzker: Well, again, you’re assuming fewer facilities — I don’t know if that’s the right answer. I think there’s an argument to be made that having facilities that are less populated within a facility is one of the answers. Maybe we have facilities — the same number of facilities and fewer prisoners. In each one, again, we can talk about the the financial implications for the state of all of that, and we can talk about the implications for the human rights of the people who are incarcerated, not to mention the safety of the workers at a facility. I want the legislature to hold hearings about it, I think they should. And I want advocates on both sides to speak up — including, for example, corrections officers, who know their facilities well and know what works well. I think everybody should be heard here.