Latest Post | Last 10 Posts | Archives
Previous Post: “Crickets” from the southern Illinois news media
Next Post: COVID-19 roundup
Posted in:
* CNI..
To Illinois prisoners, commissary is more than candy bars, shaving cream and socks. It represents normalcy and choice.
“It’s everything to them,” said Melly Rios, whose husband is in Stateville Correctional Center serving 45 years for murder.
A recent report from the John Howard Association, a prison watchdog group, detailed widespread supply shortages at Illinois Department of Corrections prison commissaries around the state. Soap, deodorant, detergent, writing materials, thermal shirts, socks, underwear and canned meat and noodles are all in short supply.
“It’s not like luxury items like candy bars or the hot new Christmas gift. These commissaries provide items that are basic necessities,” said Alan Mills, Executive Director of the Uptown People’s Law Center. Mills has litigated prisoner civil rights cases for more than 40 years.
* WUIS…
A decade after Illinois Department of Corrections inmate Anthony Rodesky began developing the blisters that would eventually lead to a below-the-knee leg amputation, a federal jury in Peoria last week awarded him $400,000, finding the state violated the Americans with Disabilities Act in its treatment of Rodesky’s type 1 diabetes.
The jury did not, however, side with Rodesky in his Eighth Amendment claims of “deliberate indifference to serious medical need” — a long-held interpretation of constitutionally prohibited “cruel and unusual punishment — against the warden of Pontiac Correctional Center, where Rodesky’s condition deteriorated, culminating in his 2015 leg amputation.
Alan Mills of the Uptown People’s Law Center, which represented Rodeksy in the case, called the jury award “extraordinarily satisfying…quite the vindication of what he’s been through for really a decade.”
But Mills said Rodesky’s path to a $400,000 jury award is emblematic of longstanding issues in the Department of Corrections, which is under a three-year-old consent decree for inadequate medical treatment for prisoners — a consent decree for which a federal monitor has repeatedly said isn’t being followed — along with a handful of settlements in other massive suits requiring institutional change within the department.
“The outcome [in Rodesky’s case] was particularly egregious but…unfortunately, the care is also typical,” Mills said. “People shouldn’t lose their legs because of a blister. And that’s what happened here. And it shows not only, I think, the poverty of medical care that’s being provided, but also it shows just how little the Department of Corrections does to deal with people who have a disability.”
* Meanwhile, from the AP…
Illinois courts are taking steps toward better understanding mental illness and its growing impact on the judicial system, which state Supreme Court Justice Anne Burke said Tuesday too often lacks compassion, treats mental disorders as a crime and skirts alternatives to jail.
Burke told reporters that her “call to action” came in response to a report her committee issued last year after months of study. It’s part of a national effort to review courts’ interactions with defendants or litigants who deal with mental health issues and so-called co-occurring disorders such as substance abuse.
“The prevalence of mental illness and co-occurring disorders has been greatly impacting our nation, our states and our communities and has had a disproportionate effect on our courts,” said Burke, adding that the courtroom’s approach to mental illness should be one of “compassion and hope.”
Research by the National Center for State Courts-led initiative found that defendants with a serious mental illness remain longer in jail than others facing similar charges, that access to appropriate health care is rare or often unavailable, and that courts rely too heavily on competency to stand trial, which leaves too many defendants waiting in jail for “restoration.”
posted by Rich Miller
Wednesday, Dec 8, 21 @ 12:09 pm
Sorry, comments are closed at this time.
Previous Post: “Crickets” from the southern Illinois news media
Next Post: COVID-19 roundup
WordPress Mobile Edition available at alexking.org.
powered by WordPress.
We are not correcting anything at the Department of Corrections.
Comment by Hamlet on the Potomac Wednesday, Dec 8, 21 @ 1:00 pm
Agencies like Corrections and DCFS really demonstrate how inhumane we’re all willing to be if the solution requires paying 6% instead of 5% or taxing federally taxed retirement.
Working at Corrections has a tendency to negatively impact the lives of those public servants too, even if they’re not willing to acknowledge it themselves.
Comment by Candy Dogood Wednesday, Dec 8, 21 @ 1:36 pm
Corrections is an easy target. The fact of the matter is that Governor after Governor and General Assembly after General Assembly have woefully underfunded the correctional system for medical and mental health care of offenders (amongst many other things as well). Until the funding and staffing challenges in this system get solved, improvement is unlikely.
Comment by Magic Dragon Wednesday, Dec 8, 21 @ 1:52 pm
What happens behind prison walls, in terms of medical mis-treatment, would cause any decent person nightmares.
Prisons are a window.
Comment by Dotnonymous Wednesday, Dec 8, 21 @ 2:01 pm
John Howard is 100% correct about the vendor issue. That is when the commissary shortages began. Self-inflicted issue by DOC. A lot of the blame falls at the feet of a Rauner holdover in the DOC administration.
Comment by Retired Doc Wednesday, Dec 8, 21 @ 2:23 pm
Who owns Keefe?
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2016/07/05/commissary-merger/
Comment by Dotnonymous Wednesday, Dec 8, 21 @ 2:37 pm
Funny, I haven’t noticed soap and basic hygiene product shortages in my local grocery store.
Comment by OneMan Wednesday, Dec 8, 21 @ 4:06 pm
so IDOC cannot stock commissary because of covid and supply issues, it portrayed that they cannot get these items if they wanted. Then how was it able to procure items to give for free as care packages then?
Comment by makesense Wednesday, Dec 8, 21 @ 8:43 pm
Articles like this make me glad I left corrections. When I left, the guidelines for what was considered SMI were taking shape. Inmates abused the SMI guidelines, as well as the PREA hotline on a daily basis. I could have a conversation with an inmate just as well as anyone I know who is not SMI, then find out the inmate who can quote the nightly news and sports statistics is considered SMI so the disciplinary reports he received would be treated with kid gloves. Leaving corrections was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
Comment by Orion Wednesday, Dec 8, 21 @ 9:45 pm
===Governor after Governor and General Assembly after General Assembly===
That’s an awfully wordy way to say “the people of Illinois.”
DOC’s issues are decades in the making. Trying to hang this on the people that we’ve elected for decades is some really twisted passing the buck. It’s bad form to blame them for doing what we elected them to do.
=== A lot of the blame falls at the feet of a Rauner holdover in the DOC administration===
There’s Rauner hold overs in every agency. Pritzker has certainly done a great job of keeping people on the payroll who actively oppose his administrations goals and openly mock him and his agenda in the work place.
Perhaps his staff is too blind to this problem, or perhaps they just believe the lies or in some cases their directors are so absent from the day to day running of the organization that they have no idea it’s going on.
Comment by Candy Dogood Wednesday, Dec 8, 21 @ 10:15 pm
Another knock-on effect of our war-on-drugs-induced over-incarcerated country. We assume that those behind bars are animals, and then we are shocked when they return as such. History will not judge us kindly.
Comment by 47th and Lake Park Thursday, Dec 9, 21 @ 3:18 pm