Housing at Stateville Correctional Center is “not suitable for any 21st century correctional center.” Logan Correctional Center is “inefficient, ineffective, and unsuitable for any population.”
Prison
An independent report identified Illinois’ Stateville and Logan prisons as outdated and in need of costly repairs.
A new bill in the General Assembly would seek to remove the roughly $200,000 cap on payments to exonerees that maxes out at the 14-year mark, replacing it with a payout of $50,000 per year, capped at just over $2 million.
Cook County Jail provides medications for opioid use disorder to incarcerated people. Where frustration comes from advocates — and local officials — is the limitations of the Illinois Department of Corrections’ medication programming in prisons.
The West Side gallery is in line with work the Prison + Neighborhood Arts Project has been doing for over a decade: connecting teaching artists and scholars to incarcerated students through classes, workshops and lectures.
The Illinois Department of Corrections has awarded a new contract to the controversial Wexford Health Sources, the same private health care provider that’s been handling medical care in the state’s prison system since 2011.
In December, Jimmy Soto saw the sunrise over Lake Michigan for the first time in 42 years. He is now discovering a completely different world from the one he left.
The Illinois secretary of state’s office, which oversees a number of library grant programs, said the new law does apply to prison libraries as they are eligible for grants.
The Franklin County Juvenile Detention Center abruptly closed on Dec. 31. The judge who ordered the closure said staffing shortages made it difficult to meet state standards for caring for youth in custody.
Charles Collins, 49, was sentenced to life in prison without parole in relation to a 2010 charge for cocaine possession with intent to sell. It was his third felony, making him eligible for an enhanced sentence under the state’s habitual criminal, or “three-strikes,” law.
Darien Harris had served more than 12 years of his 76-year sentence before prosecutors decided not to move forward with their case and dropped the charges against him on Tuesday.
Last week, the Northwestern Prison Education Program graduated its first cohort of students. The graduates are the first in the country to earn bachelor’s degrees from a top 10 university while incarcerated.
The inmate, Michael Johnson, argued that the deprivation of yard time – in the absence of a true security justification – violated the Constitution’s ban on cruel and inhumane punishment.
State audits point to troubling conditions in juvenile detention centers, but no agency has strong enough oversight to bring about change.
More than 3,300 wrongfully convicted people have been exonerated in the U.S. since 1989, according to the University of Michigan’s National Registry of Exonerations. That time on the inside adds up to more than 30,000 years unjustly spent in prison for many of those people.
For the last two years, Illinois has had a law that allows people who are in prison and are dying of a terminal illness or are physically disabled the opportunity to petition for compassionate release. However, few of the releases are granted.