 Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn said Tuesday in Chicago that he would
announce later this week whether he will send pink slips to
thousands of state workers and close several state facilities,
including at least one prison.Quinn's statements came after a
recent Chicago Tribune report that said he was looking at shuttering
a prison, a juvenile detention center and homes for people with
mental illness and developmental disabilities.
"If the General Assembly appropriates less money, then everyone
has to adjust to that, so that's what happened this year. ... We
have to maintain our schools, maintain our basic public safety and
our health care, and you have to make reductions in order to make
that possible," he said.
Illinois' 27 prisons hold about 49,000 inmates, according to the
Illinois Department of Corrections. If Quinn closes one of the
state's smaller facilities, each of which holds about 1,200 inmates,
those prisoners would have to be housed in other facilities.
Prisons in the state initially were built to hold 33,373 inmates.
Corrections officials, however, switched how they determine that
number by counting the number of beds a prison can hold instead of
the number of cells. By doing so, the officials could show that the
facilities were technically not overcrowded.
Inmates have 34 square feet of living space, or slightly more
space that one finds in a typical bathroom, according to the state
Department of Corrections. Closing a prison could cause that square
footage to get even smaller by putting more prisoners in crowded
facilities.
John Maki, executive director of the John Howard Association of
Illinois, a prison watchdog group, has toured many of the prisons in
the state.
"I don't see how you close a facility without severely
overcrowding the system," Maki said. "They can keep on putting beds
in there, and if that's their yardstick, they have some more room to
go. But in terms of what these prisons were designed to hold,
they're way beyond that."
State Sen. John Jones, R-Mount Vernon, has two prisons in his
district and also is concerned about where prisoners would go. The
combination of more inmates in fewer cells with fewer guards creates
serious safety concerns for the remaining Department of Corrections
staff, Jones said.
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The governor said earlier this summer that the General Assembly
did not appropriate enough money to keep at least 12 state agencies
operating through the current fiscal year, which ends June 30.
What Quinn is billing as a way to cope with a budget he said is
inadequate could create more bills for the state, Jones said.
"This could just end up costing the state because not only might
the inmates sue the state, there are organizations out there that
could sue on (inmates') behalfs," he said.
For example, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered California in May to
decrease its prison population by 30,000 due to overcrowding. The
cash-strapped state has scrambled to figure out whom to move to
county facilities, whom to release early and which convicts need to
stay behind bars.
Additionally, these kind of decisions can have "unintended
consequences," said Maki.
The state's prison system is "held together by all these very
tenuous policies and laws," Maki said. "You don't want to tinker
with it too much; it could blow up."
Quinn's predecessor, former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, attempted to
shut down two state prisons -- Pontiac Correctional Center and
Vandalia Correctional Center -- but both plans stalled because of
public outrage and legislator opposition.
[Illinois
Statehouse News; By ANDREW THOMASON]
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