Carol O. and Eddie G. live at the Logan Correctional Center in Lincoln, a predominantly male prison turned co-ed to relieve overcrowding at the state's only penitentiary for women. Both are repeat offenders: Eddie is serving his sixth term in Illinois' prison system, this time for burglary; Carol is serving her fifth term, this time for forgery. Both are 41 years old and both went to prison the first time at 17. She has seven children, and he has one six-year-old son. Neither has a high school diploma. She is white and calls Danville home. He is black and comes from the south side of Chicago. Unemployed, she wants to be a beautician. A self-professed "gang elder," he works part-time fixing tires for semi-trailers on the interstates. Both claim to be innocent, this time, victims of a system that they say only helps them return to the "inside," not live on the "outside."

Politicians play to the opinion of a majority of the public, who when they think about prisons at all, have little sympathy for the people who populate them

Howard A. Peters III, director of the Illinois Department of Corrections, says he wants to change that. In what represents a philosophical sea change for corrections, Peters says he want his agency to live up to its name. "We feel it is our obligation ... to return people so they are not any worse than when they came [to prison], and it is our goal to do things that will make them better citizens." After two years at the head of Illinois' penal system, Peters can claim modest progress in fulfilling the new mission of returning people to society better able to cope with it than when they entered the prison system.

However, forces beyond the prison walls and largely beyond his control — mainly those that determine how much money he can spend on programs to achieve his goals — may conspire to minimize what success he can expect to achieve. Legislators like to appropriate money for new prisons because they create short-term construction jobs and several hundred permanent jobs per institution. They find it more difficult to give money for programs because it's hard to make a good stump speech out of support for inmates. Politicians play to the opinion of a majority of the public, who when they think about prisons at all, have little sympathy for the people who populate them.

Those forces are formidable. So are the forces in trying to change the learned behavior of thousands of adults. However, in the opinion of most people who scrutinize the Department of Corrections, the state has a director who is an innovative, creative thinker and who has an alternative vision of prisons and criminal justice. What Peters needs to make his vision reality is to convince those external forces to support his internal changes to make prisons "corrective." People who know Peters say he has the ability to make it happen.

Peters knows the challenge of the mission he's undertaken. He has struggled, and won, against long odds most of his life. The first African American to lead the Department of Corrections, Peters was born in Memphis, Tenn., 46 years ago and raised in the segregated South of the 1950s and '60s. He lived for several years in public housing projects and credits his mother for giving him a vision of success. "My brothers and sisters and I didn't have any idea where we were going to get the money to go to college," says Peters. "But we grew up knowing we were going to go, and that goal gave us a certain power to stay out of trouble." Described by associates as a "quick-learner" who can process "voluminous" amounts of information, Peters traces his ability to learn to a second grade teacher. Having moved to a new neighborhood, he says he was unable to read at the same level as his classmates. His teacher taught him how to absorb and use what he heard

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Howard A. Peters III, director of the Illinois Department of Corrections

until his visual learning skills improved. Like so many of the inmates now under his control, Peters says he could have been left behind. Instead, he succeeded in school, earning a bachelor's degree from Tennessee State University and a master's degree from Southern Illinois University. He entered the Illinois Department of Corrections in 1971 as an intern, then joined the staff of the juvenile facility at St. Charles. In his 22 years with the department, he has served at several levels of management in minimum-, medium- and maximum-security institutions. When appointed director in March 1991, Peters was warden at Pontiac Correctional Center, which houses 2,000 maximum-security inmates in one of the meanest state prisons. Peters' years of experience in the department was a determining factor in his appointment as director, says Gov. Jim Edgar. "I wanted someone who knew the system," he says. "[Peters] is someone who understands the thinking of the inmates because he's held various roles in the correctional system." Edgar says he feels Peters' performance so far has proven that he can handle a prison system made potentially explosive by overcrowding. "We know that [the Department of Corrections] is a time bomb, that with the overcrowding, things can explode in a prison," says the governor. But Edgar says Peters has been more than just someone who knows how corrections works and who has been able to hold things together. "He's also someone who has a very visionary approach to dealing with that department," says Edgar. "He understands the short-term problems but also is looking for long-term solutions."

Prison overcrowding is something Carol and Eddie understand better than anyone. Logan Correctional Center, a former mental health facility converted to a medium-security prison, looks more like a college campus with its brick buildings and wide exspanse of lawns and gardens. It was designed to hold 850 inmates, but as of the first week of August housed 1,073, with more coming. Plans are under way to move 90 men out of a cellhouse in order to make more room for women. The men will be squeezed in elsewhere in the system.

Despite the cramped quarters, Carol and Eddie say Logan is preferable to Dwight or Pontiac, where each, respectively, had been incarcerated. Still, there is tension and frustration. Carol has been waiting to get into a G.E.D. class so she can earn her high school diploma and go to beauty school when she gets out. She hates the "dead time," with no feeling of productivity. Eddie is working on his G.E.D. and feels good about his progress. Even so, Eddie says he doesn't mind being sent to "seg" — the segregated unit used as a disciplinary punishment — where he has a cell to himself. "I don't need anything but my Bible and law books, and those they have to give me there," he says. Solitude can mean safety for a gang leader just wanting to survive his last nine months of incarceration and return to his family. Carol needs the company of others but wants a more fulfilling job than janitorial assignments. "I knew how to clean when I came here," she says.

Housing women in a predominantly male prison population is just one manifestation of overcrowding. There are many. Most problems grow from wedging 32,500 inmates into space designed for about 22,000. The Department of Corrections projects that all available prison beds will be filled by July 1994. Wherever possible two inmates will be placed in a 7-foot by 10-foot cell designed for one (called double-celling). "It would be difficult for a husband and wife who love each other to live in that small space," says Peters, "and many of the people who are double-celled have been sentenced for violent crimes. . . . They are here because of antisocial behavior." Yet by June 1996 the prison population is projected to exceed 40,000 — 4,000 more than prisons can hold.

The worsening living conditions were noted in the report issued early this year by the Governor's Task Force on Crime and Corrections (see Illinois Issues, December 1992, page 17): "Physical space has decreased, noise levels have increased, tempers have become increasingly shortened because of long lines for food and recre-

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ation. These problems are having a critical impact on the level of tension within Illinois prisons." The tensions are manifest in increased violence within the prison walls. In 1992, the department says 931 prison staff were assaulted, more than a third with a weapon. During the same period, there were 554 inmate assaults on other inmates, resulting in one death and 65 who needed outside hospital treatment. Idleness adds to the tension. The task force report says 2,000 inmates are without work assignments and over 1,000 inmates are waiting for the adult basic education program. Other consequences of overcrowding affect the taxpayer. "Prisons are the fastest growing entitlement program in the state and the country," says Peters. "Prisoners are the only Americans who are entitled to complete, free health care." Prisoners are also entitled to food, clothing, shelter, a library (including a law library), educational and recreational programs, plus other minimum services required by law. The average cost per prisoner is estimated by the department to be $16,000 per year, an amount that could buy two years of college at most state schools. Overseeing nearly 33,500 inmates requires a staff of over 12,000 and a budget of nearly $709 million, a figure that has climbed 23.2 percent from $464 million since fiscal year 1989.

What could be the costliest consequence of prison overcrowding is intervention by the courts. The American Correctional Association says that 34 states are under court orders to rectify problems in their adult prison systems. Tennessee just satisfied a court order that began over a decade ago and cost more than $550 million. Judges have stepped in to order changes in Illinois' correctional system in the past. In 1978, courts voided the practice of triple-celling inmates, and in 1983 a court order restricted the state's early release program that had been designed to relieve overcrowding. The attorney general's office says approximately 900 prisoner law suits were pending against the Department of Corrections or its director in 1992.

The task force warned that if the courts intervene in Illinois, it could lead to mandatory release of inmates. Nic Howell, Department of Corrections spokesman, says that Florida has a population cap ordered by the court that in some cases effectively cuts sentences by a third. According to the task force, "This potential public safety crisis could undermine the entire criminal justice system and the public's trust and faith in it."

After spending a year studying internal and external forces contributing to the problems facing Peters and his agency, the task force concluded that continuing policies that had governed the Department of Corrections for a decade and a half would "lead to spending hundreds of millions of dollars on prison construction over the next decade."

Illinois has spent over $560 million in the last decade alone to build new prisons — 15 in 15 years, so why are prisons still overcrowded? The task force identified three causes: increases in drug and violent crimes, longer sentences resulting from determinate sentencing laws and a high recidivism rate, that is the rate of inmates released from prisons only to return with new sentences.

Inmates convicted of drug offenses today account for more than one-fifth of all new inmates, up from one-twentieth 10 years ago. Every three out of four entering prisoners report impairment from use of drugs and alcohol. In 1992 the average for all drug sentences was 3.7 years (5.4 for all sentences), up by .5 years since 1983 when the average was 3.2 years for drug sentences (5.9 years for all).

Norval Morris, professor of law and criminology at the University of Chicago Law School, says that the politics of the "tough on crime" mentality that pervades the General Assembly created an environment in which "everyone in both parties is scared to say sensible things about crime control because they will be regarded as soft." That attitude, he says, has prevailed for the last two decades.

The task force report notes that longer sentences have had little effect in controlling crime. Adds Morris: "No responsible student of these matters would suggest that increasing crime explains our increasing prison population. Our punishment practices explain it, not the behavior of criminals."

Corrections policies — the lack of resources and programs to prepare inmates for the outside world — have also contributed to the problem of overcrowding. But Peters believes he can reduce the rate at which people return to prison. The impact of recidivism on the prison population is dramatic. According to the task force report, of 9,844 inmates released in 1989, 4,558 were back in prison within three years, creating a recidivism rate of 46 percent. Of the

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16,876 inmates released in 1992, 7,814 are expected back by 1995.

Conversely, a drop in the return rate is just as dramatic. The task force concludes that reducing the recidivism rate just 5 percent, to 41 percent, would free nearly 500 beds, or a number equal to a prison the size of Jacksonville Correctional Center. Cost savings after three years is estimated by the department to be approximately $ 1.5 million in operational costs.

Peters believes much can be done to help people use their time in prison to prepare for living law-abiding lives in the community: substance abuse treatment to make people healthy; education and vocational classes to give people marketable skills; and jobs in prison industries to give people a work ethic and experience in job satisfaction. The task force investigation substantiates that these strategies have proven effective in reducing recidivism.

"The extent to which we can take people who are illiterate and teach them to be literate, at least above the sixth or eighth grade level, increases their chances of being law-abiding," says Peters. "If we can take an unskilled person and give him or her a trade or at the very least an introduction to a trade, it increases their chances that they can get a job and be law-abiding." Otherwise, "the chances are they are going to go out and commit more crime and come right back," he says. "Society can't get ahead that way."

Neither can the Carols and Eddies who find themselves caught in the "revolving door" of prison. But the problem in an overcrowded system is that there is more demand than supply — needs far outstrip resources to provide services. Like both Carol and Eddie, approximately 70 percent of all inmates admitted to Illinois' prisons say they use drugs or alcohol, or both. The task force concluded that without appropriate assessment, treatment and aftercare, inmates with chronic substance abuse problems will have little chance for success once released from prison. "They will likely resume criminal activity due to their addiction and eventually return to prison," says the report.

The task force concludes that reducing the recidivism rate just 5 percent, to 41 percent, would free nearly 500 beds, or a number equal to a prison the size of Jacksonville Correctional Center

Peters has increased spending for treatment programs (after an initial drop due to the 1991 budget cuts, see box) by consolidating administrative costs, obtaining grants and securing federal dollars to expand drug and alcohol treatment. The department is working to put together a 500-bed intensive drug treatment program, which Peters says will be substantially federally funded, in addition to treatment programs already in place. Treatment services for inmates range from basic substance abuse education to intensive residential treatment. At the present only four prisons offer residential treatment, but all adult and juvenile institutions, all work release centers, several special parole units and the boot camps have at least drug education programs. The effects of overcrowding may be seen most clearly in the waiting lists for educational and vocational classes provided by School District 428, which serves the prison inmate population. In fiscal year 1992, approximately 4,300 inmates wanted classes but couldn't get into any. Still, more than 24,000 inmate students received instruction.

Peters looks for ways to use inmates to expand programming. "We make far greater use of inmate tutors today than we have previously," he says. Inmates who have finished associate or bachelor's degrees and who have developed discipline and academic skills, says Peters, work under the supervision of professional educators to help raise the literacy level of fellow inmates.

The greatest opportunities and longest waiting lists are found in prison industries. Illinois Correctional Industries operates programs in almost all adult Department of Corrections' institutions. These "factories with fences" produce goods and services: building furniture and processing meats, handling data processing and asbestos removal. In fiscal year 1992, prison industries reported a profit of nearly $1.5 million on sales of $34 million, five times the annual sales of a decade ago. Programs like a bakery and dairy that provide all the bread and milk products used by the Department of Corrections help defray the costs of operating the agency. Other programs also save the state money. The industries' optical laboratory at Dixon Correctional Center supplies eyeglasses to prison inmates and public aid recipients for a cumulative cost saving to the state of approximately $4.9 million since opening in 1986.

The industry jobs pay much better than other prison jobs. But there are 1,100 prison jobs and 32,400 inmates wanting one. Regular prison work — food preparation, cleaning, etc. — pays $15-$25 a month. Industry jobs earn inmates $100 a month on average, with higher wages possible for a very productive worker doing piecework.

Peters wants to expand industry jobs, but he hastens to remind that these are businesses. Prison industries are self-supporting, and they have to make a profit just like any business. They receive no state appropriation. Rather than asking for a legislative change to expand industries by state appropriation, Peters thinks more aggressive marketing of prison industries' products should be pursued. Prison industries are bound by law to sell only to state agencies, local governments, colleges and universities or nonprofit organizations. Peters feels that more work should be done to let buyers and potential buyers know the quality of products and services inmates can provide. A recent Illinois law also

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permits prison industries to enter into joint ventures with the private sector. Peters wants to pursue that avenue more aggressively also. He says it is important to increase profits from successful industries. That money can be invested in new ventures that would, in turn, create more jobs for inmates.

Peters is thrilled by legislation passed this spring that will provide some additional incentives for inmates to want to participate in educational and vocational training and in drug treatment programs (see "Legislative Action Special Section," page 57). Yet he is well aware of its limitations. The legislation does not come with additional money attached, but it does give Peters some room to maneuver. The legislation contains most of the task force recommendations aimed at freeing up beds.

Freeing up beds means freeing up money. Electronic detention and boot camp programs cost less to operate. The savings can help meet Peters' goals to expand drug and alcohol treatment, educational and vocational classes, and opportunities for jobs in prison industries. "We can teach people some self-discipline. We can give people some literary skills and give people some work skills, if not a trade. The extent to which we can do those things will reduce the number of people who are just in a kind of revolving door mode — come to prison, serve a time of incarceration, leave and then come on back."

But stopping that revolving door won't be easy. Michael Mahoney, executive director of the John Howard Association, a prisoner advocacy group, agrees with Peters' goals but offers a word of caution. "Even if all those programs are operating optimally, you have to have a realistic assessment of what you can really achieve," he says. "We're dealing with inmates who have had years of failure and failure and failure, and you can't expect the prison system to turn them around overnight." At this stage, Mahoney says, there's not any hard data to argue that "we've crossed that hump, and I would argue that's a hump we're not going to cross in the short run."

Peters agrees that it is important that the public understand that the new law will not solve the problems created by overcrowding. It merely allows the department to do some creative shuffling, but shuffling that will benefit select inmates (multi-time, older offenders like Carol and Eddie won't be eligible for some of the provisions like boot camp). What the law does enable Peters to do is shift about 6,300 inmates out of expensive prison beds and into less costly settings, like early release with electronic monitoring and boot camps where inmates do not stay as long.

But the current prison population is not reduced, and the measure will affect fewer than two-thirds of the 10,000 inmates projected to enter Illinois' prisons in the next four years. What happens to the remaining criminals who will be sent to the Department of Corrections would seem to require more than what the legislature is currently offering. Sen. Carl Hawkinson (R-47, Galesburg), sponsor of the legislation that incorporated the task force recommendations, says he intends to push for more funding for the agency in the fall veto session.

"Nobody solves this problem," says Norval Morris. "That's the American error. What you do is make things a little better." He says the fault doesn't lie with the prisons; it lies with the legislators and the courts. America has "about four times the use of imprisonment than any country we'd care to be compared with, without any differential in crime rates," says Norris. He says that all the prison administrators that he knows, and he says he knows most of them, say prisons are overused as a punishment for criminal activity, especially for drug offenses. "But that isn't anything Howard Peters can do anything about," says Morris. "He has to take what comes to him."

What has come to him is a modicum of support from the outside — the public, the General Assembly, the media — which is where Mahoney contends Peters must fight his major battles. "Most of the pressures are external — the legislature and its policy and the get-tough-on-crime and hence the mandatory sentences, etc.," says Mahoney. "There are the fiscal resources, which are no longer unlimited. And then there is the increased scrutiny, which I think is a plus, of interest groups like ours and others and the media, and finally the courts."

Peters is a charasmatic, eloquent defender of his cause. Gov. Edgar gives him credit for being "instrumental" in getting the General Assembly to support the task force's recommendations. Mahoney speaks for most of the people who have worked with Peters in his role as director: "One of the reasons I think Howard Peters is well-suited to be director is because of the times. The times demand someone who has an appreciation for the day-to-day operational issues, a super-warden if you will, but quite frankly someone who is able to spend considerable skills and talent and time on external forces because that's where the heat is coming from."

Getting the legislature's backing to use some alternative means of punishing nonviolent offenders — strategies that do not require cell space at $16,000 each — is one giant hurdle for Peters. Peters must also convince a skeptical and frightened public that what he wants to do in the Department of Corrections is in their best interest. He speaks at dozens of association, community and church meetings each year, explaining his actions and sharing his vision.

Peters also preaches prevention. Peters sees one-on-one mentoring through volunteerism as the strongest external force in reducing the crime rate, the recidivism rate and the need to build more prisons. On a very personal level, Peters wants every child to have what his own mother gave him: a vision of success. He tells a dramatic story of a 10-year-old African-American boy who is asked by a reporter how he copes with growing up in a drug-infested, poverty-stricken neighborhood ruled by gangs.

"I just hope I live long enough to go to prison," the boy replies. Peters asks each group, each community to give that child, that future Eddie or Carol, more than two choices in life: death or prison. 

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