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State Stix
Bulging prisons
"We have no alternative," Nic Howell, spokesperson for the Illinois Department of Corrections, said recently, "but to double cell."
Crowded conditions throughout the prison system, said Howell, were forcing corrections officials to double up inmates held at Menard Psychiatric Center, a situation that raises security concerns at the state's only facility to house mentally ill inmates.
As of last month, Illinois incarcerated more than 37,800 inmates in penitentiaries built to hold about 22,700. The overcrowding of Illinois prisons has been a chronic problem that could ease somewhat when the state opens a new maximum security prison now planned for southern Illinois.
However, the relief will be temporary. Fueled by public anxiety over crime, political leaders have vowed new rounds of "tough-on-crime" efforts, notably proposals to ensure that convicted criminals serve more of their sentences behind bars.
It has been the General Assembly's zeal for such measures that created the overcrowding problem in the first place. For instance, tougher laws against possession and sale of narcotics in the early 1980s contributed significantly to an explosion in prison population. Not only has the number of drug cases increased dramatically, but the average sentence handed out for narcotics violations has increased. These two factors have boosted the number of inmates in Illinois.
Donald Sevener
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Figure 1. Drug sentences imposed, average length of sentence, Cook County and downstate, 1983-1992
Figure 2. Overcrowding at Illinois prisons, fiscal year 1994 Rated capacity is number of inmates a prison is able to accommodate safely
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December 1994 / Illinois Issues / 33
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Sam S. Manivong, Illinois Periodicals Online Coordinator Illinois Periodicals Online (IPO) is a digital imaging project at the Northern Illinois University Libraries funded by the Illinois State Library |
