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Prison overcrowding; By BEVERLEY SCOBELL Illinois' prisons are full. Despite having built 14 new facilities in the last 14 years, the state houses 10,000 more prisoners in its 23 adult correctional facilities than the penal system was designed to hold. In response, Gov. Jim Edgar said last February that Illinois could not build its way out of the prison crowding crisis. He also appointed a 29-member task force to study the complex problem of prison crowding and criminal justice funding. While the task force's final report is not due until December 31, members in October expressed cautious optimism that its work may be the catalyst for change during the legislative session. Success, they readily admit, depends a great deal on the task force members' ability to educate the governor, the legislature and, more importantly, the public on the issues of prison overcrowding. Task force chair is Anton Valukas, a former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois (see box for task force members). The governor charged the Illinois Task Force on Crime and Corrections with specific responsibilities: • study future space needs, including costs, for correctional facilities; • consider cost-effective alternatives to imprisonment; • analyze current policies, statutes and sentencing procedures that affect inmate population; and • identify solutions that protect both taxpayers' safety and their pocketbooks. The task force issued an interim report early last June, providing an overview of the problem of crowded prisons and making three specific recommendations: 1. Open the facilities already built (but not operational because the legislature did not appropriate money to run them): the Big Muddy Correctional Center in Franklin County; work camps in Clayton, DuQuoin, Paris and Greene County; and the Chicago Community Correctional Center. They offer a total of 2,564 additional prison bed spaces. 2. Complete the conversion of the former Assumption High School building in East St. Louis to a 560-bed minimum-security prison. 3. Impose a moratorium on legislation creating new, nonprobationable offenses that put more people in prison but are not accompanied by appropriations to pay for the care of those prisoners. The General Assembly in June went two for three, conditionally. Because the final budget contained $9 million less for the Department of Corrections than the governor had asked for in his budget recommendations, the new 952-bed medium-security Big Muddy facility, which was completed in July 1992, could open but not until March 1993. The opening of the work camps downstate and the work release center in Chicago will be delayed until June 1993. According to Nic Howell, spokesman for the Department of Corrections, the $12 million needed to complete the conversion of the Assumption High School was not even proposed. The third recommendation hints at the type of policy changes that the task force is considering in its final report. Several task force members believe that overcrowding could be relieved by changing the mandatory sentencing laws first enacted in 1978. While mandatory sentencing may be politically popular as a "get tough" policy on criminals, it reduced judicial discretion in setting prison sentences. Since 1978, the legislature has continued being tough on crime, redefining crimes such as residential burglary, into categories requiring longer mandatory sentences. The opening of work camps downstate .. . will be delayed until June 1993 December 1992/Illinois Issues/17
Suggesting that judges should again be given discretionary powers for sentences is task force member Robert E. Cook of Cook Witter Inc., Springfield. He is active in Charles Colson's Prison Fellowship and its local offshoot, Justice Fellowship, which is interested in restorative justice and rehabilitation programs for inmates. Cook presents this argument with residential burglary as an example: If a kid, who may never have done anything wrong before, steals a bike from his neighbor's breezeway, gets caught and is put before a judge, the judge has no choice but to send him to prison for a minimum of two years. Then what he learns, if he survives, is how not to get caught the next time. Howell of the Department of Corrections uses the same analogy as an economic argument for policy change. While the example is simplistic, Howell admits, it does illustrate a point: "At $16,000 per year for two years, that becomes a very expensive bicycle for Illinois taxpayers." Cook insists that he is not a "bleeding heart," and he does not advocate being easy on crime. He does believe that giving sentencing discretion back to judges for extenuating circumstances could be a solution to overcrowding and help limit the spread of crime. Cook is also a proponent of intermediate sanctions and alternatives to incarceration such as probation, boot camps, electronic detention and day reporting centers. All are under review by the task force. Valukas agrees that intermediate sanctions can be part of the solution to overcrowding, but he warns that the public must be educated against myths. One such myth, Valukas says, is that the prisons are populated by a large number of first-time offenders convicted of some low-level property crime. "The reality is that the vast and overwhelming majority of people in prison are in there for some pretty heinous crimes and are in there for extended periods of time," says Valukas. The task force's interim report says that 7 in 10 inmates in Illinois have been convicted of either murder, a Class X felony (attempted murder, kidnapping, rape, armed robbery, etc.) or a Class 1 felony (indecent liberties with a child, kidnapping not for ransom, possession of 15 grams of heroin, any attempted Class X crime, etc.). Illinois is not unique with its crowded prisons. Sixteen states are under federal court orders to limit prison populations, according to a survey by the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority. The survey revealed that all but three of the other states (Alaska, Nevada and North Carolina) have a problem with prison overcrowding. The authority, charged by the governor to provide staff support to the task force, drafted the task force's 23-page interim report which includes statistics on prison inmates, including admitting charges, criminal history and recidivism rates, and a review of strategies currently in use to reduce overcrowding. Illinois is not under federal court order, but task force members say something must be done soon to correct overcrowding. Otherwise, Illinois may face the prospect of letting out of prison some people who should stay there. Assuming the newly built facilities will open, the Department of Corrections projects prison population will reach "capacity ceiling" by April 1994, with 80 percent double-celling systemwide. Capacity ceiling is the maximum number of inmates that existing correctional facilities can accommodate. Extensive double-celling, according to the interim report, strains the prison infrastructure, overburdens the staff, raises tension levels and the potential for violence and increases the chances of court intervention in managing the state's prisons. 18/ December 1992/ Illinois Issues The Department of Corrections expects the prison population to reach 38,000 by June 1996. In October 1992 there were 31,200 prisoners in the Illinois system. Whether measured by the system's "design capacity" of 20,700 (the number of inmates that correctional facilities were originally designed to house) or its "rated capacity" of 24,450 (the number of inmates that correctional facilities should house based on "administrative judgments and sound correctional practices"), the Illinois prison system is overcrowded. Task force member Michael P. Mahoney, executive director of the John Howard Association, a prison watchdog group based in Chicago, calls the overcrowding a "powder keg." Whenever 1,200 people are put in a medium-security prison designed for 750, he says, you create the potential for danger, both to inmates and to guards. "It doesn't take but one spark to start something, and I would argue that the smoldering is there, and it behooves us to act before we have to respond," Mahoney says. The increasing danger to Department of Corrections personnel is a chief concern of its director, Howard A. Peters III, and of Steve Culen, executive director of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal
In fiscal 1991 there
were 1,075 assaults on prison staff, up 35 percent from 1988 Employees (AFSCME). Both are members of the task force. Culen's main objective is to try to protect officers working within the prison system. Whenever a prisoner gets mad at the system, Culen says, he can't strike out at the director or the governor or legislators, so he strikes out at the closest officer. Culen says that 12 officers have been killed in the last 10 years. Statistics in the task force's interim report support Culen's view. In fiscal 1991 there were 1,075 assaults on prison staff, up 35 percent from 1988. In medium-security prisons, where most of the double-celling has taken place, assaults on staff increased 85 percent in just one year, from fiscal 1990 to 1991. Director Peters ties the violence in the prison system to the ratio of staff to inmates. While prison population has risen continually, the ratio of staff to inmates has dropped nearly 17 percent, according to Peters in a June report to the General Assembly. According to the task force interim report, since 1987 the staff-to-inmate ratio has dropped from 42.4 staff per 100 inmates to 33.2 per 100 in fiscal 1992. Culen says he credits Director Peters and his staff for controlling a very volatile situation. While Gov. Edgar does not want to build any more prisons, the task force seems to be leaning toward recommending a "maxi-max" prison on the order of the federal prison at Marion. A maxi-max prison would hold those violent, incorrigible criminals who disrupt productive programs within the system. The argument, according to Valukas and other task force members, is that once disruptive prisoners are removed, productive prison programs like educational classes and jobs in prison industries work smoothly and allow inmates to gain points toward early release and, presumably, skills with which to better adjust to a noncriminal life on the outside. Some innovative programs have already been authorized by the legislature, but they have been underfunded or not funded. Such programs include boot camps, electronic monitoring and work release programs. The Department of Corrections estimates as many as 5,000 inmates may be eligible for alternative sentencing programs, which would relieve overcrowding and make space for violent criminals who might otherwise be released, particularly if the federal court steps in. Some task force members also argue that any program that keeps a nonviolent offender at his job rather than in prison has a threefold effect for the taxpayer: The offender is still paying taxes, the offender's family is not forced onto welfare, and taxpayers are not supporting the offender at a cost of at least $16,000 per year. Michael Mahoney believes the state can "responsibly manage some of these offenders differently, punish them differently and at the same time maintain public safety and do it in a more efficient manner." Mahoney says that funding intermediate sanctions will allow the state to reserve that expensive state resource, prisons, for violent, dangerous and repeat offenders. Mahoney, along with other task force members, believes that the recommendations being put together in a final report have a good chance of being seriously considered and acted upon by the legislature in the spring session. The reason for optimism is that the task force received testimony from groups not usually heard from in connection with criminal justice reform. Groups like the Illinois Manufacturers' Associaton, the Illinois State Chamber of Commerce and the Taxpayers' Federation of Illinois all said that the system needs an overhaul. "With those people in the mix, if we can then get the educational lobby and the human service lobby to agree that this money is better spent on their services [rather than] in prisons, we may have some chance of changing the public policy," Mahoney says. The final report from the task force will focus on issues that may require an expansive public relations campaign both for the legislature and the public, says Chairman Valukas. "People will have to make judgments, and there are no easy judgments here," says Valukas. He hopes people will look dispassionately at the facts and recommendations the task force will present and reach some conclusions. Those conclusions, Valukas says, may not be the same as those reached by the task force, but that process in itself may lead to solutions. "That's the way this has to be approached, not with rhetoric but with reason," offers Valukas. December 1992/Illinois Issues/19 |
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