Today, Reps. Julie Hamos (D-Evanston), Karen Yarbrough (D-Broadview), and Eddie Washington (D-Waukegan) held a press conference in Chicago announcing House Bill 6651, which "establish[es] clear criteria for transferring a prisoner to Tamms supermax prison."
In her recent Progress Illinois column, Rep. Yarbrough noted that Tamms was originally intended to hold the "worst of the worst" in solitary confinement for one to two years:
[B]ut recent news reports indicate that nearly one-third of the inmates have been there since the first year it opened. If this was a normal prison, these extended stays might not be such an issue. But at a recent hearing I attended, former inmates described the conditions as mental torture. These men spend 23 to 24 hours of every day in solitary confinement, and when they have to endure this for months and years on end, it is hard to see any rehabilitative value in the way things are done at Tamms. Even more troubling is that those who testified at the hearing do not understand why they were sent there.
HB 6651 establishes three criteria which would qualify a prisoner for transfer to Tamms:
(1) while incarcerated, the prisoner committed or attempted to commit acts of violence which resulted in serious injury or death; (2) the prisoner has engaged in the second of 2 acts that occurred within one year of each other, which caused serious disruption of prison operations; or (3) he has escaped from within a security perimeter or custody, or both, or direct supervision.
The bill also specifies that those current Tamms inmates who have been held there for over a year "may continue to be held at a super-maximum institution only on the basis of specified criteria and must be provided a hearing within 6 months of the effective date of the amendatory Act."
To learn more about the situation at Tamms, check out the Chicago Reader's recent feature story.
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