Progress Illinois

By acknowledging that changes need to be made at the Tamms supermax facility in southern Illinois and outlining reforms to mitigate some of the prison's worst practices, the Department of Correction's interim director Michael Randle took an important first step to ensure human rights are upheld in Illinois. Still, the most vocal critics of the prison think that Randle's review overlooked some key problems in his review. And the Sun-Times agrees. Today, the editorial board emphasized that Randle and the state legislature have more work to do to address the facility's flawed review process and the way it houses and treats mentally ill inmates. Here's an excerpt:

Randle's reforms, laudable as they are, fall short because they rely on the good faith and professionalism of the director and his department to carry them out. They are not codified in the law, which would assure they remain in effect long after Randle and Gov. Quinn have moved on. Nor are they spelled out in the state's administrative code, which would give them the strength and protection of legislative oversight.

Randle's reforms do little to beef up the cursory quality of quarterly reviews conducted by prison staff to determine whether an inmate should remain at Tamms. The proof that such reviews are inadequate is in the numbers -- 194 prisoners have been at Tamms for at least five years, many of them unnecessarily so. When prison officials, at Randle's direction, finally began conducting special reviews of these 194 cases, they quickly identified at least 45 inmates they felt confident could be returned to less restrictive prisons -- and the special reviews continue.

Easily the biggest problem at Tamms, addressed only in part by Randle's reforms, is mental illness among inmates. The very actions that can land an inmate in Tamms, such as attacking a guard, can be signs of mental illness, and the intense social isolation of a supermax prison only exacerbates the problem. The solution to the problem, unfortunately, is undoubtedly expensive and politically unpopular, beginning with a dramatic increase in mental health services in our prisons and communities.

The paper also praises Sen. Dick Durbin for chairing a hearing last week in D.C. on mental illness in U.S. prisons. It's time state legislators do the same.