Governor Pat Quinn’s decision to shutter Tamms Correctional Center, effective August 31, in order to save money is a landmark victory
for prison reform advocates who spent a decade fighting to close the facility that has held inmates for years in 24-hour solitary confinement.
“We
are ending the era of solitary confinement,” says Laurie Jo Reynolds,
an organizer with the Tamms Year Ten coalition, which ran a legislative
campaign to close the prison. Reynolds noted that other states, such as
Mississippi and Maine, also recently shut down solitary confinement
facilities and U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) conducted a
Senate hearing last week on solitary confinement.
But Quinn’s
unilateral action goes against the wishes of the Illinois
General Assembly. It also further alienates the governor from AFSCME Council
31, the union representing many of the state's public employees. The union is steadfastly against the closings and other Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) shut downs, even though the governor's office says the moves will result in no public employee layoffs. Read more »
With a little more than a month remaining in the spring legislative
session in Springfield, advocates for Illinois children say it's
important to understand the factors driving the state's fiscal year 2014
budget debate and what can be done to help avoid damaging cuts to
education and other critical programs. 
Gov. Pat Quinn scored a big victory Friday in his plan to balance
the state budget. Arbitrator Steve Biereg ruled that the state acted
reasonably in the June ordering of the shut down of seven different
corrections and juvenile justice facilities.
