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 »
AFSCME Local Council 31, which represents state corrections workers,
forcefully argued in Springfield today that Gov. Pat Quinn’s planned
prison closings put an overcrowded system over the edge – and could lead
to more prison violence.
AFSCME Council 31, the state’s main public employees union, and a
group of state lawmakers vowed today to undo Gov. Pat Quinn's closing of
corrections facilities, including Dwight women’s prison and Tamms
supermax prison, during the fall veto session.
Gov. Pat Quinn has decided to close
several state correctional facilities in addition to shutting down the 