A hearing is set for 9 a.m. tomorrow in an Alexander County courthouse on a lawsuit filed by the AFSCME Council 31 public employees union as a means to stop corrections and juvenile justice facility closings ordered by Gov. Pat Quinn. It is not known if Illinois Circuit Court Judge Charles Cavaness will issue a ruling tomorrow as well.

While AFSCME seeks to prevent the shutting down of seven different facilities, the union’s energies, as well as the passions of advocates who support the closings, is directed at Tamms supermax prison, which is located in Alexander County. The Uptown People’s Law Center in Chicago filed two separate motions today, one to intervene on behalf of Tamms defendants they represent and the other to dismiss the case.

Meanwhile, Quinn continues to frame the closings in the context of a state budget crisis.

“Half-full, outdated and expensive facilities are no longer affordable to our taxpayers, if we truly want to address the state’s budget challenges that have been created over decades of fiscal mismanagement,” Quinn spokeswoman Kelly Kraft wrote in an e-mail. Quinn’s office has estimated that the closings will shave $62 million off a $33 billion yearly operating budget.

The governor has pledged that no AFSCME employees would be laid off due to the closings. However, affected employees must transfer to different Department of Corrections or Department of Juvenile Justice facilities.

Even as AFSCME and the Quinn administration are set to meet in court tomorrow, the two sides continue to negotiate a policy for how employees will be transferred if the closings happen, according to Kraft.

The lawsuit from AFSCME reinforces arguments that the union has made since Quinn announced the closings June 19. There are already 48,308 prison inmates in a system set to hold 33,704 inmates: These closings mean less cell space and more potential for violence. “The insertion of these inmates into the overcrowded prisons of the state will inevitably foment unrest that will put employees, other inmates, and the general community at risk,” the union's lawsuit reads.

The AFSCME suit portrays Tamms as the safety valve in a breaking corrections system. The supermax prison holds inmates kicked out of other prisons and holds them in 23-hour, daily solitary confinement. The union contends that if these dangerous inmates move to single cells in Pontiac they could prey on corrections employees and other inmates.

These arguments upset Illinois advocates who have long contended, along with groups such as the ACLU, that Tamm’s solitary confinement violates inmate’s human rights.

One such advocate is Alan Mills, legal director of the People’s Law Center, who represents clients at Tamms. “The effect of this type of isolated solitary confinement have been well documented – long-term isolation destroys mens' minds, and causes lasting damage to mental health,” Mills writes in a court memorandum to dismiss the lawsuit.

In an interview, Mills pointed out that Tamms is already under capacity and that the state has shown there is room at the Pontiac Correctional Center for these prisoners. Mills said that he “completely supports the union’s interest in keeping jobs” and hopes that AFSCME workers can be relocated to other facilities.

As for prison overcrowding, Mills says that a well executed early release program that Quinn signed into law this June will do more to address the problem than keeping facilities open.

AFSCME has sued the state before over prison closings. The union launched three separate lawsuits against the state back in 2008 as a response to Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s planned closure of the Pontiac maximum-security prison.

Then, as now, the union accused the state of compromising employee and public safety. “Pontiac is an essential part of a safe prison system, and without it, all Illinois prisons, staff, inmates are at greater risk of violence and personal harms,” AFSCME Council 31 Executive Director Henry Bayer said in 2008, according to the Peoria Journal-Star.

As the Blagojevich administration fell apart, the governor was impeached in January 2009, the Pontiac closing plan also unraveled. In March 2009, Quinn, who had been governor for all of two months, said Pontiac would stay open. Ironically, the governor gave greater fiscal responsibility as the reason, noting that the prison provides 600 jobs and $54.4 million in revenue for the Pontiac area.

For Quinn’s facility closing schedule now, Tamms is supposed to mothball August 31, necessitating the transfer of its 197 supermax inmates to maximum-security prisons in Menard, Statesville and Pontiac.

Dwight women’s prison is scheduled to shutter August 31, with its 980 inmates moved to Logan Correctional Center in Lincoln.

The governor also plans to shutter a youth prison in Murphysboro at the end of August and the Joilet youth prison by November 1. Halfway houses in Carbondale, Chicago, and Decatur are scheduled to shutter this fall as well.

Each closing, of course, is dependent on the lawsuit’s outcome.

Image: AP