Progress Illinois

Is accountability so sparse in the Chicago Police Department that even a recommendation by the superintendent isn't enough to get an officer fired by the Chicago Police Board? Based on the latest research (PDF) by the non-profit Chicago Justice Project (CJP), it seems so. Here's what the organization examined in their report:

[T]he Chicago Justice Project (CJP) examined ten years of the Board’s decisions in cases for which the Superintendent of the Chicago Police Department sought the termination of either sworn officers or civilian employees. We included the cases involving civilian employees for comparison purposes. Our study covered 310 cases over the course of a ten-year period starting in January 1999 and ending in December 2008.

Over this period, CJP identified 248 instances in which the superintendent recommended that a particular officer get the ax.  The mayoral-appointed board, however, only fired only a fraction (37 percent) of these cops. In most of the remaining 63 percent of cases, the board didn't retain the officer in question on the grounds that they were unfairly accused. Rather, they agreed with the superintendent's conclusion, but chose to handed out less severe punishments, such as suspension.

The big mystery is exactly how the ten-member board arrived at those decisions.

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Last year, The Chicago Reporter launched an investigation revealing gaps in supportive services -- from counseling to financial assistance -- for some 90,000 Illinois children whose parents are behind bars. One of the most personally devastating holes was the lack of contact between the incarcerated and their children, a majority of whom live at least a three hours away by car from where their parents are locked up. As The Reporter noted, many are starting to use alternatives to travel, like a Lutheran Social Services Program that helps inmates record messages to their children. They revealed the deep connections that come of the simple communication:

“It really don’t matter what book I read to them, they love it to death,” said [inmate Rodney] Strohmayer. His 4-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son in Sterling, Ill., have been getting tapes for the past four months. His daughter walks around all day and night, “playing this tape over and over again,” Strohmayer said. This time they will get Dr. Seuss’ “Green Eggs and Ham.”

The program doesn’t just help the children; it has had a profound effect on Strohmayer himself. His incarceration helped him understand how much his children mean to him, and knowing that he has a family to go home to makes it easier.

While lawmakers still have a long way to go in addressing the problems exposed by The Reporter, a key piece of legislation (HB1995) that could serve as a lifeline for those families is making steady progress. The bill, which was shepherded through the House earlier this month by State Rep. Karen Yarborough (D-Maywood) and is now sponsored by Chicago Democrat Sen. William Delgado, would require the Department of Corrections to create a video conferencing pilot program. The hope is that over the next two years, the program will help quantify the impact of keeping inmates engaged with the outside world. "We have to make our criminal justice system more than a warehouse with a revolving door," Yarborough said at a press conference highlighting the legislation yesterday.

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New Illinois Department of Corrections Director Michael Randle has had a busy first few months on the job. In September, he issued a set of 10 proposals to reform the Tamms Correctional Center, a flawed yet important plan that finally acknowledges the human rights abuses that have been taking place under the state's watch. Now, facing massive budget deficits and an immense prison population, Randle is leading the Quinn administration's effort to roll out an early release program.

Thankfully, he's taking the correct approach. In an interview with the State Journal-Register over the weekend, Randle said his department is "using [the budget crisis] as an opportunity to review every facet in this department," including the state's punitive and inefficient approach to handling what he calls "short-term offenders":

Randle says 47 percent of all inmates released from Illinois prisons have been there six months or less; 22 percent have been in state custody for fewer than 63 days. This is largely because of a combination of prisoners having already received substantial credit for time served in a county jail while awaiting trial and a cumbersome and costly intake process that precedes their assignment to the prison where they are to serve their sentence.

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New York Gov. David Paterson probably will not be elected to serve a second term in Albany, but his legacy may have been cemented yesterday when the state officially repealed significant portions of the Rockefeller Drug Laws. Instituted in 1973, the strict and punitive provisions removed judicial discretion in sentencing and mandated harsh penalties for nonviolent drug offenses, which ultimately increased New York's prison population dramatically. While the reforms that were passed this spring and signed by Paterson still leave some room for improvement -- mandatory minimum sentences are maintained, for example -- drug treatment programs were expanded and judges were provided more discretion to divert nonviolent criminals into those programs. Approximately 1,100 individuals currently serving long sentences for are now eligible for re-sentencing.

The occasion presents an opportunity for Illinoisans serious about criminal justice reform to reflect on our own state's progress in this field. And New York could serve as a good example for how to begin tackling reform. Even before the Rockefeller laws were paired down, New York officials had taken significant steps to diminish its prison population, according to Northwestern University School of Law's Malcolm Young:

New York never enacted rigid determinate sentencing and, apart from the notorious Rockefeller drug laws, avoided high mandatory minimums, according to the report. New York also invested in an infrastructure of alternatives to incarceration. It rapidly disposes of thousands of minor cases without lengthy pre-trial or post-sentencing incarceration and recently revised stiff drug-sentencing laws to keep low-level drug offenders out of prison and accommodate the release of rehabilitated offenders before the end of their sentences.

These smart policies resulted in a 9 percent decrease in the Empire State's prison population between 1995 and 2007. During the same period, Illinois prisons grew by another 20 percent.  (We now house over 45,000 inmates at a cost of $1.36 billion dollars per year.) However, instead of spearheading serious anti-recidivism and sentencing reforms, our top prison official is busy withering criticism of an early release plan that won't endanger public safety and will save the budget-strapped state money.

To be blunt, we are still way behind the curve.

In the crowded field of Democratic contenders for Cook County board president, Ald. Toni Preckwinkle (4th Ward) has stood out from the pack when it comes to defining and articulating her platform.  For months now, before potential voters and press, she has made her reform agenda quite clear.  Meanwhile, some of the other candidates still haven't provided their full view on the issues.

Most recently, Preckwinkle appeared on ABC 7 this past weekend, where she reiterated three ways she would break from Todd Stroger's administration: begin to roll back the sales tax hike gradually; make permanent the Cook County Health System's independent governing board; and expand jail diversion programs already being administered by the Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart's office (including the Day Reporting Center, Sheriff's Work Alternative Program, and the Sheriff's Boot Camp). Watch as she talks at length about the last priority and emphasizes that back-end support for the formerly incarcerated should be a key component of any strategy to limit the county's jail population. It's a point she's been making for months:

For more depth, you can check out Preckwinkle's recent sit-down with Jeff Berkowitz, who has also interviewed incumbent Todd Stroger and challengers Terry O'Brien and Dorothy Brown.

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.

Just days after disclosing his review of the Tamms supermax prison, Illinois Department of Corrections director Michael Randle told reporters yesterday that, within the month, the state will begin to release 1,000 current inmates as part of its budget reduction strategy. The AP reports:

Randle said it will take two to four weeks to review the prisoners' files, inspect the places they'll be living and set them up with a parole agent and electronic monitoring. Randle said it's not clear how long it will take to release all of the roughly 1,000 eligible inmates.

Capitol Fax writes today that his move is "fraught with political peril, but not a bad idea."  Indeed, the inmates being released are nonviolent offenders serving sentences less than one year long. These are not hardened criminals -- many are likely in for drug offenses -- and they were scheduled for release anyway. Those who have committed sex offenses, been convicted of domestic abuse, or violated their parole will not be considered.

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For years, human rights advocates have been pressing Illinois officials to clean up one of the state's dirtiest secrets: the human rights abuses taking place inside Tamms Correctional Center, the state's lone supermax facility. The prison has become notorious for locking scores of prisoners away in solitary confinement, some for more than a decade. Moreover, Tamms inmates have no access to a review process or adequate mental health evaluations. Worst of all, many of those same prisoners are ultimately released back into their communities with exacerbated psychological problems.

Today, the Department of Correction's interim director Michael Randle took an important step in acknowledging the problems at Tamms. But does his ten-point plan (PDF) go far enough?

The most vocal critics of the prison -- members of the Tamms Year Ten coalition -- don't think so. This afternoon, they put out this statement along with their own critique of Randle's plan:

We applaud the IDOC for moving in the right direction, as some of these reforms could mitigate the psychological damage caused by long-term isolation. However, the new plan presents no significant change for mentally ill prisoners. Tamms Year Ten, along with other human rights organizations, urges Gov. Quinn to institute independent monitoring of mental health diagnosis and treatment at Tamms to prevent the same neglect and abuse of prisoners documented in the Belleville News-Democrat expose.

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When the General Assembly passed its budget back in July, it partially addressed the state's $11.6 billion deficit by granting Gov. Pat Quinn the authority to cut several billion dollars in government spending.  In line with that responsibility, Quinn is now turning his attention to the state's corrections department. He has already declared his intention to cut 1,000 corrections jobs for a savings of roughly $125 million and is also considering releasing nonviolent offenders, as the Tribune notes:

The governor also acknowledged he has his state prisons director, Michael Randle, “looking at the issue” of the early release of non-violent inmates to help save money as part of a move to layoff more than 1,000 state corrections workers.

“I haven’t made any final decisions,” Quinn said of the early release of inmates, which is allowed by state law for prisoners who are within a year of their release date. “Crimes against persons-- we’re not interested in letting folks who have those crimes out early. There may be something we’ll look at with respect to those who have crimes against property,” he said.

When it comes to the state's prison system, there's certainly a lot of fat to be trimmed. The AP's Jim Schur notes that the department's last fiscal year budget was a whopping $1.44 billion, greater than all other departments, with the exception of human services and health care. Forty-four percent of the state's 45,000 inmates (each cost taxpayers roughly $30,o00 per year to house) were charged with drug or property-related crimes.

But if the state is going to ensure that the prison population doesn't balloon again in the future, a goal the Taxpayer Action Board advocated for in its report (PDF) earlier this year, more substantive sentencing reforms need to be implemented at the legislative level.

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Back in May, Gov. Pat Quinn called for an examination of the policies at Tamms Correctional Center in response to criticism that prisoners are languishing there in solitary confinement -- in some cases for more than a decade -- despite its intended purpose as a short-term incarceration facility.  Those seeking reforms at Tamms have primarily raised concerns about the lack of clear criteria for transfer in and out of the prison.  They have also pointed out that holding inmates in solitary confinement for such long periods of time often creates deep psychological trauma which can pose further problems once they're released back into their communities.

In an extensive article published over the weekend, the Belleview News-Democrat added some valuable reporting to this debate.  Included in their piece is some troubling data, such as the fact that 54 of the 247 inmates have been held there for ten years or more.  Furthermore, 55 were transferred to the facility for committing in-prison assaults "that did not lead to serious injury and can be attributed in some cases to mental illness and a need for self-protection."  The reporters also offer several case studies in how long-term solitary confinement has led to psychological deterioration in certain inmates.  They also interview the first warden at the prison:

[George] Welborn, who retired in 2002, said he never expected inmates to be held at Tamms for 10 years or more.

"I don't lose a lot of sleep over those guys who have been there 10 years ... (but) I think they should have been given the opportunity to go back to a reduced security facility and then, if they screw up again, it's right back to Tamms. It was not intended to be a place where guys would be there for eight to 10 years."

The whole article is worth a read.  Meanwhile, on the same day, the News-Democrat editorial page advocated for instituting more "smart and humane" policies at the prison:

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