Several drug abuse incidents in some Illinois state prisons prompt lawmakers to call for changes | News

CARTERVILLE, Ill. (WSIL) — We continue to investigate recent drug-related incidents at Illinois correctional facilities. These incidents occurred at several facilities, including Menard, Pinckneyville and Big Muddy Correctional Center.

For many, drug use behind prison walls is nothing more than a problem, but Jake Ridge experienced the problem up close and personally when he spent time behind bars himself.

“I mean, the drug epidemic is bad. It's not just affecting our prisons, you know? And they're not doing anything to get people clean there,” Ridge said.

Ridge says he has seen countless drug exposures, and not in the way one would expect.

“You're dealing with a crazy guy in the shower. Some people get drunk and then, you know, dip stuff on letters,” Ridge said.

In recent weeks, there have been several reported incidents in correctional facilities across the state of Illinois in which people have been hospitalized due to drug use.

In some cases, police officers, staff and even paramedics who responded to the emergency calls had to be hospitalized.

CARTERVILLE, Illinois – Several incidents have been reported in correctional facilities in recent weeks.

Illinois State Senator Terri Bryant has collected reports of each incident and says that during her recent tour of the Big Muddy Correctional Center in Ina, Illinois, an exposure was reported 30 minutes after she toured a cell block.

She says that it is not only guards and staff who are afraid of possible infection.

“I find more and more that we sometimes have one, two or more ambulance calls to almost every medium or large facility in the state,” said Senator Bryant.

Senator Bryant says her main focus is to find out how drugs get into prisons and how to prevent it.

“But 90% of what comes in is through the mail. And we know it's legal mail because the documents I have clearly show it's legal mail, like in the property box,” Bryant says. “One of the reports I gave you from the Lawrence Correctional Center shows it was on what looked like photo paper.”

She says the prisoners took the paper and rolled it into homemade cigarettes.

Bryant says that like other facilities, she plans to scan mail electronically and not give inmates paper copies.

“We have now found six states that are already scanning emails. In this area alone, they are already doing it,” says Bryant. “I have spoken to the sheriffs in Jackson County, Jefferson County and Randolph County. These three counties scan their jails electronically. So if a jail can do it, a prison can.”

She knows there is still a lot of work to be done, but wants to work with other lawmakers and administrators in the prison system to make it happen.

Ridge, on the other hand, believes that prison reform is ultimately what matters, saying that some people come in addicted and leave addicted.

“I mean, they're already sick, sick, half dead, all kinds of problems, you know, and then they put them in our gene pops. These guys just become victims,” ​​Ridge said.

She hopes to solve the problem together with the Pritzker administration.