Judge orders prison officials to relocate Stateville inmates by Sept. 30

The Ministry of Justice had already planned to close the dilapidated facility

A federal judge has ordered Gov. JB Pritzker's administration to move the vast majority of inmates at the Stateville Correctional Center near Joliet out of the aging prison by the end of September, citing health and safety concerns about the facility.

The Illinois Department of Corrections had previously said it wanted to close Stateville as early as September, part of a larger plan to rebuild the prison along with another. The order from U.S. District Judge Andrea Wood sets a September 30 deadline for those efforts.

Read more: Stateville could close as early as September under Pritzker's prison plan

The judge's ruling filed Friday is the latest in an 11-year legal battle over filthy and dangerous conditions at Stateville. While settlement negotiations have been ongoing since 2015, Pritzker announced a plan in March to rebuild Stateville and close and rebuild the Logan Correctional Center in Lincoln. The decision was prompted by a state-commissioned report released last year that described the center – like the Pontiac Correctional Center – as nearly “non-functional.”

But in June, 51-year-old Michael Broadway died in Stateville on a day when inmates “reported excessive heat and poor ventilation,” according to lawyers for inmates at the nearly 100-year-old prison. And late last month, those lawyers filed a motion asking Wood to intervene in efforts to move the inmates.

Read more: Capitol Briefs: Grayson personnel file released, Stateville inmates request transfer

“Currently, over 420 Stateville residents are at risk of serious injury due to the structural weaknesses, wear and tear and decay of these buildings, putting them at risk of serious physical injury or even death,” attorney Heather Lewis Donnell of the Chicago-based law firm Loevy & Loevy said at a news conference announcing the motion last month.

“We also know that all of the conditions at Stateville – the water, the extreme temperatures, heat and cold, the vermin, the birds – will worsen and worsen if the structure is not safe and vulnerable,” she added.

In her order Friday, Wood approved the request, noting that IDOC officials “do not dispute that Stateville inmates are at risk of injury from falling concrete due to the deteriorating masonry, ceilings, steel beams and window lintels” in the prison's housing units.

Those conditions, she wrote in her order, “will not be remedied in the foreseeable future because the state has determined that its funds would be better spent building a new facility rather than attempting to repair Stateville's aging facilities.” The order does not apply to the roughly two dozen residents of the facility's infirmary.

The state budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1 allocated $900 million for the closure and reconstruction of Stateville and Logan.

In an emailed statement, IDOC spokeswoman Naomi Puzzello reiterated that prison authorities would not cease operations at Stateville until mid-September at the earliest. Although IDOC has not yet released details of its plan to transfer the roughly 550 men currently incarcerated at Stateville, Puzzello noted that the department's “anticipated timeline for the transfers is consistent with the court order.”

Pritzker's plans to demolish and rebuild Stateville and Logan are being fiercely contested by AFSCME Council 31, the state's largest public employee union that represents most of Illinois' prison employees. In a series of public hearings on the proposed closures this spring, AFSCME members and community leaders have raised objections to IDOC's plan – particularly the lack of detail in the administration's plans.

Read more: Communities and Commission urge Pritzker administration to provide more details on prison plans

After a state oversight panel skipped an advisory vote on prison closure plans in June, Pritzker hinted that more concrete plans would be released in the future, but that has not happened yet.

Read more: Lawmakers pass oversight vote to close and rebuild Pritzker Prison | “We don't really know what we're voting on,” says leading Democrat about Pritzker's prison plan

It is not yet known whether the Logan Correctional Center will be rebuilt on its current site in Lincoln between Springfield and Bloomington-Normal – or whether, as the governor has suggested, it will ultimately be relocated 141 miles northeast to the Stateville campus in Crest Hill near Joliet.

Whatever the case, IDOC officials say Logan will remain open as long as possible during the roughly three-year reconstruction work at the facility, no matter where it takes place.

But AFSCME's efforts to delay Stateville's closure are now undermined by the court order, seven weeks before the Sept. 30 deadline. The union nonetheless indicated that it is not over its fight against the plan.

“Closing Stateville would cause tremendous disruption to the state prison system, its employees, the incarcerated individuals and their families,” AFSCME Council 31 said in a statement. “We are exploring all options to prevent these disruptions in response to this hasty ruling.” [email protected]

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