JUSTICE
Seeking Clemency in a Crisis
Advocates argue that Illinois could be doing much more to protect the incarcerated from the pandemic, but many politicians fear backlash BY GABE LEVINE-DRIZIN
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ince the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Illinois’ correctional facilities, like many across the country, have been devastated by the outbreak. While it has recently been superseded by two devastating outbreaks of more than 1,500 cases, each racking Ohio prisons, Illinois’ correctional facilities were for weeks home to two of the most prominent single-site outbreaks: one linked to the Cook County Jail (sitting at number six and, as of press time, responsible for 987 cases), and another linked to the Stateville Correctional Center near Joliet (sitting at number forty-three with 225 cases), where there have been at least eleven coronavirus related deaths. In response to the outbreak, activists and lawmakers have demanded bold action to both relieve the suffering of those locked inside and to speed up the process of departure for those whose sentences are ending soon. It is nearly impossible to practice social distancing within a prison; there is often a lack of critical personal protective equipment, sick people are housed near others, and there is a high concentration of the medically vulnerable and elderly. Two weeks ago, a federal judge ordered the implementation of strict social distancing measures inside Cook County Jail, a move that has been pushed by many activists and covered extensively in the media. But the crisis in the state’s prison system, which houses more than 38,000 prisoners, has yet to be met with meaningful forms of relief. Though it is a just, moral, and even legal obligation to prevent widespread death in prisons where no social distancing can occur, the necessity goes beyond that: prisons are incredibly porous places that are embedded in the communities that surround them. More than 8,600 correctional officers move back and forth between prisons and the wider community a day; this is to say 4 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
¬ MAY 13, 2020
nothing of the scores of other workers like medical workers and food vendors who do the same. If the severity of the outbreak within Illinois prisons is known and the need to address it is agreed upon, then what has gotten in the way of drastic action?
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s early as March 12, activists called on Pritzker to release elderly prisoners from state prisons in anticipation of a wider outbreak. After the first registered death in an Illinois prison on March 30, activists turned to litigation to address the crisis. Three cases seeking to compel Governor J.B. Pritzker and the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) to speed up the release of prisoners using mechanisms already available within state law were filed on April 2 by a consortium of local civil rights attorneys and advocates. On April 13, a U.S. District Court judge, consolidating the two cases that had been filed in federal court, denied the request for emergency relief, essentially saying that there must be time given for IDOC to create a more effective response. Though the request for emergency relief was denied, these two cases have yet to be ruled upon and the ball is now in the court of the civil rights organizations to either amend their argument or to push forward, said Alan Mills, executive director of the Uptown People’s Law Center (UPLC), one of the organizations behind the suits. The Illinois Supreme Court declined to take up the third case. According to Mills, even before the outbreak occurred, past litigation had compelled the Department of Corrections to address the insufficiency of its medical care. In 2013, the UPLC filed a lawsuit against the IDOC stating that more than 50,000 prisoners were experiencing needless pain due to the inadequacy of medical care in the state’s prisons. After a federal
judge ruled in 2017 that the IDOC must systematically address these insufficiencies, a 2019 agreement imposed a court-approved monitor that would oversee a complete overhaul of how medical care is provided to the state’s prisoners. Though a team of federal monitors has pressed for compliance, the overhaul has been ongoing; if the outbreak is any indication, its implementation has been underwhelming. Though a widespread release of prisoners has not occured at the speed that UPLC and its partners are arguing is necessary, Pritzker has taken some slight steps towards addressing the crisis. In late March, Pritzker signed an executive order which stopped the transfer of inmates from county jails to state prisons, something for which he was criticized by Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, the Illinois Sheriffs’ Association, and later, the Sun-Times editorial board. He also signed an order which gives IDOC permission to allow “medically vulnerable” inmates out of prison temporarily for as long as the governor’s emergency proclamation is in effect. Inmates that meet medical criteria would be granted furloughs to slow the spread of COVID-19 in prisons.
The number of prisoners released on medical furlough is woefully insufficient, however, according to Jennifer Soble, executive director of the nonprofit Illinois Prison Project, which advocates for the state’s incarcerated population and provides representation to some of its members, and is one of the organizations behind the lawsuits. Soble and Mills put the number of prisoners granted medical furlough at around fifteen to twenty, a low number which may be a product of the IDOC’s very narrow definition of what constitutes “medically vulnerable.” And while Soble, a former federal public defender, noted that Pritzker has also taken a step to remove barriers to being released on discretionary good time by waiving a notification requirement, she said that up until now, these steps “have not resulted in any substantial number of increases or in any substantial increase in the pace of releases.” (Pritzker’s office and the IDOC did not respond to requests for comment.) It doesn’t have to be this way, she noted. “It would be one thing if the IDOC didn’t have the legal tools that it needed to release people who were sick or old or to restructure
“It would be one thing if the IDOC didn’t have the legal tools that it needed to restructure the prison population to allow for social distancing...That’s not the world we live in. The Illinois legislature has given the IDOC so many tools to react responsibly to this crisis.”
