Where is stateville prison

The death comes six days after authorities announced another inmate at the correctional facility in Crest Hill had succumbed to the coronavirus, marking the first death from the disease at an Illinois prison. Rice began a year sentence at Stateville in after being convicted of kidnapping and sexually assaulting an year-old boy in Calumet City.

While serving that sentence, Rice got 80 more years when he pleaded guilty in to molesting and killing another year-old boy in Oak Forest nearly three decades earlier. He had previously served six months in connection with the same case after telling authorities in that he struck the boy with his car and hid the body. By then, the Illinois Department of Corrections had placed Stateville and the Sheridan Correctional Center on a two-week lockdown after both inmates and staff had tested positive for the virus.

On Wednesday, Gov. The service members were expected to arrive by the end of the week. Meanwhile, coronavirus cases have also been reported at 10 other Illinois prison facilities, with six more inmates and 11 other employees testing positive for the disease. Advocates for inmates have complained about the prison system not doing more to grant early release to non-violent offenders, prisoners nearing an end of their sentence and thousands of others they say should be let out.

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Cookie banner We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from. By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. Several programs that provide higher education in Illinois prisons have started fundraisers and donation drives to help those inside the prison get supplies to protect them against infection.

The group purchased over 12, bars of soap, nearly 5, surgical face masks, 10, nitrile gloves, 1, isolation gowns, over gallons of hand sanitizer and 1, individual hand sanitizer pumps, according to its website.

But despite these donations, Ehlers, who is also a student in NPEP, wrote in his letters that much of those supplies have not made it to inmates, a statement echoed by other inmates. Without regular access to hand sanitizer, disinfectant wipes or the like, inmates feel they are at constant risk of contamination. Melly Rios said her husband worries that his belongings could be contaminated during regular shakedowns , when correctional officers search cells and the men in them for contraband, sometimes requiring the men to strip their clothes off.

Amid the alleged shakedowns and the lack of cleaning supplies and PPE, the men inside Stateville say they also fear they could be exposed to the virus by making calls to loved ones. During the pandemic, several inmates explained they make calls using an old-fashioned landline phone that is attached to a long cord and passed cell to cell without being sanitized.

The men are responsible for disinfecting the phone themselves, inmates said, but with little to no cleaning supplies, properly sanitizing the phone is impossible. Before Stateville went on lockdown, prisoners were able to go to the prison commissary to buy items like bottled water, toothpaste, soap, Little Debbie cakes and other snacks at the commissary.

But since lockdown, their purchases are made using paper request slips that IDOC says they can submit once a month. Decatur, 29, said he and his cellmate were tested on March 29, and April 1, respectively, and were later told they were infected with COVID It was the last such roundhouse open in the U.

As of May 21, Hess said 85 men were being housed in F-House, including those testing positive, waiting for results, and inmates with jobs in the prison.

But inmates say the poor conditions that F-House was once notorious for, still persist today. Similar claims were made in a lawsuit, Lyons v. Vergara , regarding conditions in F-House. Juan Rodriguez was one of the men moved to F-House in early May. Rodriguez, 33, said he was tested again and on May 8, security staff told him that the test came back positive and he was moved to F-House for a day quarantine. Rodriguez told his wife that other inmates were also moved to F-House after testing positive for the virus, then later told that their results were actually negative.

This caused many to worry they could have contracted the virus while housed with infected inmates in F-House. They are not placed with anyone who is not symptomatic. Rodriguez, who has been at Stateville since on a year sentence for a murder conviction, said he demanded to see a written copy of his test results because he was skeptical of the differing outcomes, but has not received one.

According to Hess, all test results are communicated verbally. With nearly 37, prisoners held across 24 state prison facilities in Illinois, according to a March IDOC prison population data set , the contagion in prisons could also fuel infections in surrounding communities , home to thousands of IDOC staff members. To minimize the risk, civil rights organizations have been calling on IDOC to reduce the prison population.

The Cook County Jail reduced its population by about 1, before the effort was stalled due to a lack of electronic monitoring equipment for home confinement. Other states like North Dakota , Wisconsin and Virginia have taken measures to reduce their prison populations during the pandemic. On March 26, Illinois Governor J. Pritzker issued an executive order temporarily suspending all new prison admissions from county jails. But advocates and family members of incarcerated loved ones have been calling on the governor to issue wider reforms.

Mills points to an existing Illinois law that he says could allow around 9, state prisoners with lower-class felonies to serve the last 90 days of their sentence under home confinement. According to Mills, IDOC has been slow in its efforts to release legally eligible inmates in part because there are not enough personnel to review each case. With the pandemic expected to continue for many months at least, Stateville inmates and their family members and advocates worry that there will be more sickness and death unless IDOC takes significant measures to improve sanitation, testing and isolation measures, and overall health care.

The risk could increase as the state reopens, or if a feared second wave of the virus materializes, since correctional officers could be exposed in their communities and bring the virus into the prison. Meanwhile though COVID has shed more light on the dire sanitary and health conditions inside Stateville, inmates and their supporters say it is only the latest example of the way people are stripped of their basic human rights and dignity once they are incarcerated.

As Illinois officials focus on safely reopening the state and addressing the economic damage wrought by the pandemic, prisoners and their advocates worry that prison reform will fall by the wayside. They are pleading with the public and demanding officials to pay greater attention to the poor conditions and unnecessary suffering in prisons that have been highlighted by COVID, and to keep pushing for reform even after the pandemic ends.

Do you? Correction: An earlier version of this post erroneously attributed a quote from an Illinois Coalition for Higher Education in Prison press release. Anabel Mendoza is a graduate student studying social justice and investigative journalism at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.