AFSCME calls for special task force to investigate release programs, safety in state prison system
In a letter sent Jan. 7 to Illinois Senate President John Cullerton and House Speaker Michael Madigan, AFSCME Council 31 called for the immediate creation of “a special joint task force, including legislators from both parties and both chambers, to answer urgent questions about the administration of the corrections department.” AFSCME members include some 11,000 frontline employees of the Illinois Department of Corrections.
“Recent events and news reports reveal a system spiraling out of control. Yet Governor Pat Quinn’s most substantive action has been to create new appointees answerable solely to him,” AFSCME executive director Henry Bayer wrote. “This response is wholly inadequate on its face.”
Bayer added: “[W]e are alarmed by the premature release of nearly 2,000 inmates through two IDOC initiatives—one conducted in secret—that have put violent and repeat offenders back in Illinois communities, despite pledges to the contrary. News reports indicate that many of these individuals have already committed new crimes. … Now, more than two weeks after the secret program was revealed, we still know almost nothing about how it was conceived, designed, approved or implemented. The public deserves a full accounting of who in IDOC management or the governor’s office authorized or was aware of the MGT Push program.”
Further, Bayer pointed out, “for years AFSCME has raised concerns about reckless budget cuts, mismanagement and neglect that have left state prisons severely short of staff”. Yet it appears that the premature-release programs were intended to “justify the governor’s threatened layoff of more than 1,000 prison employees.”
Bayer emphasized that “state prisons are increasingly dangerous” due to lack of staff, noting recent “disturbing outbreaks of violence” by prison inmates against employees at the Pinckneyville, Hill, Dixon, Pontiac, Illinois River, Logan and other facilities.
“These crises cannot be allowed to fester. Past patterns of cuts, mismanagement and neglect must not be repeated,” Bayer concluded. “The legislature has both the power to oversee the operation of state prisons, and the responsibility to serve as a co-equal check on the executive branch. In that capacity, I urge you to appoint a special joint task force to seek answers to these mushrooming scandals for the benefit of the people of Illinois.”
