In mid-March, there were no cases of COVID-19 at Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet. By April 6, some 85 people were infected, with 29 staff members among them. Two inmates have died of complications from the virus. The infection is now spreading so rapidly through the prison that it is reasonable to expect its entire population could be suffering from the novel coronavirus before April is over. At AMITA Health Saint Joseph Medical Center in Joliet, the intensive care unit is already filled with patients from Stateville.
“I’m coughing, I’m wheezing, I haven’t been tested for COVID, there’s several individuals in my wing that haven’t been tested for COVID and have clear symptoms of the virus,” Eugene Ross, a prisoner in segregation at Stateville, said in a voice recording delivered to members of the media by inmate advocates. Ross complained that authorities had taken measures to prevent inmates from placing phone calls to their families, that food supplies were dwindling, and that a plan was underway to move prisoners into a condemned wing of the facility that he referred to as “a torture chamber.”
Since the COVID-19 pandemic hit the U.S. this March, the Montana supreme court has instructed limited jurisdiction judges to “release as many prisoners as you are able, especially those being held for non-violent offenses.” Cook County courts have received no such guidance, however, at least not publicly.
However, Pritzker has vowed to place criminal justice reform at the top of his agenda, setting himself apart from a past generation of Democrats who collaborated with southern Republicans on prison-packing tough-on-crime policies (Joe Biden comes to mind here). That’s what makes his inaction on Stateville so mystifying. He has been willing to spend $171 million of his own fortune to defeat a fellow billionaire, yet he has so far refused to expend any political capital to head off a human rights catastrophe unfolding under his watch.
