A near-riot in Cook County Jail and a dramatic escape by a prisoner have sparked renewed warnings and recriminations over conditions at the excessively crowded penal facility.
The warehousing of about 9,000 prisoners in the jail-1,800 over capacity- and tension over a lockdown were cited by a court-appointed monitor on Wednesday as the leading causes of Tuesday`s disturbances, which injured 52 inmates and 15 jail guards.
Jail officials attributed the most recent trouble to another chronic problem: gangs.
Division 5 of the jail, like other sections of the institution, was ripe for the violence that tore through its corridors and cells, according to the John Howard Association, a prison watchdog group. Although the division is designed to house 1,112 inmates, it holds 2,008, forcing many to sleep on the floors and in common areas.
”You can only glue the sides together so long before it pops,” said Michael Mahoney, executive director of the association, which has been appointed by federal judges to monitor the overcrowding. ”You stretch the medical services, the food services, the maintenance. Despite the best efforts of the staff, you can`t do everything you`re mandated to do.”
On Wednesday, jail administrators, association officials and inmates painted a nightmarish picture of an institution full of hardened criminals, unsanitary conditions and some corrupt guards who smuggle in and sell drugs to inmates.
One former inmate who was incarcerated in the jail this summer described prisoners plugging their ears with toilet paper so that cockroaches would not crawl inside as they slept.
”The conditions are madness,” said the former inmate, Taurus Zambrella, 32, of East Chicago, Ind., who was jailed after he hadn`t completed probation for a drug charge. ”It`s impossible to get sleep in there when you have 107 men in a room intended for 40.”
Cook County Sheriff Michael Sheahan said Tuesday`s melee involved only a small portion of the jail`s prisoners and did not mean that order in the facility had broken down.
About 90 inmates took part in the uprising, which was confined to Division 5 and, in its most violent outburst, lasted only 15 to 20 minutes, he said.
Others, however, asserted that the disturbance was partly an outgrowth of long-standing conditions, and say it is a wonder violence does not erupt more frequently.
”I consider it remarkable that there haven`t been more serious situations before this,” said Richard Hess, a lawyer for the Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago, which in 1974 filed a lawsuit arguing that the overcrowding was unconstitutional. ”They`ve been keeping a lid on a bad situation.”
The major security problem for the jail, Hess said, is in some tiers where up to 50 inmates mill about incessantly in small ”day rooms” because officials don`t have enough cells for them.
”It`s hard to control the inmates, to keep gangs from fighting,” Hess said.
Opinions differed on exactly what caused Tuesday`s violence.
Mahoney said that the association`s interviews with inmates revealed that the prisoners in Division 5 had been simmering since Thursday, when the building was placed on lockdown following the escape of accused drug kingpin Ergodan Kurap.
One guard has been suspended and two others are still being questioned by investigators in connection with the escape. Kurap remains at large.
While the entire jail was placed on lockdown for two days, the order remained in effect in Division 5 until Wednesday, according to jail officials. In this case, Sheahan said, the prisoners couldn`t go outside or to the library.
According to Mahoney, this infuriated prisoners who thought they were being punished for an escape accomplished, by jail officials` own admission, with a bribe to a guard.
On Wednesday, Mahoney said he had received numerous complaints from inmates in Division 5 alleging that the lockdown had been more severe than Sheahan described. Inmates told Mahoney that they couldn`t take showers or get medical supplies, and that the disturbance was touched off when guards beat some of them.
Inmates also alleged that guards needlessly abused prisoners during their attempt to quell the violence, Mahoney said. A spokesman for Sheahan said the allegations are being investigated.
”While we recognize the value of lockdowns to get control, the question is whether the lockdown was necessary for as long as it lasted,” Mahoney said. ”It was not the result of a riot, it was the result of an inmate getting out of the facility.”
In contrast, Sheahan blamed gang leaders for inciting the trouble.
He gave this account:
At mid-afternoon Tuesday, inmates on four of the 24 tiers in Division 5 began breaking windows. Guards moved to stop them.
Later, between 4:30 and 5 p.m., inmates on a fifth tier demanded that jail Executive Director J.W. Fairman and other officials sit down with leaders of three gangs to negotiate an end to the lockdown. When the officials refused, the inmates rioted.
”They wanted a confrontation; they wanted to challenge the system,”
Sheahan said of the rioters. ”They saw (partial lockdown) as an opportunity to get media attention, to bring attention to themselves.”
”We are dealing with murderers, rapists and armed robbers,” Sheahan added. ”They armed themselves with pieces of broken furniture and mop handles; they put bars of soap inside socks to make saps. We found (makeshift knives).”
Damage amounted to $5,000, mostly in broken windows, he said.
Sheahan said he is eager to end the jail`s problems and to punish rebellious prisoners.
But he acknowledged that not all staff, including some of the 2,400 guards, want or welcome his reforms, saying that some employees are criminals who smuggle and sell drugs at the jail.
”I would say 85 to 90 percent of staff want us to succeed,” Sheahan said of himself and Fairman, the jail chief and a 22-year veteran of the Illinois prison system. ”The rest don`t.”
The disturbance led to renewed calls for quick solutions to the crowding. Cook County Commissioner Maria Pappas touted improved computer links among municipal, county and state law enforcement agencies as a way to speed up the processing of prisoners. Computer software costing $1.5 million would facilitate such improvements and open up hundreds of beds in the jail, Pappas contended.
Sheahan said other efforts to increase jail capacity either planned or under way include boot camps for first-time offenders, consigning inmates to work camps in Downstate Illinois, using Chicago Housing Authority space to hold nonviolent inmates and sharply expanding the number of supervised crews to clean city lots and remove graffiti from CTA bus and rail cars.
One of the simplest ways to maintain order in the short term, Mahoney said, is to ensure that inmates receive some time outdoors or with visitors.
Other than that, he added, ”There`s no quick fix.”
