By agreeing on reforms within Illinois’ troubled prison system, Gov. Jim Edgar and House Republicans have signed an intraparty peace treaty aimed at helping GOP legislative fortunes in the Nov. 5 election.
For Edgar, the decision to acquiesce is a major admission that the prison system is a mess. But it also muzzles any more embarrassing disclosures about drugs and gangs from a House committee investigating the prisons.
House Republicans now will train their investigation on more mundane prison issues. But their agreement with Edgar gives them a boost in pursuing a law-and-order campaign strategy.
That fact was not lost on Democrats, who Tuesday accused the Republican-run state government of making a politically expedient deal to try to defuse the prison issue well before the election, when control of both chambers of the General Assembly will be at stake.
And a major state employees’ union traditionally allied with Democrats released a report that said the GOP pact stops far short of making badly needed, though costly, prison reforms.
Edgar’s prison changes, announced Monday by state Department of Corrections Director Odie Washington, include putting the maximum-security Pontiac Correctional Center on permanent lockdown, designating a minimum-security prison as gang-free, eliminating inmate picnics at maximum-security prisons and instituting random drug testing among guards who have contact with inmates.
Edgar’s prisons agency mostly had defended itself during harsh questioning before the House Judiciary Committee. But Tuesday Edgar said the committee’s hearings “made us aware of some problems that, perhaps, we were not aware of.”
The abrupt change of heart came after the governor’s deputy chief of staff, Howard Peters, a former state prisons chief, was dropped as Edgar’s point man with House Republicans on the prisons issue.
Sources familiar with the House GOP investigation said Peters would overrule Washington and deny the Judiciary Committee access to information or witnesses.
Peters denied that he tried to thwart the committee’s work. He also went so far as to say that the changes “were going to occur” anyway, with or without the House GOP probe.
But as the committee hearings continued with more embarrassing disclosures, Edgar brought in a different emissary, chief legal counsel Bill Roberts, who negotiated the changes.
“They made a good decision to acknowledge the gang problem, a good decision to do the drug testing,” said Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Wheaton), co-chairman of the panel.
But Steve Brown, a spokesman for House Democratic leader Michael Madigan of Chicago, called the changes “half-baked.” He said the agreement came after Edgar “put out an order that he was tired of being embarrassed.”
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents 11,000 prison workers, also blasted portions of the Republican agreement.
The union called for new prison construction, more staff, strict adherence to prison rules, elimination of any recognition of gangs and their powers and alternative sentencing for non-violent offenders.
