Savings from shuttering Stateville’s maximum security prison minimal as reception center grows

Last fall, Illinois emptied the maximum security prison at Stateville Correctional Center amid a lawsuit over the aging prison’s deteriorating condition.

But as state lawmakers negotiate the first state operating budget since the prison was shuttered, Gov. JB Pritzker’s administration is proposing that Stateville receive nearly as much funding as when the maximum security section of the facility was open.

The governor’s proposed operating budget for Stateville in the upcoming year is $148 million. That’s down from $159 million budgeted in the current fiscal year — and less than $150 million is expected to be actually spent —  but more than the facility’s $146 million budget two years ago, when the maximum security prison was operational for the entire year.

Officials said the reason the proposed funding is in the same ballpark as recent Stateville budgets is in part because of the increased population of the two remaining facilities on the Joliet-area campus, a reception and classification center and a minimum security unit.

Illinois Department of Corrections spokesperson Naomi Puzzello said that as of May 14, more than 1,400 people were housed at the two Stateville facilities that remain open. At this time last year the population of Stateville, which still included 430 people in the maximum security prison, was about 1,550, Puzzello said.

The population of the Northern Reception Center, or NRC, which has a capacity of 1,900 and houses people coming from county jails and court in northern Illinois before they’re sent to another IDOC facility, fluctuates widely, Puzzello said.

All facilities on Stateville’s campus remain under one line item in the current budget. Before the maximum security facility was closed, the John Howard Association pushed for that facility and NRC to be separated in budgets and other reports, said Jennifer Vollen-Katz, executive director at the prison watchdog John Howard Association.  Without that separation, and given the population fluctuations at NRC, it’s hard to know whether the budget allocation is justified, she said.

“By grouping them all together, it’s much harder to understand what’s going on administratively in each of the buildings,” she said.

Asked about the Stateville budget, Democratic state Sen. Rachel Ventura, whose district includes Stateville, said IDOC “reallocated staff to fully support” the NRC, which is part of the reason funding is at relatively the same level.

“With Stateville empty and the NRC now fully staffed, we can focus on rebuilding Stateville into a state-of-the-art facility centered on rehabilitation,” Ventura, who has pushed for better quality of life at Stateville, said in a text message. “Investing in better living conditions and meaningful programming is essential to reducing recidivism and improving outcomes.”

Still, the increase in population at the NRC raises questions that “should better be explained” by IDOC, said state Sen. Terri Bryant of Murphysboro, a Republican who worked at the department for 20 years.

This year’s state budget is being put together amid Pritzker’s $900 million, yearslong plan to demolish Stateville and Logan women’s prison in downstate Lincoln and and replace them with new prisons on Stateville’s campus.

The state Capital Development Board in April named as construction managers a joint venture between Vanir, a California-based firm, and Chicago-based firm Milhouse. Vanir has recently provided its construction management services to San Quentin prison in California — a facility even older than Stateville.

The lawsuit over Stateville’s conditions that led to the prison being emptied before a deadline last September was settled last month.

The Stateville budget request reflects a $10.6 million reduction for salaries and the state’s contributions to Social Security, but a $100,000 increase for “commodities, reflecting rising costs for food, clothing and household items,” Puzzello said.

The bulk of Stateville’s budget each year goes to staff, contributions to Social Security and contracts, which could include health care and education.

The staff headcount at Stateville is projected to decrease by 10, to 872, in the coming year, according to the governor’s budget proposal. Much of the staff that previously worked at the maximum security facility has been transferred to the NRC.

James Soto, who was wrongfully incarcerated for 42 years and now advocates against building new prisons, including the rebuilding of Stateville,  said he would expect the budget to be reduced by more than the governor’s proposal suggests.

“It should be far less, because you have no — zero — amount of people behind that wall. I don’t get it,” Soto said of the facility’s proposed budget. “It begs the question of, what are we doing here?”