CHICAGO—Illinois prison reformers demanded Wednesday that the Chicago Tribune correct an editorial it published about Tamms supermax, the controversial southern Illinois prison condemned for human rights abuses. Ex-prisoners, mothers of current prisoners, and advocates held a protest rally at the historic Tribune building on Wednesday, with several symbolic actions. Four “prophets” delivered the “Ten Corrections” on two stone tablets, and citizens floated dozens of helium balloons up to the fourth floor editorial board conference room window, printed with the message “Do the research before you write.”
Tamms Year Ten, a coalition formed to end inhumane policies at the prison, was invited to meet with the editorial board the hour before the protest, and announced the results of the meeting before the picket began at noon. At the meeting, the prison watchdog group reviewed misconceptions about the prison and urged the editorial board to write a new, fact-based editorial: 1) recognizing that the system provides no way for men at Tamms to earn their way out of isolation; 2) condemning the exceptional cruelty of placing mentally ill prisoners in long-term solitary confinement; 3) acknowledging the lack of clear criteria for placement at Tamms and absence of due process. The group wants the Tribune to set the record straight before important July negotiations with the Illinois Department of Corrections about the future of Tamms.
The recent, unexplained death of a mentally ill prisoner at Tamms was cited by reform advocates as emblematic of failures at the supermax. Robert Foor, incarcerated for residential burglary, had lived at Tamms Correctional Center for ten years. His worsening mental condition, marked by frequent acts of self-mutilation and a suicide attempt, was a source of despair to him. According to a grievance written just three weeks before his death in June, Foor stated that Tamms staff had withheld medications and therapy since March as punishment for filing a grievance against the IDOC’s contracted psychiatrist. (The IDOC concedes that he was not on medication.) Foor was 33 years old and would have been paroled in 2012. His mother Debbie Elshoff stated, “I don’t want this to happen to anyone else’s son. Treatment is a right, not a privilege.” Solitary confinement is known to worsen both mental illness and the violent and self-destructive behaviors associated with it.
Reform advocates applaud the Tribune for running a front-page story about the supermax on February 27, but regret that their May 13 editorial was marred by serious errors of fact and interpretation. Parroting IDOC arguments, the board falsely claimed that all prisoners are sent for acts of violence and disruption, incorrectly asserted that they know why they are sent to Tamms, misrepresented an important Ohio Supreme Court case, mistakenly stated that Tamms had curbed gang violence, neglected to mention the plight of mentally ill prisoners, and dismissed the harm caused by long-term isolation. The editorial argued against supermax reform legislation HB2633 which would prohibit mentally ill prisoners from being housed at the supermax, and for the first time establish criteria about how prisoners are transferred to and from Tamms. It would also limit stays at the supermax to one year, unless the IDOC determined that doing otherwise would pose a significant risk to staff or inmates. The group maintains that prisoners must have some way to earn their way out of supermax confinement, unless the facility is to remain a cruel and expensive warehouse. Tamms is by far the most expensive way to house a prisoner in the state with per capita costs of $67,000, compared to $20,736 at Menard, $32,693 at Stateville, and $33,031 at Pontiac where death row prisoners are housed.
Prisoners at the supermax are kept in permanent solitary confinement and never leave their cells except to shower or exercise alone in a concrete pen. They are permitted no communal activity, phone calls, contact visits or educational or religious programs. Because of concerns about the treatment of mentally ill prisoners, the lack of due process, and the psychological damage caused by long-term isolation, both Amnesty International London and Human Rights Watch have called upon the Illinois Department of Corrections and Governor Quinn to immediately alleviate conditions at the prison. Although the prison was designed as a short-term “shock treatment program,” it was discovered last year that one-third of prisoners have been there for over a decade. Quinn recently appointed a new IDOC director with the top priority of reviewing conditions at Tamms supermax. Illinois legislators and Tamms Year Ten will meet with Director Michael Randle in July.
Although it is a serious subject, the protestors hoped their good-natured and interactive protest would encourage greater social responsiveness on the part of the Tribune. “Let us help you stay relevant,” read one of their signs. Tamms Year Ten also delivered to the board textbooks on logic and argumentation to help them improve their writing. “This editorial is did not carefully weigh the important public policy issues,” said Laurie Jo Reynolds, an organizer for Tamms Year Ten who has taught composition and rhetoric, “Instead, the reader experiences a chain of non-sequiturs, and then suddenly a conclusion.” The group, which includes a number of college instructors, counted five factual errors, three false premises, three unproven assertions, two errors of omission and one false analogy in the 791 word editorial. Tribune security would not allow the “prophets” to deliver the stone tablets, but the group commended Editorial Board editor Bruce Dold, for coming out to accept a balloon.