Illinois houses an estimated 49,000 people in its prison system, and a recent report finds it’s one of the most overcrowded systems in the nation, according to the Jacksonville Journal Courier. In fact, only Alabama’s prisons are more crowded. The Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics’ most recent census of prisoners found Illinois is operating at more than 170 percent of design capacity.
“There is not enough capacity to provide programming for these folks,” he said. “There are no more education programs; there aren’t even any jobs for them to do. They simply sit there and stare at the walls, or a TV set if they are ‘lucky’ — and I put that in big quotes — enough to have one. And these are not necessarily all people in segregation.”
“We’re asking the people who work at the Department of Corrections to do an impossible job, which is to care for a huge number of both physically and mentally ill people with no money,” he said. “And they don’t do a very good job at it — but not because they’re terrible doctors, but because they’re asked to do the impossible.”
A Pew Research Study found Illinois is 50th among states in the amount of money it spends delivering medical services in prisons.
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