CONDITIONS AT TAMMS
Reforming Tamms
Advocates who labored for more than a decade to reform Tamms Correctional Facility, Illinois' controversial supermax prison, achieved significant progress this month when Illinois Department of Corrections Director Michael P. Randle unveiled a new plan to improve conditions at the site.
During its brief but dubious history, Tamms has been called "inhumane" and a place of "psychological torture" by human rights advocates and legal experts alike. Inmates are warehoused in isolation, barred from contact with the outside world and with others within the facility. It is not uncommon for prisoners confined in such isolation to suffer from mental illness.
The Roderick MacArthur Justice Center has joined other prison reform groups, such as Tamms Year Ten, in urging state officials to close the controversial facility. While stopping short of that goal, Randle introduced a ten-point plan that aims to alleviate some of the most flagrant problems at the prison. In addition to calling for more mental health screenings, his plan also allows for congregate religious services, eased restrictions on reading materials and an increased access to phone calls, showers and other privileges. His full plan can be read here.
These reforms are clearly a step in the right direction. Regrettably, however, Randle's plan is short on specifics. He also fails to make clear whether the changes he proposes will be permanently codified in Administrative Regulations.
Of particular concern, Randle's plan proposes no changes in the unacceptably vague criteria governing which prisoners are eligible for transfer to Tamms in the first place.
Tamms was created as a short-term punishment for prisoners who commit serious rule infractions and to quell violence in other Illinois prisons. Yet the rules for how and why prisoners are sent to the supermax are so ambiguous that any prisoner could be found eligible for placement at Tamms. Meanwhile, the entire justification for Tamms' existence – that it reduces violence and disciplinary problems throughout the state prison system – lacks credibility.
Randle should have established narrow, objective criteria for transfer to the supermax, like those in HB 2633, sponsored by Representative Julie Hamos. With no clear transfer guidelines, Randle's proposals to review the assignment of long-term Tamms inmates, to hold transfer hearings, and to allow prisoners to appeal their detention at Tamms may have little practical effect.
Some experts have rightly compared Tamms to the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. While the President has renounced the conditions at Guantanamo and ordered the facility to eventually close, Tamms continues to be Illinois' warehouse of long-term isolation.
Randle's 10-point plan moves several steps toward the humane treatment of Tamms inmates. We have yet to see how firmly the Illinois Department of Corrections is committed to protecting the human rights of these prisoners.
Updated (09/23/2009)
Former Inmates Describe Psychological Torture at State Supermax Prison
During Illinois House Committee Hearing
The Illinois House of Representatives Committee on Prison Reform held a hearing today in Chicago to review the current conditions at Tamms Supermax Prison—a "supermaximum security" prison in southern Illinois where prisoners are sent for extra punishment. The prison was intended for short-term incarceration (1-2 years) during which time prisoners are in permanent solitary confinement. However, 88 men have been at Tamms since the prison opened 10 years ago and are being held indefinitely.
"Permanent solitary confinement, often for years at a time with no end in sight, is a form of psychological torture, and it often leads to mental illness," said Jean Maclean Snyder, a former MacArthur Justice Center attorney who has represented Tamms’ prisoners in the past. "And when some of these men finally do return to society, Tamms has left them worse off than before they went in. It’s time to reevaluate the effectiveness of supermax prisons."
They’re also extremely expensive. According to the Illinois Department of Corrections, the average annual cost of housing a prisoner at Tamms is two to three times as much as any other adult prison in Illinois.
"The fact that we’re paying tens of thousands of dollars more to lock people up at Tamms when there is no benefit to the prisoner or the larger society is mind boggling," said Locke Bowman, legal director of the MacArthur Justice Center. "Throwing more money away on an abusive system at Tamms that doesn’t work is not the answer."
Mental health professionals, prisoners’ family members, MacArthur Justice Center attorneys, and advocates testified at the hearing and are calling on the Illinois House of Representatives to end psychological torture at Tamms.
Download press release (pdf)
April 2008
