Illinois To Make Early Releases
Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn is planning to release 1,000 inmates from prisons across Illinois the next several months in an effort to save money, according to the Chicago Tribune.
An Illinois Department of Corrections prisons spokeswoman said only “low-level, non-violent” offenders who are in the last year of their sentence will qualify for early release and will be fitted with electronic monitoring devices. Officials with the corrections agency and the Quinn administration declined to provide specifics after announcing the plan late this afternoon. Corrections spokeswoman Januari Smith said the bulk of those to be released and placed on supervised parole will be drug and property crime offenders. The move is estimated to save the agency about $5 million a year, Smith said, though Quinn is giving corrections an extra $2 million to monitor those who are released. The release of prisoners is another symptom of the state’s dire fiscal situation, and is coupled with Quinn’s plan to layoff approximately 1,000 prison workers.
The department will layoff 419 workers effective at month’s end. Meanwhile, Quinn gave the department an extra $2 million to help divert offenders from state prisons. That money will go toward drug treatment and other community-based alternatives in an effort to reduce the number of people who receive short prison sentences. Prison officials say 47 percent of offenders released from custody each year serve six months or less behind bars. Another $2 million will be used to monitor the 1,000 inmates facing release, including assigning each a parole officer and providing drug treatment and other rehabilitative programs. In a statement, Quinn said the changes are focused on “protecting the public while also modernizing and improving the state’s correctional system” …
Prison reform advocates said releasing non-violent offenders close to the end of their sentences will free up valuable resources to allow prison officials to focus on rehabilitative programming for those with longer sentences, and in turn reduce the rate of inmates who often return to jail. “We should be using tax dollars to wisely to be locking people up who present a physical threat to the community,” said Hanke Gratteau, executive director of the John Howard Association and a former Tribune managing editor. “But to just lock people up to punish them without programming doesn’t make any sense. If you take these people out of the system, you free up money to focus on helping people get jobs, go to school and set them on a better path.”
The money comes out of a $1.2 billion discretionary fund lawmakers gave Quinn to use as he sees fit to boost funding for state agencies. Quinn also tapped his discretionary fund earlier this week to help restore $16 million in funding for probation services after they were slashed by 44 percent – from $65.1 million last year to $36.5 million this year. The additional money came after Illinois Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas Fitzgerald warned the budget cuts were threatening public safety.
The state currently houses approximately 46,000 prisoners.
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