Illinois - Hundreds Rally to Save Prison
About 700 Council 31 members and other supporters of Pontiac Cor-rectional Center marched on the Capitol in Springfield in November to stop a plan by the Illinois Department of Corrections to shutter the maximum-security prison.
SAVE PONTIAC! – Chanting “Save our jobs!” hundreds of Council 31 members and supporters march on the Illinois state Capitol.
Photo Credit: Linc Cohen
Springfield, Illinois
About 700 Council 31 members and other supporters of Pontiac Cor-rectional Center marched on the Capitol in Springfield in November to stop a plan by the Illinois Department of Corrections to shutter the maximum-security prison.
“To see so many people there with one common purpose was great,” Danny Jarrett, president of Pontiac Correctional Center Local 494 (Council 31), told the Pontiac Daily Leader. “There was representation from other AFSCME locals from all around the state. We have a lot at stake here: Transfers from Pontiac’s population will affect the safety of officers at every correctional center.”
Members of Council 31 — which represents most of Pontiac’s 570 employees — delivered to the capitol about 500 letters written by Pontiac-area schoolchildren, describing how their families would be hurt by plans to close the prison by Dec. 31.
The next day, a Livingston County judge, acting on a lawsuit brought by Council 31, temporarily blocked the layoff of Pontiac workers pending resolution of the union’s grievance that the state failed to meet its obligation to bargain with AFSCME first. In another legal victory, a Johnson County judge approved Council 31's request for a restraining order that temporarily prevents further inmate transfers.
Cameron Watson, a corrections officer at the high-minimum-security Jacksonville Correctional Center and president of Local 3549 (Council 31), says the push to close the 1,600-bed Pontiac Prison makes other Illinois prisons more perilous: “By closing a maximum-security prison, they are pushing maximum inmates into medium facilities and medium inmates into facilities like mine.”
More than 45,000 adult inmates are housed in Illinois prisons built for just 34,000.
