Representatives for prison workers and people incarcerated at Illinois’ Joliet Treatment Center described poor mental healthcare and unsafe conditions during a hearing held by state lawmakers Tuesday.
Legislators called the hearing in response to an investigation by The Marshall Project, WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times that revealed 70 fires at the Joliet Treatment Center in recent years. The prison was designed to provide intensive mental health treatment, but men there said they were so despondent over conditions that they set their cells — or themselves — on fire. The consequences were often tragic: One man needed a skin graft, another lost a leg, and two died.
The joint hearing of the state House of Representatives’ Mental Health and Addiction and Restorative Justice and Public Safety committees was called by Democratic state Reps. Lindsey LaPointe and Kelly Cassidy, both of Chicago. Cassidy said she had long been frustrated with poor prison conditions in the state.
“‘We’re trying’ is no longer going to be enough of an answer,” she said.
Illinois Department of Corrections Director Latoya Hughes testified that 47% people in the state’s prisons have mental illness, and correctional facilities were never designed to provide long-term treatment. Still, prison administrators said the access to psychiatrists at the Joliet prison was phenomenal, and men there can participate in group therapy and activities.
But an employee at the prison, as well as lawyers for incarcerated people, painted a very different picture before the dozens of people in attendance at the hearing in downtown Chicago.
Amanda Antholt, a lawyer who represents people incarcerated at the Joliet Treatment Center and managing attorney at the disability law firm Equip For Equality, said people there rarely get individual therapy. Instead, she said, they face harsh punishments. For example, she said officers pepper spray people for engaging in self-harm.
Sheena McClain, a Joliet employee and AFSCME local union president, said the facility had failed to take actions to fight fires, such as installing sprinklers. She said employees are asked “to rush into smoke-filled cells, in some cases with little more than an N-95 mask to protect them.”
The inability to get accurate information about what happens in the state’s prisons was a repeated complaint from legislators during Tuesday’s hearing. State Rep. Gregg Johnson, D-East Moline, worked for 32 years in the Department of Corrections before he became a lawmaker. He said was concerned that he could not get clear answers to his questions.
During the hearing, lawyers for incarcerated people referenced the case of Jason Stephens, who was at the center of the news organizations’ coverage of the dysfunction at the Joliet Treatment Center. In 2024, Stephens repeatedly complained the prison was failing to treat his sickle cell disease, causing him extreme pain. He threatened to harm himself until they gave him help. Then on July 27, 2024 Stephens set a fire in his cell.
Joliet guards left him locked in the smoke-filled cell for around 30 minutes, according to surveillance video reviewed by The Marshall Project. Then, when the fire department put him in an ambulance to go to the hospital, correctional officers would not open the gate for almost 28 more minutes because they were waiting on paperwork and guards to accompany the ambulance. Stephens died two weeks later.
Representatives for the Illinois Department of Corrections told lawmakers at the hearing that they were limited in what information they could share due to pending litigation. Stephens’ estate is suing the department over his death.
Antholt said the officers who were working the night Stephens set the fire that killed him were part of a larger, harmful system.
“Jason Stephens died because he was so desperate to get the help that he needed, that he did the one thing he thought would give the people holding him in that cell no choice but to help him,” Antholt said. “He was wrong.”
Lawmakers also held a second hearing Tuesday about creating an office to provide independent oversight of Illinois’ prison system. And state Sen. Rachel Ventura, a Democrat whose district includes Joliet, recently filed a resolution in the legislature calling for an independent inspection of fire safety issues at the Joliet Treatment Center.