This was on my local news channel tonight. Thought I would pass it on for others who may not have access to it.

Closing Its Doors?
Posted May 26, 2004 5:06pm
The gates at Pontiac Correctional Center could permanently close if state lawmakers do not sign off on Governor Rod Blagojevich's budget.

That is one of several options the governor's administration is reviewing in an effort to save money.

Governor Blagojevich says the state could save more than 7 and a half million dollars by closing Pontiac Prison and Stateville Correctional Facility in Joliet.

Pontiac prison ranks second among the top five employers in the city. The 132-year old maximum security prison employs nearly 800 workers, most of who live in Livingston County.

Sergeant D. Beal, Pontiac Prison Employee, said, ''Besides the possibility of the loss of a job you also got a loss of revenue coming into this township, this community. It also means that the convicts that are inmates that are housed here have to be moved elsewhere. And when you overpopulate a prison just like this was when this camp was open its gonna cause more of a risk factor to the officers.''

Under this scenario, Pontiac inmates would be transferred to Thompson Correctional Center, a new prison in Northern Illinois.

The city administrator says Pontiac's mayor has requested a study on what the costs savings would be for the state to close the prison here.

Cheri Lambert with the Pontiac Area Chamber of Commerce said, ''I don't think that we could say that there isn't a business that isn't affected by either doing business with the prison or by any means those businesses doing business with the employees of the facility.''

One business owner says if the prison closed the downtown could suffer a setback.

''We have a lot of things going for us now. Our downtown is getting better and to have a big group of people leave it would be devastating,'' said Kathy McLean of Pickles, Peppers, Pots and Pans.

Pontiac business and city officials say the effects from such a loss could cause more closures in this community that is trying to promote itself for tourism and compete for economic dollars.
In Governor Blagojevich's budget proposal Vandalia prison and another one in Saint Charles would close.

I found this in my local newspaper for today and I though it was interesting.
It came out of The Dispatch newspaper in the Quad Cities not oo far from Thompson prison.
Gov. Rod Blagojevich's plan to close Pontiac Correctional Center and move inmates and staff to the now-vacant Thomson Correctional Center is garnering a lot of attention in the capital, but little in Thomson. "We have had so many rumors, propositions, ideas, until something's done up here we don't move anymore, we don't get excited," said Luanne Bruckner, owner of the Thomson House Villager Lodge. There have been several proposals to open Thomson, but not one has panned out.

Here's a good AP article about the closing of some prisons and opening of Thomson. As much as I hate to see anyone losing their jobs, I don't believe prisons should be used as income generators. I've read opinions written by people who will be affected by the Vandalia closing and they all say pretty much the same thing: we don't want to have to move. Well tough. They chose to work in a prison and prisons are subject to inmate population. I really have little sympathy for people who don't think ahead. It is supply and demand just like factories whose workers are subject to production needs.

I could be mistaken but I thought officers could retire after a certain number of years (20, 30 etc.) rather than having to wait to be 65. Therefore, a significant number of these officers who are about to lose their jobs are young enough that if they have to move to stay in corrections, it shouldn't be THAT big a deal for most of them. Embrace change! There is life outside Vandalia! The ones who are near retirement in their 40's and maybe 50's, it truly sucks. But it happens. It happens to blue collar workers, it happens to white collar workers. Many big name corporations throughout the 80's and 90's were guilty of laying off older workers before they reached retirement age so as to get out of paying benefits.

Anyway, here's the article:

Prisons being used as pawns in game of budget chess

By JOHNO'CONNOR - Associated Press Writer

SPRINGFIELD - A quarter-century ago, Illinois began a prison building spree, adding 22,000 beds to keep pace with an inmate population that more than tripled as tougher sentencing and new drug laws took effect.

But the state's inmate numbers have leveled off in recent years. Two prisons now sit empty, others are only partially filled, and the governor, saying the state overdid it, vows to "close prisons we don't need."

In his state budget, Gov. Rod Blagojevich proposed closing the minimum-security prison in Vandalia and a St. Charles juvenile center to save money and help close a deficit now estimated at more than $2.3 billion.

Now, he is advocating closing the mammoth, 133-year-old Pontiac Correctional Center as well.

Prisons have been used for decades in Illinois to bring jobs to impoverished areas, to reward politicians or as bargaining chips in budget negotiations. The numbers can be easily manipulated to fit arguments for closings or openings. Right now, for example, while some prisons are only partially filled, the three main maximum-security prisons have twice as many inmates as the Corrections Department considers ideal.

The idea of shuttering Pontiac and shifting its inmates to the vacant but brand-new Thomson Correctional Center publicly surfaced Monday in a midnight budget the Democrat-controlled Senate adopted in the vain hope of meeting an adjournment deadline.



Blagojevich has made it clear that Pontiac's future will remain an issue as he and top lawmakers continue to negotiate a new state budget to take effect July 1.

Illinois' inmate population grew 265 percent in the 1980s and '90s as tough new laws, many targeting drug offenders, made prison sentences longer and put more people behind bars. By 2001, the prison population had reached 47,569, up from 13,000 in 1980.

Two more prisons and a juvenile detention center with 4,200 beds were completed in 2001 - but by 2002, the state had run out of money to fully open them.

At the same time, a drop in crime and an improved economy lowered the population. It stands at just over 45,000 today, and officials don't expect a significant increase in the next year.

A prison at Lawrenceville and a youth camp at Kewanee each are less than half full now, and Thomson has yet to open. Blagojevich halted construction on two others, at Hopkins Park and Grayville.

"If we are going to structurally change things and reform things, we have to close prisons," Blagojevich said late last month.

But while the state has 3,200 empty prison beds, it also has 45,000 inmates crowded into space designed for 30,400 - 50 percent over capacity, according to Department of Corrections figures.

As of February, 91 percent of all inmates were in cells of two or more.

The three main maximum-security prisons - Pontiac, Menard and Stateville in Joliet - have 5,973 inmates but ideally would hold half as many, closer to one per cell, the Corrections Department said Friday.

When plans to build Thomson were announced in 1998, the proposed prison was meant to relieve overcrowding at four maximum-security prisons, said Charles Fasano, a lawyer with the prison watchdog John Howard Association. Since then, the infamous Joliet Correctional Center has been closed because of budget cuts.

The idea was "to build a new one that would be cost-effective and very secure and you could put a good number of your fairly serious bad guys there," Fasano said. "That was before we got into this question of, we'll close this and open that. This was supposed to be in addition to."

In a tight budget, priorities change, Blagojevich spokeswoman Abby Ottenhoff said.

The administration thinks it can save $2 million by shifting Pontiac inmates to Thomson, perhaps more in future years because the new prison will be more cost-effective.

"It's a brand-new, state-of-the art, maximum-security facility that has been completed and sitting vacant for two years," Ottenhoff said. "If we can house inmates there more cost-effectively and in a setting that's safer for Corrections employees, then it's absolutely something we should do."

That might make sense, said Sen. Steve Rauschenberger of Elgin, a budget negotiator for Senate Republicans, but it shouldn't be decided on deadline.

"It should be done in a thoughtful way with legislative consultation and some transitional support for communities losing major employers," Rauschenberger said.

Regardless of how prison space is allocated now or how state officials solve the budget crisis, the inmate population won't be stagnant forever. Although expected to grow much more slowly than in the previous two decades, Corrections projects the population to increase 10 percent by 2010, to about 50,000.

Anders Lindall, spokesman for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents prison guards, said the state should be opening Thomson without closing other facilities.

"We need to ... talk about opening and fully utilizing the facilities we've got instead of closing one to open another," Lindall said. "If it requires additional revenue to do that, that's the discussion we need to have."

jims...

I heard exactly that on KMOV.tv news when I was there. The Governor said he wants to close Pontiac and open Thomson but there's no money to open Thomson, his words, not mine.

Rose