McHenry County Blog

When I was on the Prison Reform Committee in the Illinois House during the late 1990′s, I expressed my constituents’ and my lack of belief at why the Illinois Department of Corrections could not keep drugs out of state prisons.

After all, there are only three main access points:

• the visitors
• the vendors
• the guards

The guards’ union got really disturbed when I uncovered statistics that showed a higher percentage of correctional officers than inmates testing positive for drugs in some prisons.

Today an indictment from the McHenry County State’s Attorney reveals that the Sheriff’s Department has been unable to keep drugs out of the McHenry County Jail.

Here’s the information that appeared today on the State’s Attorney’s press release about indictments:

EDWARD A. MERCADO
13-11836
13CF338
WOODS
DOB: 02/27/1974
MCSP
1811 WOODSIDE DRIVE
WOODSTOCK, IL 60098

UNLAWFUL POSSESSION OF CONTRABAND IN A PENAL INSTITUTION,
UNLAWFUL POSSESSION OF A CONTROLLED SUBSTANCE, UNLAWFUL
POSSESSION OF HYPODERMIC SYRINGE, UNLAWFUL POSSESSION OF DRUG
PARAPHERNALIA

The information on the McHenry County Sheriff’s Department web site about Mercado appears below:

According to the indictment, the arrest was made on April 16th.

State Rep. Emily McAsey, a Democrat from Lockport, thought she had a good idea.

And what does a relatively new legislator do with a new idea…especially if you are a lawyer, as McAsey is?

You have it drafted into a bill.

McAsey’s bill would increase the inmate co-pay for non-emergency medical visits from $2 go $5 a visit.

$336,000 extra money coming in from prisoners is the claim.

But wait.

Might not the higher co-pay have a significant affect on utilization?

When a co-pay of $2 was imposed, how much less medical service was rendered?

If significant, did the costs for the outside medical providers decrease proportionately?

$2 represented 20% or a prisoner’s monthly income, one inmate has let me know.

It seems conceivable that more than doubling the co-pay will cut utilization even more.

So, the higher co-pay might lead to the delivery of significantly lower amounts of medical care.

If so, shouldn’t the outside vendor be paid significantly less?

At two forums I attended on then-State Rep. Penny Pullen’s behalf I made predictions about the danger black women had of becoming HIV-infected.

One was a debate with a left-wing law professor at John Marshall Law School in Chicago and the other was on a pilot of a talk show hosted by Faye Wattleton, who had just resigned as president of Planned Parenthood.

At both events a black woman stood up and shouted angrily.

That was probably in 1991 when I was working for Pullen.

My logic was based on male prisoners being released from prison with being told they were infected with the AIDs virus.

Based on a study by the CDC, one-third of one percent of male inmates each year became HIV-infected while in Illinois prisons. (That transmission rate sounds low, but, if it existed in the general Illinois population, all of the infections through the mid-1990′s would have occurred in one year.)

I couldn’t think of any reason the rate of transmission would be less from sharing tattoo needles, hypodermic needles or getting raped by HIV-positive men elsewhere in the country than it was in Illinois.

There was no serious attempt to stop the spread of HIV in Illinois prisons then and there still isn’t.

Since a disproportionate number of black men were imprisoned and they weren’t tested on the way out—even if they were married—it stood to reason that black women were in danger. Even if an ex-convict would be willing to avoid having intercourse if he knew he was HIV-infected, IDOC saw no reason to let the prisoners know before they were released into the general populaiton.

And, I’m told, that when men get out of prison, it’s sex and drugs they want first.

So, in those two Chicago forums I stated my prediction.

Now comes USA Today, reporting http://www.usatoday.com/yourlife/health/medical/2011-02-05-blacks-aids_N.htm on the Feb 4th Centers for Disease Control Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report that shows I was unfortunately correct those 20 year ago.

The evidence:

“The rate of HIV diagnosis among black men is eight times that of whites, and the rate for black women is 19 times that of whites…”

The author talks about prison, but still doesn’t get the point I made above. Here’s what Dr. Kevin Fenton, Director of CDC’s National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention, days:

“High rates of male imprisonment are another factor, he added. ‘This leads to imbalances in male-to-female ratios in the community, which in turn result in sexual networks which facilitate transmission of HIV.’”

I guess he’s part right, but he’s missing something public health types have ignored for decades—HIV is spread in prisons and they and corrections officials have done virtually nothing to deter that.

The Illinois Department of Corrections generally doesn’t.

It seems to be it should be renamed the Illinois Prison System or something more descriptive of its role of keeping crooks off the street.

Now comes along a program that so far is providing successful.

I remember it’s being championed by now-Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky while she was sitting across the aisle from me in the Illinois House.

That’s the really liberal Schakowsky.

But even liberals have some good ideas once in a while.

Allowing pregnant women to keep their children they bear while in prison seems to have been one of them.

This Chicago Sun-Times article by Huey Freeman tells of how a special unit in the Decatur Correctional Center gives new mothers a private room and six weeks without a work assignment after their baby is born.

“Of the 25 offenders that have gone through the program, non, zero, have returned to this prison,”

DOC Director Michael Randle says in the article.

September 25, 2009, McHenry County Blog ran the press release from McHenry County State’s Attorney about Marcus Sessom.

Although the sentence could have been from 2-10 years, according to the release, Sessom is already back on the street.

Thanks to an alert reader for alerting me by putting a comment under the article.

I asked State’s Attorney Lou Bianchi for details and he wrote me,

“Marcus Sesson has been released.  As to the charge of Intimidation, for which he was convicted, our office refused to negotiate with the defense, went to trial and Judge (Sharon) Prather sentenced him to 2 ½ years to the Department of Corrections.

“Based upon the statutory good time, etc. (which I believe was passed to ease jail crowding) he only had to serve 9 months.

“He was given credit for time served since he was arrested on May 14, 2009 to November 9, 2009.”

Remember the “Revolving Door” TV attack ad against Massachusetts Governor and Democratic Party presidential candidate Michael Dukakis?

The successor to that ad is why appointed Governor Pat Quinn is not going to become elected Governor Pat Quinn.

A little 30-second ad.

That’s all it will take.

The significance of Quinn’s mistake was signaled by Chicago’s newspapers yesterday.

There was a little story in the top right hand corner of the Chicago Tribune’s front page.

It referred readers to a full page of stories inside.

The top of the inside page showed the press conference at which Quinn said,
“Oops,” and passed the blame off to his Department of Corrections Director.

On the bottom of the page was the more devastating story.

There’s a before and after photo of Jennifer Hall.

Before what?

Before homeless man Derrick King, who is black, attacked Hall and her boyfriend when they told him they did not have any cigarettes.Hall had hair down to her waist before the attack. The photo of her afterwards had this under the photo:

“I woke up bald—no teeth, 85 staples in my head—out of a drug-induced coma.

For that August attack, to which King pleaded guilty, he was sentenced ti three years in prison.

Here’s the kicker in the story:

“But just 18 days after that plea, state records show, King was paroled as part of the early-release program that Pat Quinn on Wednesday called “a big mistake.”

The small front page story says,

“Derrick King went after another woman in an incident eerily similar to the August 2008 attack. King was charged with assault and is now back in custody.”

Quinn said didn’t know about the accelerated “meritorious good time” plan for prisoners. He blamed is Corrections Director Michael Randle.

Quinn called King’s release “a big mistake.”

The television ad will be less mild.

Now, they will have to stay in prison for at least 61 days, Quinn says.

Felons don’t get sent to the Illinois Department of Corrections for less than a year’s sentence. Of course, they are regularly given credit for serving time in county jails prior to transfer to state prison.

Don’t think this will knock Quinn out of the box?

Look at the front and second page of yesterday’s Chicago Sun-Times.

Then remember 1,781 other inmates are on the street under Quinn’s “catch and release” money-saving program.

Daily Herald reporter Chuck Keeshan wrote a story on Sheriff Keith Nygren’s jail having making it more expensive to give money to inmates and ICE detainees.

McHenry County Blog broke the story last Wednesday.

Keeshan’s article about the complaint of Crystal Lake resident David Warren, who is a member of the Secular Franciscan Order of the Catholic Church has one paragraph that caught my attention:

“Deputy Corrections Chief Patrick Firman said the change was necessary for the jail to abide by state regulations governing how it handles inmates’ money.“

It is true that the Illinois Department of Corrections regulates local county jails. In my experience, this regulator has cost local taxpayers to spend money they would not otherwise have spent.

But, according to DOC Public Information Officer Januari Smith, this is not one of them.

I called her up and asked if this change by the McHenry County Jail had been required by state officials.

“We don’t oversee how they take in money,” she told me.

“We don’t oversee this particular part of a county jail.”

Maybe Firman was referring to a different state regulator.

No story from the Northwest Herald on the subject yet.

There is a way to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS in prison.

But it goes against the grain of everything considered by liberals as politically correct.

The way to do it is to test all of the prisoners periodically and house those who are HIV-infected separately from those who are not.

When I was on top of this subject in the mid-1990′s, three or four states followed that almost guaranteed course of protecting uninfected inmates from those who are HIV-infected.

I talked to a former Illinois Corrections official working in Louisiana’s prison system, one of the ones that housed the infected separately from the infected.

(The liberals opposed to this practice always called it “segregation,” thus putting a racial twist on a disease that infects all races.)

The former Illinois DOC employee told me when they first instituted the policy, they put up a chain link fence between the two sections.

Guess what?

The prisoners were having sex through the links.

Louisiana solved that problem by putting up another fence 12 inches away.

The point is that prisoners are not responsible people. If they were responsible, they would not be behind bars.

Now comes my former colleague Monique Davis, who sat across the center aisle from former State Rep. Tom Johnson and me in the 1990′s, sponsoring a bill to distribute condoms in the Illinois Department of Corrections.

She has gotten the bill out of committee.

Giving prisoners condoms will not stop rape in prison.

If you are interested in the problem, here’s some more information.

The DOC has pretty much a three money approach to HIV.

Although an almost half million dollar CDC study in the early 1990′s proved that HIV was being spread behind Illinois prison walls, the Department refused to do anything significant about it.

Even when I found a “face”–Michael Blucker, then of Crystal Lake–who could proved he was HIV-infected in prison.

DOC decided to institute “peer counseling.”

Big deal.

Inmates don’t put on condoms when they are about to rape someone.

If a subservient inmate agrees to “hook up” with a dominant inmate in order not to be randomly raped, the dominant male may use a condom. That happened to Donny Donaldson, who wrote the brief

But the rape is not less a rape, even if it looks consensual.

How bad is it?

“The horrors experienced by many young inmates, particularly those who are convicted of nonviolent offenses, border on the unimaginable.

“Prison rape not only threatens the lives of those who fall prey to their aggressors, but it is potentially devastating to the human spirit.

“Shame, depression, and a shattering loss of self-esteem accompany the perpetual terror the victim thereafter must endure.”

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun, Farmer v. Brennan

That is the top item on the newly re-named Stop Prisoner Rape organization. It is now called Just Detention International.

It seems that Michigan has figure it out.

I’m not sure is was deliberate, but prosecuting Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick in state court will work to deter future corruption in local government.

Why?

The Detroit mayor will have to serve his time in state prison.

If Michigan’s state facilities are as dismal as those in Illinois, that could a real crimp in Michigan’s political crime.

In Illinois, of course, political crooks know the Cook County State’s Attorney will not be the one prosecuting them.

So, no hard time, even if convicted.

The worst time was served by George Ryan’s top assistant, Scott Fawell, in the Dakotas. And the worst part of that was the round-about trip back to Chicago.

Most can expect to go to Oxford, up near the Wisconsin Dells.

That cannot be as much of a deterrent than any of the prisons in the Department of Corrections.

= = = = =
The article you see is from Elgin’s Courier News of last Friday.

The photo of Denny’s is from the Wisconsin Dells. Click to enlarge either image.

It seems that Michigan has figure it out.

I’m not sure is was deliberate, but prosecuting Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick in state court will work to deter future corruption in local government.

Why?

The Detroit mayor will have to serve his time in state prison.

If Michigan’s state facilities are as dismal as those in Illinois, that could a real crimp in Michigan’s political crime.

In Illinois, of course, political crooks know the Cook County State’s Attorney will not be the one prosecuting them.

So, no hard time, even if convicted.

The worst time was served by George Ryan’s top assistant, Scott Fawell, in the Dakotas. And the worst part of that was the round-about trip back to Chicago.

Most can expect to go to Oxford, up near the Wisconsin Dells.

That cannot be as much of a deterrent than any of the prisons in the Department of Corrections.

= = = = =
The article you see is from Elgin’s Courier News of last Friday.

The photo of Denny’s is from the Wisconsin Dells. Click to enlarge either image.