Officials debate Pontiac vs. Thomson

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Illinois spent millions securing prison set for closure CHAMPAIGN (AP) - Illinois spent more than $17 million in the late 1990s and early part of this decade turning the Pontiac prison the governor plans to close into a specialized lockup to keep hundreds of the state's most violent and destructive prisoners away from other inmates, according to state records. The money, from the state Department of Corrections and the Capital Development Board, bought steel plates to keep prisoners from digging through the walls of the 137-year-old prison, specially designed doors that can't be kicked loose and what amount to steel-barred cages where prisoners exercise, records and interviews show. Six years after the work was finished, Gov. Rod Blagojevich says shutting down the Pontiac Correctional Center will save the state $8.5 million over the next 2 years as it struggles with a budget deficit of roughly $700 million. And the governor and Department of Corrections officials say closing Pontiac will allow them to fully open a prison in Thomson in northwestern Illinois that has sat all but idle since it was opened in 2001. "We have to work with the resources we have," corrections spokesman Derek Schnapp said. "We have to be realistic. We don't have unlimited resources." The prison at Thomson, he said, is "the most modern, state of the art facility that we have, and we're not using it." But lawmakers from the Pontiac area, which would lose about 570 jobs if the prison closes as planned early next year, and the union that represents most of the prison's employees say the state shouldn't choose between the two. With about 45,000 prisoners locked up - over 30 percent more than the state's prisons are meant to hold - and the money already spent at Pontiac, Illinois needs both, they say. "They're good investments, both of them," said state Sen. Dan Rutherford, a Republican from Chenoa, just south of Pontiac. The towns are about 100 miles southwest of Chicago. He says the state can afford to do both, and blames the governor for trying to create new spending - such as his expansion of health care funding - before paying for existing needs. Much of the back and forth about the Pontiac prison is grounded in politics. If Pontiac is closed, about half its 1,600 inmates would be shipped to various facilities around the state, and the others sent to the Thomson prison. Roughly half of those bound for Thomson are kept in single-inmate cells in Pontiac because they're either too great a danger to other inmates or, in some cases, they need protection from other inmates, according to prison guards, and their union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. "Pontiac plays a unique role in the state's prison system," union spokesman Anders Lindall said. Once known as the Thunderdome by prison guards because of years of violent incidents, the Department of Corrections began converting Pontiac in the late 1990s to handle inmates frequently referred to by guards as "the worst of the worst." "We've got guys that'll rip doors off walls," said corrections Lt. Ben Dallas, who has been at the prison almost 21 years. According to the Department of Corrections and records from the state Capital Development Board, at least $17.33 million went into the work, completed in 2002. While that work was going on, the state was also planning and building the $140 million Thomson prison. The state has never had the money to fully open Thomson, but it's had to spend roughly $5.2 million maintaining the facility since it was built. The Thomson prison, which is just across the Mississippi River from Clinton, Iowa, has most of the same sort of safety measures that Pontiac has been outfitted with, Schnapp said. "To say it's not as safe and secure than Pontiac is inaccurate," he said. But the union and lawmakers argue that, with a $59 billion state budget, closing Pontiac to save just over $8 million makes no sense. "To have the principal policy initiative out of the governor with respect to corrections be the closure of such a facility, or any facility at all, entirely fails to respond to the crisis in our prison system," Lindall said.