By Rachel Rodgers
Daily Gazette
DIXON, Ill. – A settlement approved by a federal judge to upend the state’s treatment of mentally ill prisoners will bring about $80 million in changes to Illinois prisons, including an expansion already underway at Dixon Correctional Center.
U.S. District Judge Michael Mihm signed off on a settlement agreement Friday in the class action lawsuit of Ashoor Rasho v. John Baldwin, first filed in 2007, determining the settlement provisions to be “fair and reasonable.”
The 32-page settlement calls for an overhaul of the Illinois Department of Corrections policies toward mentally ill offenders and includes providing short- and long-term care in residential treatment centers for prisoners requiring hospitalization, hiring more than 300 new clinical staff and 400 new security staff, and increasing out-of-cell time for prisoners kept in solitary confinement.
Dixon’s prison will house one of four planned residential treatment units with the goal of reducing the number of mentally ill inmates subjected to long-term solitary confinement and providing them housing geared toward medical treatment.
Work on the Dixon center began several months ago.
Nicole Wilson, Illinois Department of Corrections director of communications, said the agency implemented a phased approach for the residential treatment unit in Dixon.
More than 300 offenders are being treated at the Dixon unit, which will have 625 beds by the project’s end, Wilson said.
Additional mental health staff have been hired to accommodate the unit; the exact number could not be confirmed Monday.
The added staff will provide for more individualized care, and “any offender requiring on-going outpatient, inpatient or residential mental health services shall have a mental health treatment plan,” according to the settlement.
Construction costs for the treatment centers and new personnel is estimated to total about $80 million. Many of the expenses, though, are contingent on the state approving a budget.
In addition to Dixon, treatment centers are planned at Pontiac and Logan correctional centers and the former Illinois Youth Center in Joliet.
The mandated improvements for the specialized healthcare and services will affect about 11,000 mentally ill prisoners.
Before becoming a class action lawsuit, the case was filed on behalf of Ashoor Rasho, a mentally ill inmate at Pontiac Correctional Center; it claimed that the state prison system’s overuse of solitary confinement and other penalties constituted cruel and unusual punishment. The case reached a preliminary settlement in December between the state and a team of lawyers representing global firms and legal advocacy organizations.
IDOC said in a news release that “while the department does not admit liability regarding the allegations made in the suit, it does recognize that providing adequate care for offenders with mental illness will improve their quality of life and ultimately improve safety within its correctional facilities.”
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