By Brandyn Wilcoxen
The Southern Illinoisan, Ill.
VIENNA, Ill. — Staff at Shawnee Correctional Center spent their Friday calling attention to safety issues that have made an already difficult work environment even more dangerous.
The Shawnee Correctional Center has been on lockdown for more than two weeks because of not having working radios. This, coupled with chronic understaffing, has created an environment unsafe for both staff and inmates.
Jon Dye, president of AFSCME Local 3605 representing Shawnee prison staff, said the lack of radios spurred Friday’s picket, but some of the problems have plagued the prison system for years.
“We’ve had some catastrophic equipment failures within the prison,” Dye said. “Staffing is always an issue within the Department of Corrections , and we’re here to say that our safety matters and we need these problems fixed.”
While the radio outage is relatively new, Dye said the IDOC has had plenty of time to address it knowing the equipment was aging, on top of the more than two weeks since they went down with no indication of when it will be fixed.
“They know that the old, antiquated, outdated equipment that we use on a daily basis was eventually going to be a problem,” Dye said. “It shouldn’t be a shock to anybody that we’re in this position.”
Hursel King with Menard Correctional Center attended the picket, as did other representatives from prisons in Southern Illinois . He said Menard has had a similar issue with its radios running down to the end of their useful life.
“Our batteries are getting ready to go bad, and they last about a couple hours through the shift,” King said. “I’ve got to constantly have guys come in and switch out batteries just to make it through the shift. We got new radios 10 years ago, and now the batteries won’t hold a charge.”
At Shawnee CC, prison staff are unable to communicate with each other over long distances or in other buildings, making any emergency response, assault or medical situation exponentially harder to handle.
Dye said that affects not just staff, but the inmates it is their job to take care of.
“We have to have the equipment to do our job to provide for those individuals that are in custody,” Dye said. “If we don’t have the proper equipment, the individuals in custody don’t get the rights that they have coming to them because we have to be on lockdown.”
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