Chicago Tribune
CHICAGO — State lawmakers are seeking to end a little-known but controversial program that tries to recoup the costs of incarceration from current and former inmates, saying the state recovers little money and the program puts up obstacles for prisoners returning to the community.
State Rep. Kelly Cassidy, D-Chicago, and state Sen. Daniel Biss, D-Evanston, said they acted after reading a Nov. 30 Tribune story detailing an Illinois Department of Corrections program that sues prisoners to recover the costs of locking them up.
The two legislators’ companion House and Senate bills, introduced earlier this month, would repeal provisions of the code of corrections that allows the prison system to identify inmates with assets and target them for litigation. The lawsuits are filed by the attorney general’s office.
“It’s so wrongheaded,” Cassidy said Tuesday of the law. “People mostly were mortified we were doing this.”
Biss said suing prisoners undermined the state’s efforts to help inmates stay out of prison.
“I don’t think it’s consistent with how you fund government, nor is it consistent with principles of rehabilitation,” he said in an interview Tuesday. “Generally speaking, when someone is released from prison, your hope is they will wind up on their feet. Taking what in many cases is limited resources is counterproductive.”
State Rep. Mary Flowers, another Chicago Democrat, has filed a similar measure. Flowers called the state’s litigation a form of “bullying” inmates.
“If a person is released and serves their time, they should be free,” Flowers said. “They should not have to continue to pay to remain free.”
Biss said the measures would stop the state from seeking to recover money in pending cases and end the practice in the future.
The Department of Corrections “is neutral” on the legislation, according to spokeswoman Nicole Wilson. The attorney general’s office supports the bills; indeed, Lisa Madigan told the Tribune in November that the prisoner lawsuits raise “moral” questions and called on lawmakers to evaluate the issue.
“I have encouraged the legislature to review this statute and consider what policy they want in place going forward,” Madigan said Tuesday in a statement. “The current law charges my office with recovering incarceration costs when requested by the Department of Corrections, but these cases can present significant roadblocks to former inmates who are trying to lead successful lives outside of prison.”
Among the cases the Tribune spotlighted was that of Johnny Melton, who served 15 months for a drug conviction. The corrections department sued Melton after he had received nearly $32,000 from a settlement over his mother’s death in a nursing home. When he was released from prison last year, Melton was forced to go to a homeless shelter and applied for food stamps. When he died in June, he was destitute, according to his family.
In other cases the state sued inmates who received relatively modest inheritances or had other money. But the state also has sued such inmates as James Degorski, whom a jury had awarded $451,000 in a lawsuit against a Cook County Jail guard he said had beaten him. Degorski is serving a life sentence for his role in the 1993 murders of seven employees at a suburban Brown’s Chicken restaurant.
At least 43 states allow officials to seek what are often called room-and-board fees from prisoners, according to a 2015 study from the Brennan Center for Justice, which is based at New York University’s law school. Some states charge inmates for medical care. Both fee structures are part of a broad effort — also called pay-to-stay — to lessen a prison system’s financial burden on taxpayers, according to experts.
In Illinois, the law allowing the state to sue inmates for the cost of their incarceration dates to 1982. But officials do not appear to have used it much until last year, when the number of lawsuits jumped from two each in 2012 and 2013 to 11 in 2015, according to officials.
The state has recovered more than $500,000 since 2010, although about $415,000 of that was obtained from just two inmates.
Alan Mills, executive director of the Uptown People’s Law Center, which advocates for inmates, said the proposed legislation corrects an injustice in the prison system, one that makes a newly released inmate’s adjustment to the outside world all the more difficult.
He said that while there is often little enthusiasm among lawmakers for backing prisoner rights, the fact that the lawsuits generate so little money might improve the legislation’s chance of passage. A wave of criminal justice reform across the country might boost its chances as well.
“If this thing were generating $2 million or $3 million a year, I’d say no way in hell,” Mills said of the bills’ likelihood of passage. “But it’s not. It generates so little money and disrupts lives so badly that it’s not a fiscal issue.”
Cassidy said she first gave thought to such lawsuits after a nephew was released from prison in another state and came out with a lien on his future earnings to cover the cost of his incarceration. Reading the Tribune’s account of Illinois’ law generated added frustration.
“I got really mad, really upset,” she said.
Like Biss, she said the cost of incarceration should be borne by the state, not by inmates trying to get back on their feet.
“We pay for prison every day,” Cassidy said. “That’s the function of government. Fundamentally, this is just wrong.”
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