Cook County Jail

Last updated
Aerial view of the Cook County Jail complex Cook County Jail complex, Chicago.jpg
Aerial view of the Cook County Jail complex

The Cook County Jail, located on 96 acres (39 hectares) in South Lawndale, Chicago, Illinois, is operated by the Sheriff of Cook County. [1] It is sometimes referred to as California or Hotel California, as its address is on California Street. A city jail has existed on this site since after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, but major County prisoners were not generally collocated here until closure of the old Hubbard Street Criminal Court Building and jail in 1929. [2] Since then, a 1920s neoclassical and art deco courthouse for the criminal division of the Cook County Circuit Court has operated at the South Lawndale complex.

Contents

As of 2017, Cook County operated the third-largest jail system in the United States by inmate population (after the Los Angeles County and New York City jail systems). [3]

The jail has held several well-known and infamous criminals, including Tony Accardo, Frank Nitti, Larry Hoover, Jeff Fort, Richard Speck, John Wayne Gacy and the Chicago Seven. It has held lesser-known criminals, including Louis Liing. [4]

It was one of three sites in which executions were carried out by electrocution in Illinois. Between 1928 and 1962, the electric chair was used 67 times at the jail, including the state's last electrocution, that of James Duke, on August 24, 1962. The state's other electrocutions were carried out at the Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill and at the Menard Correctional Center in Chester.

History

19th and 20th century

In the mid-to-late-1800s suspects in serious criminal matters were held at the site of the Cook County Criminal Court Building on Hubbard Street in a jail attached to the courthouse (the jail house was on the same block, in back of the courthouse, and is sometimes identified by reference to the corner of "Dearborn and Illinois" Streets). A separate short-stay city jail called the "Bridewell" on Polk Street, officially the House of Correction, housed less serious offenders from within the city. The city Bridewell moved to the site of the present jail complex at 29th and California in 1871 (at the time of the Great Chicago Fire) but the county's serious alleged offenders did not generally move there until the 1920s. When the two facilities began to be located together, they first gained the reputation as the 'largest concentration of inmates in the free world.' Later, the County and City jails were institutionally merged by the Illinois legislature, officially called the Cook County Department of Corrections, overseen by the Cook County Sheriff's Office. [5] [6]

The adjacent George N. Leighton Criminal Courts Building is where the prisoners criminal matters are heard in the Circuit Court of Cook County. [7] A rather elaborate neoclassical and art deco inspired high-rise built in the late 1920s, the courthouse was long known by just its cross-street location "26th and Cal" (26th Street and California Avenue) and has held many high-profile cases and is often seen in films and television. [8]

21st century

One of the largest clusters of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases in the entire United States occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. On April 3, 2020, the civil rights law firm Loevy & Loevy, MacArthur Justice Center, and Civil Rights Corps filed an emergency class action lawsuit on behalf of detainees, alleging Sheriff Tom Dart failed to stop a "rapidly unfolding public health disaster" and seeking immediate release of any prisoner whose constitutional rights were being violated by their continued detention amid the coronavirus crisis. [9] On April 27, 2020, a federal judge overruled objections from Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Sheriff Tom Dart in a sweeping preliminary injunction that mandated the Cook County Sheriff's Office implement additional testing and social distancing measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 at the jail. [10] [11] This included banning the jail from corralling new inmates into cramped “bullpens” or group housing and mandating it provide face masks to all detainees under quarantine and regularly sanitize common surfaces. [11]

As of April 22, 2020, at least 812 confirmed COVID-19 cases were linked to the jail; due to a lack of testing, the actual number of infections linked to the jail is believed to be higher. [12] [13] The jail's inmate population dropped by almost one-fifth during the coronavirus pandemic after a state judge ordered a review of cases involving low-risk, primarily non-violent detainees. [14] At least six inmates and one guard have died. [15] [16]

And as of 26 July 2022, there has been one case of monkeypox in the prison with an inmate testing positive for the virus which is unlikely to spread across the prison. [17]

Operations

At Metropolitan Correctional Center, Chicago (MCC Chicago) female prisoners needing to be isolated, as of 2005, have been taken to the Cook County Jail as the security housing unit (SHU) at the former is only for males. [18]

U.S. Department of Justice report

In July 2008, the civil rights division of the United States Department of Justice released a report finding that the Eighth Amendment civil rights of the inmates has been systematically violated. [19] [20] The report found that the CCJ failed to adequately protect inmates from harm or risk of harm from other inmates or staff; failed to provide adequate suicide prevention; failed to provide adequate sanitary environmental conditions; failed to provide adequate fire safety precautions; and failed to provide adequate medical and mental health care.

Specific alleged violations that have resulted in Federal sanctions and/or class action lawsuits include:

  1. Systematic beatings by corrections officers
  2. Poor food quality
  3. Inmates' being forced to sleep on cell floors due to overcrowding and mismanagement (resulting in a $1,000 per inmate class-action settlement)
  4. Rodent infestation and injury caused to sleeping inmates by rat and mouse bites
  5. Violations of privacy during multiple invasive strip searches
  6. Failure to provide adequate medical care, including failure to dispense medications
  7. Invasive and painful mandatory tests for male STDs (resulting in a $200 per inmate class action settlement)
  8. Unnecessarily long waiting time for discharge upon payment of bond, completion of sentence, or charges being dropped. Wait times are currently routinely in excess of 8 hours, nearly all of which is spent with many inmates packed into tiny cells.

The women's section of the former Cook County jail near Hubbard Street is the setting used for the musical Chicago , as well as its 2002 film adaptation. The present jail is used in segments of TV series including Chicago Fire and Better Call Saul .

B.B. King's Live in Cook County Jail album features a live recording of a concert that he performed for the jail's inmates on September 10, 1970.

A live album Concert: Friday the 13th - Cook County Jail featuring performances by jazz musicians Jimmy McGriff and Lucky Thompson was released on the Groove Merchant label in 1973)

The song "My Long Walk to Jail" on Filter's 2002 album The Amalgamut includes a sample of an incoming call from Cook County Jail.

The Cook County Prison was referenced to by Elwood Blues (Dan Aykroyd) in the film The Blues Brothers as serving oatmeal to inmates.

The Cook County Prison is where Bigger Thomas is held, in Richard Wright's Native Son .

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American Correctional Association</span> Private non-profit trade association

The American Correctional Association is a private, non-profit, non-governmental trade association and accrediting body for the corrections industry, the oldest and largest such association in the world. The organization was founded in 1870 and has a significant place in the history of prison reform in the U.S.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rikers Island</span> New York City island and jail complex

Rikers Island is a 413-acre (167.14-hectare) prison island in the East River in the Bronx that contains New York City's largest jail.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CoreCivic</span> U.S. prison-operating company

CoreCivic, formerly the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), is a company that owns and manages private prisons and detention centers and operates others on a concession basis. Co-founded in 1983 in Nashville, Tennessee by Thomas W. Beasley, Robert Crants, and T. Don Hutto, it received investments from the Tennessee Valley Authority, Vanderbilt University, and Jack C. Massey, the founder of Hospital Corporation of America.

Wende Correctional Facility is a maximum security prison located in the town of Alden in Erie County, New York, east of Buffalo. The prison is named for this region of Alden. The prison was formerly the site of an Erie County jail and was sold to the state to fulfill the need for a maximum security state prison. The Erie County Correctional Facility was built adjacent to Wende.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GEO Group</span> American institutional facilities company

The GEO Group, Inc. (GEO) is a publicly traded C corporation that invests in private prisons and mental health facilities in the United States, Australia, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. Headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida, the company's facilities include illegal immigration detention centers, minimum security detention centers, and mental-health and residential-treatment facilities. It also operates government-owned facilities pursuant to management contracts. As of December 31, 2021, the company managed and/or owned 86,000 beds at 106 facilities. In 2019, agencies of the federal government of the United States generated 53% of the company's revenues. Up until 2021 the company was designated as a real estate investment trust, at which time the board of directors elected to reclassify as a C corporation under the stated goal of reducing the company's debt.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison</span> Mens prison in Georgia, United States

Opened in 1969, Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison (GDCP) is a Georgia Department of Corrections prison for men in unincorporated Butts County, Georgia, near Jackson. The prison holds the state execution chamber. The execution equipment was moved to the prison in June 1980, with the first execution in the facility occurring on December 15, 1983. The prison houses the male death row, while female death row inmates reside in Arrendale State Prison.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cook County Sheriff's Office</span>

The Cook County Sheriff's Office (CCSO) is the principal law enforcement agency that serves Cook County, Illinois. It is the second largest sheriff's office in the United States, with over 6,900 members when at full operational strength. It is headed by the Cook County Sheriff, currently Thomas Dart.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alabama Department of Corrections</span> Government agency in Alabama, United States

The Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) is the agency responsible for incarceration of convicted felons in the state of Alabama in the United States. It is headquartered in the Alabama Criminal Justice Center in Montgomery.

The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office (MCSO) is a law enforcement agency in Maricopa County, Arizona that was involved in a number of controversies. It is the largest sheriff's office in the state of Arizona and provides general and specialized law enforcement to unincorporated areas of Maricopa County, serving as the primary law enforcement for unincorporated areas of the county as well as incorporated cities within the county which have contracted with the agency for law-enforcement services. It also operates the county jail system. Elected in 2016, Paul Penzone is the current sheriff of Maricopa County. Penzone replaced Joe Arpaio after his 24-year tenure as sheriff.

Prisoner suicide is suicide by an inmate in a jail or prison.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Baltimore City Detention Center</span> Prison in Baltimore, Maryland, US

Baltimore City Detention Center is a Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services state prison for men and women. It is located on 401 East Eager Street in downtown Baltimore, Maryland. It has been a state facility since July 1991.

Prindle, Patrick and Associates was an architectural firm founded by architect Theodore Hord Prindle in 1957 as Titus & Prindle. The firm designed a wide range of buildings, but specialized in jails, prisons, and other correctional facilities. Its most notable projects include the Municipal Court, Hall of Justice, jail, and courthouse annex at the Franklin County Government Center in Columbus, Ohio, and the courthouse, jail, and county sheriff headquarters at the Justice Center Complex in Cleveland, Ohio. The firm dissolved in 1991.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas M. Hodgson</span> Sheriff of Bristol County, Massachusetts

Thomas M. Hodgson is an American politician who served as Sheriff of Bristol County Massachusetts from 1997 to 2022.

Hudson v. Palmer, 468 U.S. 517 (1984), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that prison inmates have no privacy rights in their cells protected by the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Court also held that an intentional deprivation of property by a state employee "does not violate the Fourteenth Amendment if an adequate postdeprivation state remedy exists," extending Parratt v. Taylor to intentional torts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">COVID-19 pandemic in Illinois</span> Ongoing COVID-19 viral pandemic in Illinois, United States

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic began in the U.S. state of Illinois on January 24, 2020, when a woman in Chicago, who had just returned from the pandemic's place of origin in Wuhan, Hubei, China, tested positive for the virus. This was the second case of COVID-19 in the United States during the pandemic. The woman's husband was diagnosed with the disease a few days later, the first known case of human-to-human transmission in the United States. Community transmission was not suspected until March 8, when a case with no connection to other cases or recent travel was confirmed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on prisons</span> Impact of COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted prisons globally. There have been outbreaks of COVID-19 reported in prisons and jails around the world, with the housing density and population turnover of many prisons contributing to an increased risk of contracting the virus compared to the general population. Prison crowding and lack of sanitation measures contribute to the risk of contracting diseases in prisons and jails. As a mitigation measure, several jurisdictions have released prisoners to reduce density and attempt to reduce the spread of the illness. There have also been protests among prisoners, riots and prison breaks in multiple countries in response to prisoner anger over their risk of contracting illness in prison conditions. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, health services within prisons had issues providing adequate care for incarcerated people, and this has only been exacerbated by the impacts of COVID-19. Minority groups within the prison system have been disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fresno County Jail</span> Jail in California, U.S.

The Fresno County Jail is a detention center made up of three different adjacent complexes, located at 1225 M. Street, in downtown Fresno, California, operated by the Fresno County Sheriff's Department. The facility is made up of the Main Jail, the North Annex Jail, and the South Annex Jail and is connected by an underground system of tunnels providing easy and safe transportation of inmates. These tunnels also connect to the nearby Fresno County Courthouse. As of March 31, 2020, the Fresno County Jail had 2,746 inmates with 2,490 being male and 256 being female. The Fresno County Jail has recorded the highest number of deaths out of any county jail in California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Decarceration in the United States</span> Overview article

Decarceration in the United States involves government policies and community campaigns aimed at reducing the number of people held in custody or custodial supervision. Decarceration, the opposite of incarceration, also entails reducing the rate of imprisonment at the federal, state and municipal level. As of 2019, the US was home to 5% of the global population but 25% of its prisoners. Until the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. possessed the world's highest incarceration rate: 655 inmates for every 100,000 people, enough inmates to equal the populations of Philadelphia or Houston. The COVID-19 pandemic has reinvigorated the discussion surrounding decarceration as the spread of the virus poses a threat to the health of those incarcerated in prisons and detention centers where the ability to properly socially distance is limited. As a result of the push for decarceration in the wake of the pandemic, as of 2022, the incarceration rate in the United States declined to 505 per 100,000, resulting in the United States no longer having the highest incarceration rate in the world, but still remaining in the top five.

The Central Arizona Florence Correctional Complex, is a privately owned and operated managed prison located in Florence, Pinal County, Arizona. The facility is run by Corrections Corporation of America and houses prisoners for the United States Marshals Service (USMS), TransCor America LLC, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Pascua Yaqui Tribe, United States Air Force, City of Coolidge, and City of Mesa. The majority are awaiting the resolution of their trials. The current population is male and female.

The COVID-19 pandemic in U.S. immigration detention has been covered extensively since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. More than 38,000 people were detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at the time of the outbreak of COVID-19 in the United States. ICE's response to the outbreak in detention facilities has been widely characterized as substandard and dangerous. Harmful practices have been reported in numerous facilities managed by third-party private contractors with ICE. For example, reports found that HDQ Neutral disinfectant was used over 50 times per day in un-ventilated areas, which caused pain, bleeding, and severe illness to numerous people held in Adelanto Detention Center, a private prison managed by GEO Group Inc.

References

  1. ↑ "Cook County Sheriff's Office - Home Page". Cook County. 27 June 2017. Archived from the original on April 23, 2020. Retrieved 29 November 2017.
  2. ↑ "The Cook County Criminal Court and Jailhouse". chicagology.com. Retrieved 2023-12-21.
  3. ↑ Breeanna Hare & Lisa Rose, "Pop. 17,049: Welcome to America's largest jail", CNN (September 26, 2016).
  4. ↑ "Chicago Hauntings: The Sinister Men Who Were Executed At The Old Cook County Jail Gallows, And Sightings At The River North Firehouse Now In Its Place". CBS News. 31 October 2021. Retrieved 6 April 2024.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  5. ↑ "Cook County Jail's History". Cook County Sheriffs Office. 27 June 2017. Retrieved 2019-08-05.
  6. ↑ "Jails and Prisons". Encyclopedia of Chicago. Newberry Library and Chicago History Museum. 2005.
  7. ↑ "Criminal Division". Cook County Circuit Court. Retrieved 2019-06-21.
  8. ↑ Meisner, Jason (2012-06-11). "26th and Cal courthouse rich with history and charm". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 2022-03-03.
  9. ↑ "Federal judge orders testing measures at Cook County Jail, but rejects request to order immediate releases due to coronavirus". Chicago Tribune. 2020-04-09. Retrieved 2023-10-03.
  10. ↑ "Hacked emails show Lightfoot's private concerns about releasing jail detainees during pandemic". Chicago Sun-Times. 2021-05-30. Retrieved 2023-10-03.
  11. 1 2 "Federal judge orders additional social distancing measures at Cook County Jail". Chicago Tribune. 2020-04-27. Retrieved 2023-10-03.
  12. ↑ "Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count - The New York Times". The New York Times . 2020-04-22. Archived from the original on 2020-04-22. Retrieved 2020-04-22.
  13. ↑ A jail in Chicago is now the largest-known source of U.S. infections., New York Times (April 8, 2020).
  14. ↑ Grimm, Andy (Apr 7, 2020). "Federal judge holds hearing on lawsuit filed over Cook County Jail coronavirus response". Chicago Sun-Times. Archived from the original on April 11, 2020. The jail population dropped nearly 20% — to 4,547 — after Chief Criminal Court Judge LeRoy K. Martin Jr. mandated a sweeping review of criminal cases of hundreds of low-risk, mostly non-violent detainees.
  15. ↑ ABC 7 Chicago Digital Team. "Coronavirus Chicago: 4th Cook County Jail detainee dies after testing positive for COVID-19". Chicago. Archived from the original on April 29, 2020. Retrieved May 10, 2020.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  16. ↑ Heffernan, Shannon (April 30, 2020). "Inside the Jail With One of the Country's Largest Coronavirus Outbreaks". ProPublica. Archived from the original on May 10, 2020. Retrieved May 10, 2020. Seven people have died: six inmates and one guard
  17. ↑ "Cook County Jail inmate tests positive for monkeypox". 26 July 2022.
  18. ↑ Kerman, Piper. Orange is the New Black (Chapter 18: It Can Always Get Worse). 2010; ISBN   978-0-385-53026-2 (Location 4394).
  19. ↑ Davey, Monica. "Federal Report Finds Poor Conditions at Cook County Jail." The New York Times . July 18, 2008.
  20. ↑ "'A serious problem' U.S. attorney says Cook County Jail falls short of basic standards." Chicago Tribune . July 18, 2008.

41°50′29″N87°41′51″W / 41.8414°N 87.6975°W / 41.8414; -87.6975

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.