Trump's compromise? Do it my way!

I’m sure that in the mind of President Donald J. Trump, he is the ultimate compromiser.

TRUMP: His idea of compromise is still wrong

He did, after all, sign off this week on an agreement related to people trying to enter the United States that goes contrary to the nonsense-talk he has been spewing in recent weeks.

THE RHETORIC THAT justified children being removed (by force, if necessary) from their parents, who were then being detained as federal officials pondered their circumstances to figure out if there was any reason for allowing them to remain in this country – or should they just be deported?

Since in the minds of those people who actually believe in the nonsense of the Age of Trump, all foreigners are a problem who ought to be removed, it creates chaos.

Particularly since we have to figure out what to do with all those children who now, theoretically, are in U.S. custody. We are now responsible for their well-being.

The fact that many of those children were being detained in camps that were one step up from prison conditions had many people appalled. Heck, even Trump’s wife and elder daughter, allegedly, have been giving him grief about these circumstances.

BUT TRUMP ISN’T about to do anything that manages to offend the sensibilities of the nitwits who voted for him and remain devoted to his causes. So instead of realizing the problem is that children are being detained in miserable conditions, Trump’s solution is to keep the families together.

Because he’s not about to ease up on his larger goal – which is to keep as many of those parents from being able to establish a life for themselves in this country.

It’s almost like those places that view pregnant women who are incarcerated as somehow being acceptable to care for their children. In prison!

It’s twisted and kind of sick when you think about it. But the Trumpster is just too determined to have the long-arm-of-the-law cracking down on those “foreigners” whom he is determined to think are being “criminal” just by the nature of where they were born.

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From prison to electoral politics?

The upcoming election cycle may wind up showing just how sympathetic the electorate is to the idea of someone with a criminal record being able to get back into the game of government.

SANCHEZ: Wants back in to politics

The process of people getting themselves on the ballot for the March 18 primary elections ended Monday. Nominating petitions were required by the close of business that day.

LOOKING THROUGH THE list of people with political dreams, at least three people with criminal records and stints in prison want to get back into politics.

Two of them – Al Sanchez and Isaac “Ike” Carothers – want to serve on the Cook County Board. While Kenneth Williams (not the one-time Chicago White Sox general manager) wants to serve in the Illinois House of Representatives.

Sanchez is the former Streets and Sanitation commissioner whose simultaneous control of the old Hispanic Democratic Organization resulted in him committing acts (that were supposedly done in the name of advancing Latino political empowerment) that wound up putting him in federal prison for a stint.

Carothers is a former alderman who lost his City Council seat when he pleaded guilty to bribery and tax fraud charges. He, too, wound up doing prison time.

WHILE WILLIAMS WAS the school board president with Thornton Township High School District 205 in suburban South Holland who was removed by a Cook County judge earlier this year because of his 28-year-old criminal conviction in Indiana for aiding in the commission of a forgery.

Williams, who has never done anything to hide his criminal record and has not been convicted of any felony since then, was twice elected to the school board post. But the judge ruled that he was never eligible to hold the post – and that the voter support he got was irrelevant.

WILLIAMS: Booted from old post

The appeals courts have not been sympathetic to his case thus far. Which caused Williams, a suburban South Holland resident, to decide to run for the Illinois House instead.

Particularly since that legislative body has a history of members (Rep. Coy Pugh of the West Side back in the 1990s) who had done prison time.

WILLIAMS WILL HAVE to take on state Rep. Thaddeus Jones, D-Calumet City, a two-term House member who has the strong support of Thornton Township Democratic Party operatives. But he is developing a slew of supporters in his community who think he’s being singled out for abuse because of his race (he’s African-American).

CAROTHERS: Filling a vacancy?

Whether that would be enough to defeat Jones is uncertain. But he’s determined not to make the 22 months he did in prison back in his early 20s define the rest of his life. Particularly since the breakdown that seems to have developed is that someone with a felony record cannot serve on a school board or the City Council (aldermen specifically approved that change a few years ago), but can serve in state, county or local government.

As for Sanchez and Carothers, both of them are hoping to take advantage of special circumstances on the Cook County Board.

Carothers is going for a county board seat that was held by Earlean Collins, who has decided to retire from politics. She’s not seeking re-election.

WHICH MEANS AN open seat. No one has the benefit of incumbency. It may well be that Carothers will have enough name recognition amongst his old ward constituents to win – particularly since he’s one of six people running for the post.

He won’t exactly have to win a majority to win the election. A 30 percent support level could be more than enough for him to get a political comeback.

As for Sanchez, the seat he’s going for currently is filled by Stanley Moore, who was appointed to fill the vacancy created when William Beavers was found guilty of the tax-related charges that sent him off to prison for a six-month sentence beginning Monday.

Sanchez hopes that Moore, who has less than a year in office thus far and keeps a low profile amongst the county board members, is beatable. As though he hasn’t been around long enough to gain the benefits of incumbency!

HE MAY EVEN try to claim that he’s benefitting the cause of Latino empowerment by adding to the number of Latinos now on (Jesus Garcia and Edwin Reyes) the Cook County Board.

Whether anyone buys that argument is questionable.

Although the idea that Sanchez wants back in to the game of electoral politics is so predictable. Political retirement, particularly when it is imposed on someone, is deadly dull.

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Seven more days for 40892-424

One week from now, federal inmate number 40892-424 will have gone through orientation and will have completed his first night in prison – a lifestyle that he’s going to have to endure for just over a decade.

BLAGOJEVICH: Soon to lose the suit

That inmate, of course, is Rod Blagojevich, who has to report to prison (possibly a minimum-security facility in Colorado) come Thursday. Which means he’s now going through his final week of freedom.

EVERYTHING HE DOES in coming days will take on the aura of “one last time” – both for himself and for his family.

It even seems that we’re going to get “one last statement” from Blagojevich. The Associated Press reported that a Blagojevich “spokesman” said the former governor himself will make some sort of public statement some time in coming days.

Then, he will go off to prison – which makes me wonder if his final day of freedom will resemble the scenes in the film “Goodfellas” where actor Ray Liotta’s “Henry Hill” character engaged in a final party of booze and drugs and floozies, only to climb into a limousine and tell the driver, “Now, take me to jail.”

Although as much as I might joke here, and some people will eagerly be awaiting this week with glee (a fact that still bothers me more than anything Blagojevich might have actually done while in public office), the truth is that there really is nothing funny about what is going to happen a week from now.

HE’S STILL A human being, and he will have a wife and two daughters who will be devastated by what will happen. I’m not about to start up the charity fund for the family Blagojevich. But we shouldn’t overlook the loss that is created by a 14-year prison term (even if that translates into 11-plus years of REAL time).

Which is why I can’t help but feel a bit of sympathy these days. But not so much sympathy that I really care much what Blagojevich has to say in a final statement. In fact, a part of me desperately wants to ignore whatever the former governor has to say for his final words as a “free” man.

Because I’m convinced that if we really wanted to inflict a “blow” to the ego of Blagojevich, we’d blow it off. We wouldn’t cover it. We would let his statement twist in the wind, and we’d seriously debate that old philosophical cliché, “If a tree falls in the forest but no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

If Blagojevich speaks and no one records it, does it really matter?

BECAUSE I CAN’T really envision anything he’d say that needs to be recorded for posterity. He still thinks he ‘didn’t do it.’ He’s been framed?

Even if he were to do an about-face and admit some sort of “guilt” or “responsibility” (which some law-and-order types always claim they want to hear), would it really make a difference now?

He’s going to have to endure prison. It’s going to be a demeaning experience, particularly for someone like Blagojevich who had such an over-bloated view of his self-importance to begin with.

My own trivial question is to wonder how Blagojevich will cope with the fact that the prison barbers will likely be incapable of (and unwilling to try to) maintaining that helmet-like hairdo he has spouted for years.

BLAGOJEVICH WITH A buzz-cut?!? What horrors it will be for him!

Although I wonder if he’ll get another ego-blow come March 17 – St. Patrick’s Day. That is a holiday that Chicago political types like to make a big deal of, regardless of their ethnic origins.

It will be a “first” – as in, the first holiday Blagojevich will miss out on due to his incarceration.

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Some just aren’t happy unless they can label other people in a derogatory way

I recall a moment over a decade ago when now-former state Senator Walter Dudycz told me that it is proper that someone who serves some time in prison has to live the rest of their lives with something of a stigma on their reputation.

At the time, I dismissed it because it came from Dudycz, who was a former Chicago cop who also was a rare breed – a Republican elected official who lived within the city limits (the far Northwest Side, to be exact).

BUT THEN, THE General Assembly created laws requiring people convicted of sex crimes to have to register with the police – even after they have served their sentence. Those registries are public, which means everybody gets to know what once happened.

Considering that some communities have local ordinances that allow landlords to refuse to rent to people with criminal records, this does get to be a major inconvenience.

It may well be a hindrance to the ability of some people to get their act together and live something resembling a normal life.

Now, we have the state Legislature wanting to impose similar requirements for anyone who has a murder conviction.

EVEN AFTER SERVING their prison terms (which are lengthy in and of themselves), those people would have to go to the police department in their home community and put themselves on a list for public inspection.

Perhaps we want a scarlet “M.” Or maybe some ghoulish individuals would rather it be a “K” (for “killer”).

Such a requirement, according to the bill that got passed this spring by the General Assembly, would be in place for 10 years after being released from prison. This measure is now pending before Gov. Pat Quinn, who’s going to have to decide whom he is willing to offend.

Because he’s going to upset somebody, regardless of what he does.

YES, I SEEM to be on the side of people with a murder conviction. But only because I think the “logic” of the people who are most eager to have this bill enacted into law is based in mean-spirited sentiments.

I happen to believe that the prison sentence itself (along with the inevitable probationary period that follows) IS the punishment. This just strikes me as an attempt by people of a certain mentality (they’d call themselves “law and order,” while I’d say they’re mere “vigilantes”) who are eager to pile on the punishment.

There literally are some proponents of this new bill who say the reason they want it is to provide additional reminders to the individuals of what they did.

As though the actual prison sentence (a significant portion of which likely was served in a maximum-security facility) didn’t provide ample reminder, or an experience horrific enough that they could ever forget it.

IT STRIKES ME that the kind of people who want a law like this are the same people who are going to complain that 10 or so years in a federal prison isn’t enough for former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, and that they wish he could get something close to the 300 years that, in theory, is an option.

Anybody who gets a murder conviction has at least a 20-year sentence to serve (and it is that short only IF the person was a model individual in the rest of their life AND if the actual crime could somehow be portrayed as something resembling an accident).

In most cases, a murder conviction results in a prison sentence of severe length. Forty to 60 years is common, although with the concept of “extended sentence” it can be a virtual life prison sentence.

That is, if the inmate doesn’t get an actual life-without-parole prison term.

THE IDEA THAT anyone thinks there is a need to add on to that punishment is absurd. Even the Chicago Sun-Times saw that logic in officially editorializing against this bill.

Which is why I don’t get swayed by the stories told by the measure’s proponents, including state Rep. Dennis Reboletti, R-Elmhurst, who talk of cases where someone got out of prison after serving about a decade for a murder conviction (which is possible in cases where the original crime wasn’t severe and where the inmate behaves so well in prison that they qualify for all the early-release good time possible).

The cases they are describing are the exception. They are so far from the norm. But these proponents seem more interested in exaggerating the situation, even if it penalizes the masses.

Even though these individuals have a conviction for one of the most heinous crimes imaginable (I know those who’d argue that sex crimes are worse because the victim survives), they do still have some sense of humanity.

I’M NOT FOR trampling on that, just because some people feel the need to have someone else to look down upon.

Let’s hope that Quinn, when he makes his decision on this particular bill sometime this month, sees this issue sensibly – and doesn’t decide to give in to a “bullying” mentality that should have died once we got past the mentality of the schoolyard.

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There is a new tactic to try to get George Ryan out of prison – will it work?

Requesting clemency from a now-former president in the final weeks of his administration didn’t work for George Ryan. Neither did appealing to the current president’s sense of home loyalties and creating the image of a doddering old man whose health could take a turn for the worst at federal taxpayer expense.

So perhaps it should not be a surprise that the people who are willing to publicly back Ryan these days (whose numbers are far greater than the total who will ever say they support Rod Blagojevich) are trying a new tactic.

THEY’RE APPEALING TO a sense that perhaps Ryan has already served his prison time, and ought to be released.

That is the basis of an appeal attorneys for Ryan filed this week, saying that some of the charges upon which he was convicted ought to be dismissed and that he has served enough time at the Federal Correctional Center near Terre Haute, Ind., to satisfy what remains.

It is now in the hands of U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer to decide whether or not there is any legal merit to Ryan’s claim, and while a part of me thinks it is a totally reasonable request, I am not convinced she (or any other judge) will be inclined to grant it to him.

Which means if I had to put money down on this, I’d argue that Ryan will remain inmate 16627-424 for quite some time.

WHAT IT COMES down to is that ruling made by the Supreme Court of the United States earlier this year with regards to criminal convictions based on “honest services” – the belief that a person who fails to perform up to his best abilities on the job is committing an infraction worthy of criminal charges and prison time.

That ruling specifically related to officials with Enron whose behavior cost many people their financial livelihoodm, but the nation’s high court went so far as to restrict the ability to use such laws in public corruption cases.

Then, one-time newspaper publisher (and Chicago Sun-Times executive) Conrad Black was able to use that ruling as the basis of having a federal judge in Chicago knock some time off of his prison term – allowing him to be released. Conrad is a free man.

Which is what George Ryan – who has been held in federal prison for nearly three full years – wants to be.

RYAN WANTS US to believe that the charges upon which he was found guilty that rely on the “honest services” concept (the idea that by ignoring the fact that his Secretary of State employees were soliciting bribes from unqualified drivers, he himself was committing an illegal act) ought to be disregarded and downplayed.

When one considers that the bulk of the counts against him were based on the concept, it becomes clear that Ryan’s 6 ½-year prison term would be so significantly reduced that he probably would only really owe the federal government a year or two of his life in incarceration.

And as I pointed out earlier, he already has served 34 months in prison.

He wants us to think he did the time. Which means George Ryan is focusing less on getting his conviction overturned than he is in just trying to get out of the Terre Haute federal penitentiary (which fans of The Blues Brothers will point out serves a terrible cabbage roll to its inmates) any time sooner than his scheduled release date of July 4, 2013.

I POINTED OUT that last tidbit about having served the “time” because I have lost track of the number of people whose response Wednesday to Ryan’s request is to quote that old Baretta cliché, “Don’t do the crime, if you can’t do the time.”

But it does go to show how anything that even slightly resembles compassion toward Ryan is going to tick off a certain segment of our society – one that is determined to take a harder line toward the former governor than they would to many other people.

So it will be with some interest that I wait and see when Pallmeyer holds a hearing to allow attorneys (including former Chicago-based U.S. attorneys James R. Thompson and Dan Webb) to argue the merits of this particular request (and allow the prosecutors to dump all over it). Because I can’t envision any judge being that eager to have her (or his) name on an order that sets George Ryan free. At the very least, it will tick off those prosecutors who will perceive it as a challenge to their authority – and their conviction records.

It also would outrage that segment of the public that, for politically partisan reasons, wishes Ryan could be required to serve more time (not less). Even though it probably is the right thing to do, nobody – not George W. Bush or Barack Obama or anyone else – wants to put their name on the piece of paper that shows compassion in this case.

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Gov gives Brady what he wants, still loses

The summer isn’t even over, yet we’re getting hard-core campaign activity. How else to explain the fact that Republican gubernatorial nominee William Brady is upset about a new law he sponsored?

At stake is the fact that Brady currently is a state senator from Bloomington, and one of the bills he introduced this spring actually made it all the way through the legislative process, and was signed into law earlier this week by Gov. Pat Quinn.

CONSIDERING THAT THIS gives Brady a legitimate legislative accomplishment to include on his record, and one that could bolster his record when it comes to the campaign season, some might have expected Quinn to veto the measure out of political spite.

Sure, the Legislature could have come back during the veto session and over-rode him – making it law anyway. But that wouldn’t have happened until after the Nov. 2 elections. Who would have remembered? Or cared?

Instead, Quinn signed the measure into law. Yet Brady is upset. He thinks Quinn didn’t give him and his “issue” enough public attention. He would have wanted Quinn to tout this bill as a major accomplishment of the administration – and one given to him by Brady himself.

If it sounds like I write that last sentence with a mocking tone, you’d be correct. Brady ought to be thankful he got his “new law” in place, because that bill was one of his own attempts to create an issue for the campaign season. It would have made sense for Quinn to veto the thing, just for the sake of rejecting it.

INSTEAD, HE DIDN’T.

Enough of this partisan babbling. The issue relates to the early release of prison inmates who appear to be behaving while incarcerated in a manner sufficient enough that their continued imprisonment just doesn’t make much sense at a time when the state’s prison system is grossly overcrowded.

There already are measures for early release for good behavior, but it seems that under Quinn, there was a program by which additional good time could be earned. The result is a set of inmates who were set free, and some of them either immediately got themselves arrested, or are not complying with probation requirements because they have managed to disappear altogether.

That situation creates embarrassment for Quinn. Back during the primary campaign season, opponent Dan Hynes tried to make an issue against Quinn out of this, and it did hurt his support.

BRADY HIMSELF TRIED to score some political points by coming up with his bill that is now law – requiring the Illinois Department of Corrections to use their website to publish pictures and basic information about inmates who are set free under special early release programs.

Theoretically, it gives the public information that might help us realize that a person who suddenly shows up in our communities might have a past that we should be concerned about. In reality, it allows Brady to say that such a law was required because of the incompetence of state corrections officials during the Quinn administration.

Brady had his campaign spokesman issue a statement saying that Quinn should have signed this bill into law with much fanfare. Perhaps a big bill-signing ceremony, with Quinn turning over the pen he used to apply his signature to paper to Brady himself, who would then be allowed to grandstand on the issue – with the “Mighty Quinn” forced to stand at his side and take the verbal abuse.

Once again, more sarcasm on my side. Such a sight was never going to occur, and Brady knows that. For him to have such self-righteous claptrap be issued in his name makes him look absurd – almost as absurd as it was back in June when Quinn held a ceremony to honor the Illinois Wesleyan University baseball team for winning an NCAA Division III national championship and Brady took offense that he wasn’t invited on account of the fact that he is an alum (Class of 1983).

THE SIMPLE FACT is that the Illinois Legislature approves hundreds, sometimes near 1,000, bills each year. The number of them that get elaborate ceremonies to celebrate their approval are but a dozen or so.

Most of them get signed in batches usually timed for moments when political people think no one is paying much attention. By and large, few people are.

Then, there are cases such as this bill, which was signed just as its time for consideration was running out. State law gives a governor 60 days from the date a bill arrives in his office to take some sort of action. So yes, it is true that Quinn handled this particular issue in as low-key a manner as possible.

But considering that this is an election year, it would not have been surprising for Quinn to just take a “no” attitude toward anything with Brady’s name connected to it. Which means my bottom line is that Brady should be thankful he got his legislative accomplishment – which I’m sure he will still find ways to use to smack Quinn upside his head a few times.

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Posturing galore on Wednesday

I’m dreading Wednesday.

That is going to be a day for all the gasbags to come crawling out of the woodwork and express their “outrage” over the great injustices that will be committed that day.

WHAT MAKES IT worse is that there isn’t even just one issue that will cause the rhetorical pontification that will spout up that day. Politics and sports – take your pick. There are going to be ticked off people.

Wednesday is the day that an Illinois government commission will meet both in Chicago and at the Statehouse in Springpatch to discuss the “fate” of the Thomson Correctional Center. That also will be the day that the Baseball Hall of Fame will inform us which ballplayers – if any – wind up gaining admission this year.

The big, fat balls of gas will come out on both issues, and we’re going to hear so much pompous rhetoric – particularly if onetime Montreal Expo Andre Dawson (who played a few years with the Chicago Cubs) doesn’t get it, while the other side of town will give us some people seriously outraged at the concept that former Chicago White Sox outfielder Harold Baines never gains more respect from Hall of Fame voters.

The scary thing is that their rhetoric will be just as intense as the cheap talk coming from the political people at the Thompson Center and at the Statehouse.

FOR IT WILL be on Wednesday that the Illinois Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability will use modern technology to meet without gathering in the same room to express their thoughts about the fact that the federal government wants to purchase the unused maximum-security state prison from Illinois government – so as to provide a place to locate some of the people alleged to have committed acts of terrorism against the United States who now are being held at a U.S. Navy base in Cuba.

State officials even go so far to say that they may reach a decision on what to do with this issue when they meet on Wednesday.

Hah!

I will be the first to concede this is a serious issue. It is legitimate. It ought not to be ridiculed by anyone.

BUT THE IDEA that anything that will happen on /Wednesday will resolve this issue is a laughable concept. For the bottom line is that this is a federal issue. It is going to be the Congress and the president who ultimately settle this score.

All that is going to happen on Wednesday is that a lot of state officials, some of whom have Election /Day interests at stake come Feb. 2, will make pompous statements meant to make themselves look firm and authoritative to the people of their home districts who foolishly elected them once and likely will send them back to Springfield to continue to do “the people’s business.”

The state at some point will have to take some sort of vote approving the sale of the prison that was meant to be opened in the early 2000s as a way of giving the state a modern maximum-security facility – but never was properly opened because the state’s financial problems made it impossible for them to afford to operate it.

In short, Thomson was the fancy new house that we never could afford, and now someone is willing to take it off our hands at something resembling a fair price.

BUT WE’RE GOING to hear the politicking from Republican officials who will parrott the partisan rhetoric of their federal government counterparts – bringing inmates from Guantanamo Bay to Thomson somehow makes us Illinoisans (and Chicagoans in particular) a target for terrorist plots.

Ignoring the fact that the city’s size and amenities already do that, Wednesday will be another case for political people to manage to say something stupid, all in the name of trying to get themselves re-elected. I wish I didn’t have to hear it.

But we’re going to have to listen to more of this trash talk at our local level, on top of the identical arguments that are made at the federal level. At least there, there is legitimate procedures that need to take place. There are Republicans who can hold up the actual purchase of the prison if they are that determined to try to make President Barack Obama look bad.

Of course, all they will really do is make themselves look inane. But that has never stopped political people before. I’d like to think that I could somehow escape the political trash talk by simply looking elsewhere.

BUT THEN, I’M going to encounter all those Baseball Hall of Fame types who already are polluting the Internet with their tyrades. Bert Blyleven in the Hall of Fame? I hardly think so, although here in Chicago we’re going to get our focus of people either feeling self-righteous indignation that Dawson had to wait nearly a decade before being accepted, or more disgust if he (probably rightfully so) gets overlooked again.

When combined with the complaints about Baines (who despite his quality statistics is now paying for being such a quiet, mild-mannered personality when he was an active ballplayer), it is going to be hard for me to figure out whether the sporting-type or the political-type people are being more ridiculous.

Chicago sports fans might have to settle for cheering the election of Roberto Alomar, the one-time star second baseman who played some non-descript ball with the White Sox toward the end of his career.

In short, Wednesday might turn out to be one of those days I lock myself away in my apartment and hide under the covers while the kooks complain. Somebody wake me up when its Thursday.

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They're coming to Illinois, accept it!

Federal officials made it final on Tuesday, the U.S. government is going to buy the largely-vacant prison near Thomson, Ill., and use it to house many of the alleged terrorist suspects who until now have been held indefinitely at the U.S. Naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

President Barack Obama made one of his first actions in office to be the signing of an order that those inmates be moved out of there as soon as was practically possible, and the purchase of the prison means that the answer to the question “What will we do with them?” is now “Send them to rural Illinois.”

AS WAS TO be expected, this is becoming a partisan issue amongst our political people. Democrats are lining up behind the president, while Republicans are engaging in the scare tactics of ridiculous rhetoric implying that somehow, this makes Chicago more of a target for future terror acts than it already is.

Or do these people believe Chicago should give up O’Hare International Airport and the Willis Tower?

All big cities in this country are targets, just because an incident in Chicago or somewhere else significant will draw more international attention than, say, an attack on Watterson Towers in Normal, Ill. (and my apologies to any Illinois State University alums who ever actually lived in that 27-story structure).

Also, there’s the fact that no more than 100 Guantanamo inmates are being sent to Thomson, a maximum-security facility that has about 1,600 cells. This is not going to be the end destination for all those would-be terror suspects, so we’re not going to get the brunt of negative attention.

YES, I WILL come out and write it. I mock the idea that Illinois is somehow being put at risk by shifting these inmates to Thomson. I realize that they ultimately have to be put somewhere on the mainland United States, and a place in northwestern Illinois that is located a hundred or so miles from any city of significant size is about as isolated a ground as one can find.

About the only placemore isolated might very well be to build a facility in Alaska and transport them there – but then I could envision Sarah Palin getting all worked up.

Part of what makes me think little of the Republican rhetoric was the debate held this week among the GOP dreamers for Illinois governor – all of whom took their own shots at Democrats, which is to be expected.

But one-time Illinois Attorney General Jim Ryan, in his attempt to criticize, wound up conceding the absurdity of the argument.

“I THINK IT’S a very bad idea to bring the mastermind of (the World Trade Center attack) to Thomson,” said Ryan, according to the Daily Herald of Arlington Heights. “I have no doubt we can keep him there and he’ll never get out . But no one can tell me there’s no risk.”

In short, he concedes that it would be impossible for these inmates to sneak out of the prison and “blend in” with the surrounding community. So what’s the problem?

Is it just that some people are determined to complain no matter what the issue or how ridiculous a viewpoint they must take in order to be “in opposition” to the “other” side? Because under typical circumstances, these particular officials would be the first ones to praise the opening of a new prison facility because of the creation of so many new jobs for people who are their potential political supporters.

At least with the case of Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., whose campaign website promoting his bid for a U.S. Senate seat contains a link to an Internet petition to be sent to Obama, his ridiculous rhetoric can be explained away as a cheap attempt to gain attention to his political aspirations and to try to appear more conservative than his voting record would indicate he is on various issues.

I’M SURE HIS people took a look at polls such as the one recently released by the Chicago Tribune that showed nearly half of would-be Republican voters (46 percent, to be exact) remain undecided, which means their initial look at Kirk was not enough to convince them to want to support him.

It may be shameful, but Kirk’s rhetoric is political, and his comments of today may very well be the ones that he tries to downplay in the future when he’s trying to get the votes of “real” people – not the ideologues.

My problem with the issue, and the reason I’m glad to see that movement is being made to get the inmates out of Guantanamo is that I always have believed the odd conditions (unlike those of any other person being incarcerated by our government against his will) of that facility go a long way toward undermining the moral authority our country claims with regard to the military efforts taking place in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A line I often have used remains true today – any time Fidel Castro can criticize you (and he has many times on this issue) without being totally dishonest means you’re doing something wrong.

TUESDAY’S ANNOUNCEMENT ALSO gave me a kick because it had the feel of Illinoisans taking over the White House for the day. Obama made sure to have Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., at his side, along with Gov. Pat Quinn – who made last-minute changes to his schedule so he could be in the District of Columbia for the day instead of at his Chicago office.

Heck, even our other senator, Roland Burris, D-Ill., got into the mood, issuing the statement that usually would have been the priority of Republican officials and which likely will be the last time anyone pays serious attention to him.

More than 3,000 jobs created for the local folk, along with the potential for much more federal funding for the area on account of the fact that the Thomson Correctional Center shifts from the Illinois Department of Corrections to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.

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Could “THOMSON, Ill.” become one of the hotspot datelines on the planet?

To me, one of the great shames of Illinois government of the past decade is that we are the state with serious prison crowding issues that built a new maximum-security correctional facility – only to discover that we couldn’t afford to operate it.

We’re like the lottery winner who spends their one-time riches on a big mansion that they can’t afford to keep up, so it becomes decrepit. That makes our state government more buffoonish than anything that was ever done or said by Rod Blagojevich.

THAT IS THE situation with regards to the maximum-security prison located near Thomson, a town of just over 1,000 people in far northwestern Illinois. It is a town that never had much to draw attention to it, until it became the site of a prison that sits largely unused.

To me, anything that allows that new prison facility to be put to use is a good thing.

So it is because of that concept that I am inclined to look favorably on the political people who think that the inmates currently being held at the U.S. naval base on Guantanamo Bay in Cuba ought to be moved to the facility in northwest Illinois.

I have long thought that the situation in Guantanamo was an embarrassment to the United States by giving our international enemies a legitimate issue that could be used against us, one that goes so far as to undermine our sense that we have a morally superior cause in the fight against terrorist activity.

REGARDLESS OF WHERE they are moved, the people being held at Guantanamo need to be moved from that facility where they are being held indefinitely without charges, to a situation where they would be in the criminal justice system of the United States.

The argument has always been, where to put them.

To me, moving them to Thomson, Ill., makes sense in that it puts them into a modern corrections facility in an isolated part of Illinois.

In short, a national embarrassment would be erased by moving the inmates to Illinois, which would erase a state government embarrassment.

NOW I CAN already envision the critics, since this issue has already become politicized. Democratic officials largely support the idea of moving the inmates to Thomson, in part because it would require a mass hiring of people to properly staff the corrections facility.

Those promises made a decade ago that all kinds of jobs would be created by a new prison in northwest Illinois would finally come true.

Republican officials, meanwhile, are largely speaking out against the issue. Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., used the issue this past weekend to stir up rhetoric critical of Democrats and Obama.

His challengers in the Republican primary for Senate largely are in agreement with him. This may actually be something that has brought the sides together.

HONESTLY, I THINK their true objection is that this is an Obama-supported proposal. If George W. Bush had ever suggested the idea during his presidency, these same people likely would have raced to see who could endorse it most quickly.

Their rhetoric says they hate the idea because they don’t like Thomson’s proximity to Chicago and Rockford – both of which have federal courthouses for the U.S. District of Northern Illinois.

It would make sense that if inmates facing criminal charges related to international terrorism were to be put on trial in the federal court system, they’d likely be sent to Chicago.

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald could wind up having to take on countless cases related to terrorism, which might cut into the amount of time his staff can spend seeking to prosecute Democratic Chicago political people.

BUT SERIOUSLY, THE GOP critics say they don’t like the idea of Chicago having these trials because it makes our city “a target.”

They sense that the kinds of people in the Middle East who pledge their allegiance to the memory of Osama bin Laden (I don’t know if he’s still alive, I find it hard to believe that a man who required kidney dialysis treatments could survive for too long while living on the lam) will seek revenge every time one of their cohorts goes on trial, and they will attack the city where those trials will be held.

Excuse me for not being overly concerned, largely because I have enough sense to realize Chicago already is a target for such activity. I don’t believe that this change in procedure would significantly change the amount of attention that the third largest U.S. city (and the largest in the Heartland) would get from people crazed enough to try detonating a “suitcase” bomb of nuclear material at the corner of State and Madison.

In fact, I find people who try to dredge up such rhetoric to dump on the idea to be guilty of little more than fear mongering, which makes me wonder if we should fear the GOP as much as we do the would-be terrorists.

NOT REALLY. I realize that most of the ideologues of the GOP are merely being foolish, not venal.

But this is one situation where we ought to put aside the partisan rhetoric and consider a solution that would resolve several problems. For as I wrote earlier, those inmates at Guantanamo are going to have to be put somewhere. Maintaining that status quo clearly is unacceptable.

As far as I am concerned, the fact that the Republican candidates for Senate and governor are so quick to try to use this as an issue makes me wonder if any of them are worth receiving our votes come Election Day.

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Just because people don’t want to hear about Tamms doesn’t make it lesser issue

I understand why most people don’t want to have to think about issues related to prison conditions.

Those of us with any sense of compassion get squeamish at the thought of some of the things that happen in the places where people supposedly are being rehabilitated, while some of us have a twisted enough sense that we enjoy the thought of an inmate suffering somewhat.

BUT THE CONDITIONS at the Tamms Correctional Center (the place where inmates who misbehave in maximum-security prisons are sent as punishment) are severe enough that we as a society probably do need to have a serious discussion about what is appropriate when it comes to inmate discipline.

For the record, I have only been to Tamms once (about 10 years ago as a reporter-type person). I still remember walking through the halls of the facility thinking it was unlike any prison or jail facility I had ever been inside before.

The only other person I saw was the corrections officer who was escorting me to the spot where I was to meet Corrections Department officials. There was none of the rambling noise or clamor of a prison.

No obscenities being shouted me by inmates. But the excess control of movement made for a more tense vibe than I had ever felt inside a prison, or just about any place no matter how intense the security is.

THE “GIMMICK” ABOUT Tamms is that it is a “control unit” facility (although the TV types generally prefer to call it “Supermax”), which means that inmates are kept in their cells for 23 hours per day, and are isolated to such a heavy degree that they never come into contact with each other.

And when it comes to cells, we’re not talking about anything with iron bars and windows. We’re talking closed-off rooms with iron doors.

We’re talking about total isolation from human contact – except to the degree that a guard will have to drop off a meal at the inmate’s cell or escort the inmate to a fenced-in area for an hour’s worth of physical stretching or other exercise per day.

Now if this were truly a case where an inmate was shipped to Tamms for a few weeks of isolation, then sent back to their more conventional (and usually much older) prison facility, there might not be the controversy.

AFTER ALL, PRISONS have usually had a “segregation” unit to keep problem inmates separate from others – sometimes for the isolated inmate’s own safety.

But we’re talking about inmates spending months and months being isolated from any human contact, which can have the effect of messing mentally with those individuals.

We’re talking about some problem inmates who caused so much havoc in the Illinois Department of Corrections that they were shipped to Tamms (the land where one is closer physically and in spirit to Jackson, Miss., than to Chicago) when the facility opened in 1998 – and remain there to this day.

Perhaps it is no great loss that Henry Brisbon (the I-57 Killer of 1970s fame who has since killed another inmate and once attacked notorious serial killer John Gacy when they were at the state prison in Pontiac) is being kept under such conditions, as prison officials believe he is beyond control except under the most extreme circumstances.

BUT IT WOULD seem that the Illinois Department of Corrections is becoming too comfortable with the thought of leaving inmates in Tamms for extended time periods.

There is a reason that Amnesty International, the group that monitors conditions around the world looking for instances of torture and abuse, thinks that the concept of “control unit” prison facilities is just as much torture as anything done in a Cuban facility controlled by the Castro Brothers.

Part of torture is breaking people down mentally.

And whether one wants to accept it or not, forced isolation can cause just about anyone to crack.

IT CAN LITERALLY get to the point where one spends so much time cut off from the rest of the world that they lose what little ability they ever had to interact with other people. Whether that makes them more likely to lash out, or become the victim of such people, varies from person to person.

This is a situation that cannot carry on the status quo.

Just because this particular facility has been built in the most isolated end of Illinois does not give the Illinois public the excuse to ignore the situation.

So it would be nice if Corrections Director Michael Randle were to be successful in implementing portions of a 10-point plan he has concocted in response to the studies that trash the “control-unit” concept.

PROBABLY THE MOST significant of those changes is that inmates will have to be given a serious guess at how long they will be held at the facility. It also would restrict stays at Tamms to no more than a year, unless state officials can justify longer incarceration periods.

These ideas only make sense because prison officials have always defended the concept of prisons like Tamms by saying they are designed for discipline of problem inmates, not their permanent incarceration.

So if the intent is that inmates will eventually be returned to other prisons, we should probably give up on policies meant to mollify that portion of the population that is deluded enough to think that “throwing away the key” accomplishes anything.

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From Guantanamo to Tamms?

It’s more about political grandstanding than offering up a serious suggestion.

I don’t expect the federal government to take Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., up on his offer to take some of those suspected terrorists who have been held at the military base at Guantanamo Bay (that’s Cuba) and keep them in custody in the depths of Southern Illinois.

DURBIN WENT ON the “Meet the Press” program Sunday, and made his statement that Illinois could easily handle some of those people who think they’re earning their way into Heaven by igniting a bomb or two against the Western world.

Specifically, he’d have them sent to the closed-unit prison built near the town of Tamms – located about 12 miles north of the state’s southernmost tip.

To those of us who rely on newspaper headlines and smart aleck pundits for details, a closed-unit facility is known as “supermax,” although most prison officials I have ever met detest that term.

But regardless of what one calls it, Durbin is offering up our state’s most isolated prison as a place to keep people who view themselves as “enemies” of our nation (or may have mistakenly been taken for terrorists, who’s to say. It’s not like these people were ever tried and found guilty of the allegations against them).

“I’D BE OKAY with them in a supermax facility, because we’ve never had an escape from one,” Durbin said during his interview on the long-running weekend interview program whose ratings have been on the decline ever since host Tim Russert passed away last year.

“We have over 340 convicted terrorists now being held safely in our prisons,” said Durbin. “I just don’t hear anyone suggesting releasing them or sending them to another country. That isn’t part of the program that we have before us.”

The issue of the “enemy combatants” picked up in desolate parts of Afghanistan or other parts of the world and being held in U.S. custody has long been a feisty one.

Former President George W. Bush will have the fact that these people were held in Guantanamo Bay as a negative part of his legacy, and that is what is behind President Barack Obama’s desire to get those people off the naval base maintained by our nation at the southeastern tip of Cuba (the bizarre nature of that deal is a topic for another day’s commentary).

OBAMA IS NOBLE enough in his desire to get these people out of a situation where it looks like our nation is incarcerating them without any concern for their legal rights (and yes, every human being has certain legal rights – that’s part of what makes our nation so noble).

But what do we do with them?

The obvious situation would be to hold them within the existing prison system maintained by the federal government. But the Bureau of Prisons only maintains one closed-unit facility (in Colorado), and officials there have made it clear they’re filled close to capacity.

One broadcast report I heard this weekend indicated that prison in Florence, Colo., had room for only one more inmate. Obviously, there is more than one person being held in Cuba who needs to be put elsewhere.

AND NOBODY IS suggesting that one-time Evergreen Park resident Ted Kaczynski (a.k.a., “the Unabomber”) should be moved to a lesser-security prison so that someone who thinks his ultimate reward is 72 virgins can have his cell.

So what should become of these people who have had a particularly un-luxurious Cuban “vacation” in recent years, and whom the United States would prefer not to have freely in circulation around the globe?

The smart aleck in me wants to welcome Durbin’s suggestion.

After all, if the Illinois Department of Corrections were required to take custody of inmates because of the federal government, it would be able to send a bill to Washington for the expense of custody and care of these people.

PERHAPS ONE KEY to helping plug the state’s budgetary problems is to offer up a few cells in Tamms, with the state adding on a certain “gratuity” of sorts to ensure that a profit is made.

I don’t think we’d want to take on so many people to plug the entire budgetary gap, but a few extra bucks couldn’t hurt.

Nonetheless, I don’t seriously expect anyone to take up this suggestion – even though Durbin has offered up Tamms and Sen. Roland Burris, D-Ill., said last week he’d be willing to have some of those inmates transferred to the maximum-security federal prison in Marion.

I can already hear the outrage of the roughly 5 percent of Illinoisans who live south of Interstate 70 if such “dangerous” people were put in their midst, even though such an argument would be ridiculous.

THE WHOLE CONCEPT of closed unit/supermax/whatever you call it is that inmates are kept in their cells for about 23 hours per day, and NEVER have contact with any human being other than the guard who gets to put them in shackles for the few minutes of fresh air they are allowed each day.

In short, people of Southern Illinois would never see these inmates.

Neither would the rest of Illinois, since Tamms is such an isolated place (I made the drive down there once, it’s not the kind of place one accidentally stumbles across) that one could argue these combatants had more contact with the rest of the world when they were at Guantanamo Bay.

So will it soon become every state’s obligation to take on a few of these inmates (who are a significant part of the Bush legacy) so Obama can try to appear as though he’s being humanitarian? It’s not like life in isolation at Tamms is a picnic.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Did Dick Durbin upstage Newt Gingrich? Or did the Gentleman from Sangamon (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/30913724#30913724) make himself look foolish?

C-number inmates not a new issue

A series of inmates who by now have spent at least three decades of their lives in Illinois’ prison system say the Illinois Prisoner Review Board is so obsessed with punishment that it ignores rehabilitation.

That was the stance taken earlier this week by the John Howard Association, the Chicago-based group that monitors prison conditions and attempts to ensure that the basic human rights of inmates are observed.

SPECIFICALLY, THE ASSOCIATION spoke out once again on behalf of “C number” inmates – which refers to inmates who were sentenced prior to 1978. Their Corrections Department case numbers all start with the letter “C,” hence the nickname.

The significance of that date is that was the year the General Assembly and then-Gov. James R. Thompson approved a new sentencing scheme for people convicted of crimes. Judges now hand down specific sentences.

Previously, judges would set a range of time, and ultimately it was up to the parole board (which has morphed into the Prisoner Review Board) to decide when an inmate should be released from prison.

The change was made out of a belief back then that setting specific sentences was more reasonable, since it let an inmate know exactly how long he could expect to spend in prison.

UNDER THE OLD system, an inmate’s fate was completely out of his control, and he had no clue what would happen to him.

The result is that some inmates kept perpetually coming up for parole, only to be turned down. Take the case of Richard Speck, who was convicted of the 1966 slayings of eight student nurses at South Chicago Community Hospital.

After his death sentence was overturned in 1972 (all death sentences everywhere in the United States were overturned that year by the Supreme Court), Speck was re-sentenced to eight consecutive prison terms of between 50 and 150 years each.

He kept coming up for parole every few years, until he finally died at Stateville Correctional Center near Joliet – having never convinced a parole board of his ability to rehabilitate himself.

BUT SPECK WAS not the only case. Although inmates since 1978 have been sentenced to specific terms (with set rules by which specific amounts of time can be knocked off the sentence for “good behavior”), the Prisoner Review Board continues to hear these old cases – for the inmates were sentenced under different rules.

Although some inmates have managed to win their parole throughout the years and others have died off, the John Howard Association estimates there are roughly 300 inmates still in the Illinois Department of Corrections system who have to go through the old system.

The problem, as inmate rights activists see it, is that there are two systems, and the old system has turned out to be unfair to the inmates, since there are many cases of the older inmates who wound up doing significantly more time in prison for the same crime as an inmate sentenced under the modern way of doing things.

Now like I said, this is not a new issue. Although the John Howard Association held a press conference earlier this week to stress the concept that these inmates have spent so much of their lives in prison that they are old and incapable of posing a threat any longer to the general public, this is not a new issue.

SO I HAVE heard the Corrections Department note that some of these older “C number” inmates were given a choice back when the system was changed in 1978 to be re-sentenced to a specific prison term – rather than the indeterminate method that was once common in prison systems across the country.

These older inmates chose to keep their existing sentences, perhaps out of a belief they could persuade a parole board to let them free somewhere closer to the minimum end of their prison term.

By that logic, these inmates chose their own fate, and should not be allowed to have the rules changed just for them. It is the same logic used whenever people argue on behalf of William Heirens (convicted of three North Side slayings in 1946, including that of a 6-year-old girl), who remains in prison to this day and has shown an impressive record of achievements while in prison.

Yet his detractors argue that he agreed to a life prison term to avoid execution, and ought to accept the fact that he will die in prison.

THE PROBLEM BECOMES that the Prisoner Review Board (which argues that it gets criticized by both liberal- and conservative-oriented activist groups, so it must be doing something right) has developed the mentality that it exists to keep people in prison.

Perhaps it is because it spends most of its time these days hearing the worst criminal cases in the Corrections Department system (among its duties, the review board makes recommendations to a governor whenever a condemned inmate appeals for clemency) that it is not suited to deal with many of these remaining old cases, which have resulted in some inmates doing decades in prison for crimes that comparable younger inmates did a few years.

So what is likely to happen? I won’t be surprised if the answer turns out to be, “nothing much.”

Like I said before, this is not a new issue. I remember hearing these same activists making their arguments a decade ago to a lack of interest among state officials.

THEIR ARGUMENTS THAT these are “model inmates” who have taken opportunities to educate themselves in prison and who no longer pose a threat to society because of their age and/or physical condition were ignored back then.

For the bottom line is that too many prosecutors are willing to take the view of DuPage County State’s Attorney Joseph Birkett, who told the Peoria Journal-Star newspaper that these inmates committed heinous crimes and deserve to remain in prison. “It’s not the age that defines who a person still is. It’s their character, what makes them tick.”

With that attitude, this is an issue that will only go away when many of these inmates wind up dying in prison. And for those who think somehow that paying attention to their situation is misguided, all I’d have to say is that it somehow seems to be a waste of state resources to continue to incarcerate these inmates – especially since many now have to be kept in special facilities to accommodate their deteriorating health conditions.

All this is paid for on your (and mine) tax dollars.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Inmate rights activists are once again trying to stir up support for prisoners (http://www.pjstar.com/homepage/x332634564/Prison-boards-parole-rate-criticized) sentenced under old guidelines that have resulted in them spending significant portions of their lives in Illinois’ prison system.

The John Howard Association has created a special project within its group to address the concerns (http://cnumbercampaign.org/ourcause.html) of “C-number” inmates.

Would Bush really grant Ryan a pardon?

What are the chances that President George W. Bush, on his final day in office in January 2009, grants a pardon for former Illinois Gov. George Ryan – thereby commuting his sentence to time served?

I know that the very thought of anything other than Ryan dying in prison will make a segment of the Illinois population very unhappy, and that there likely was a feeling of joy going through the minds of certain people when they learned Tuesday that the Supreme Court of the United States refused to hear Ryan’s appeal.

BUT I HAVE to admit that when I first learned that Ryan had failed in his last legitimate chance at a successful legal appeal and elimination of his prison sentence, my thoughts turned to Bush.

It seems inevitable that every single outgoing president has a pardon controversy. Ronald Reagan showed compassion to those caught up in the Iran-Contra affair, while Bill Clinton was accused of giving pardons to people who had previously been his campaign contributors.

Would Bush feel any sort of compassion for Ryan, who currently is 74 and would be pushing age 80 by the time he finishes “his time” – assuming he actually lives that long.

I wonder if Ryan’s age and health factors (he’s diabetic and suffers from Crohn’s Disease – an inflammatory bowel disease) could sway Bush into showing some compassion.

AFTER ALL, HE’S old and sick, and by January 2009 would have served just over one year of his life in a prison environment. Some might think that sufficient punishment for Ryan’s infractions (which amount to looking the other way and ignoring the fact that his staffers in the Illinois secretary of state’s office were soliciting bribes).

For those who think Ryan is at some sort of “country club,” he’s not. After beginning time at the minimum-security prison in Oxford, Wis., he was transferred (in large part because of his age and health conditions) to the minimum-security work camp that is a part of the maximum-security federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind.

That means he’s working in an environment where he’s in the shadows of one of the most intense prison environments in the country – Terre Haute is the facility where the federal government houses its “death row” inmates and performs its executions (the last of which were Timothy McVeigh and Juan Garza in the summer of 2001).

An argument can be made that the last thing the federal government really needs is to have to deal with Ryan’s declining health.

THERE’S ALSO THE fact that since the criminal conviction was kept intact (never overturned, despite vociferous written opinions by various appeals court judges), the loss of his sizable government pension remains in place.

He’s penniless and sick. What more is there for George Ryan to lose? Unless you are of the perspective that justice will only come if he gets knifed by a fellow inmate during a cafeteria brawl, then there isn’t much of a purpose to continuing to keep him in Indiana.

Ryan could easily slink back to the Kankakee area and live out his life as a broken man, which was the fate of Ryan’s opponent in the 1990 campaign for Illinois secretary of state – Jerry Cosentino. He got caught up in his own federal corruption trial and died with a criminal conviction, and only avoided prison because he sold his house to pay for the attorneys who kept him free. At the time of his death, he was broke and lived with his daughter.

Of course, I’m not completely convinced Bush would grant the pardon, although I expect him to grant a few to his political allies who managed to get into trouble during the past few years.

THE PROBLEM IS, Ryan may have been of the Republican Party, but they had ceased to be political allies.

Bush was the Texas governor who presided over so many executions (about one every two weeks at their peak), while Ryan was the guy who presided only over one (Andrew Kokoraleis), had trouble bringing himself to allow it to happen and wound up stirring up national attention against the death penalty when he imposed the still-intact moratorium against executions in Illinois.

Could I see Bush deciding to ignore a Ryan pardon application on the grounds that he doesn’t want to dignify anything related to the Ryan record – which includes death penalty opposition?

I could.

IN FACT, I wonder if people who talk about a pardon for Ryan are as misguided as the attorneys for Garza, the Brownsville, Texas, drug dealer who was put to death for a series of murders along the U.S./Mexico border, who actually appealed to Bush for clemency, saying they believed Bush would look at the death penalty differently now that he was president, and not just a Texas governor.

People who talk about pardons for Ryan note that dozens of people will be put on a list for Bush’s consideration. They want to believe it would be easy for Ryan to slip through, unnoticed.

Except that when it is Ryan, everything he will ever do for the rest of his life will gain extra attention. People who want him punished because of his activities with the death penalty (or those who seriously believe he “killed those kids” when an improperly-licensed Illinois truck driver caused an accident that killed six people) will ensure that his name shoots to the top, and a Ryan pardon would wind up being yet another blot on the legacy of George W. Bush.

So what is the Ryan legacy?

THERE ARE THOSE who want to spin it so that it is nothing more than a political official who went to prison.

I honestly believe that is a ridiculously narrow view from people who resent the fact that Ryan forced the concept of capital punishment in this country to be debated by government officials.

Ryan is the political official who was willing to address the issue of flaws in his state’s capital crimes statute at a time when the Illinois General Assembly wanted to ignore the issue and pass it on to someone else.

That doesn’t really warrant the Nobel Prize – as some people have tried in recent years to pursue on Ryan’s behalf.

BUT IT LIKELY will be the reason that a pardon request will not be taken seriously. The issue’s existence is the reason no one can rationally discuss the Ryan legacy.

And it is the reason why I still keep a photograph of Ryan hanging on my office wall (the picture is of Ryan being interviewed by myself during the 1997 Illinois State Fair in Springfield). He was an old-school politico who got things done and didn’t get caught up in the political partisanship that has poisoned modern-day politics.

And he also was one of the most interesting characters I will ever write about.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: George Ryan’s hometown newspaper, the Daily Journal of Kankakee, does its own pondering of the possibilities of a presidential (http://daily-journal.com/archives/dj/display.php?id=421347) pardon for the former governor.

As expected, the federal prosecutors who handled Ryan’s criminal case don’t want a presidential pardon (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-george-ryan-appeal-denied-webmay28,0,6489600.story), seeing any granting of clemency as a blotch on their own legal legacies.

Aside from surprise that the criminal conviction actually withstood legal appeals, my basic viewpoint of George Ryan hasn’t changed (http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2003/01/12/analysis_death_row_dead_kids_for_ryan/3528/) much since his final day in office in 2003.

"Joliet, Ill." losing its rep as a prison town

There once was a time when the placement of a “Joliet, Ill.” dateline atop a news story was a sure-fire guarantee of prison violence or some other news related to the activity of a violent criminal.

The small city located at the far southwestern-most corner of what could be considered the Chicago area became internationally known for the facilities located in or near its borders that housed dangerous and violent criminals.

THE NAMES “STATEVILLE” and “Joliet” brought to mind the same dank, depressing images of criminal justice and retribution as do names like “Leavenworth” and “Alcatraz.”

Those days are receding into the past, and Joliet municipal officials are glad. While they enjoyed the tax benefits and jobs provided by having two maximum-security prisons nearby, the fact that their town was known more for its dangerous visiting residents than anything that happened in town had to be depressing.

Joliet’s days as a prison town are declining because the Joliet Correctional Center and the Stateville Correctional Center in neighboring Crest Hill (which many people mistake for the low-income section of Joliet) are old. The Joliet prison dates to the 19th Century, while Stateville is a modern (only by Illinois prison standards) facility that opened in 1925.

Age is the element that brought the Joliet Correctional Center to its demise as a viable maximum-security prison, and its sister Stateville Correctional Center could soon share the same fate. Photograph provided by Library of Congress collection.

Trying to turn those old prisons that were meant to resemble imposing castles that would scare passersby into never wanting to have to spend any time there (while also intimidating the inmates who were there) into modern corrections facilities would be way too expensive.

IT IS EASIER to just build new facilities, which can be constructed up to modern standards of criminal incarceration – which, for those who fear inmates are being “coddled” are still extremely restrictive. No one in their right mind would volunteer to live under such conditions.

The old Joliet Correctional Center already has been shuttered, as far as housing maximum-security inmates. The facility is now a center for people convicted of a crime in northern Illinois. They start their prison term there, spend a few days while being evaluated by state corrections officials, then they are assigned to the prison where they will spend the bulk of their hard time.

That fate is to be shared by Stateville, if Gov. Rod Blagojevich gets his way.

When Blagojevich presented his state budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year, it called for closing the oldest parts of Stateville (the ones that are most in violation of modern standards for housing inmates) and using other parts to perform the same functions now carried out on the other side of town at the former Joliet Correctional Center.

STATEVILLE CURRENTLY HAS about 3,500 inmates, and it is estimated that the move would cause about 1,500 of them to be relocated to prisons across the state. That sounds like an ambitious project – trying to shift that many potentially dangerous people around the state.

There’s a very good chance that the bulk of them would wind up in Thomson, Ill., where a modern facility has been sitting empty in the rural northwest Illinois county for nearly a decade. Officials would like to have transfers complete by 2011.

Corrections officials also say that some less-violent inmates could be placed at new prisons in Lawrenceville and Sheridan, although critics of the proposed shift say the three new prisons were meant to supplement existing facilities – not replace them.

The Thomson prison is actually one of the laughable tales of state government ineptitude. The problem is that Illinois Department of Corrections officials were never given adequate funding to maintain the new prison.

THE FACILITY BUILT back in the 1990s was meant to give Illinois a modern maximum-security prison. Its construction was completed in time to theoretically open the facility in 2001.

But the state built itself a new toy that it can’t afford to play with. Large portions of the modern prison have sat empty for six years now, and a recent report by the Illinois auditor general’s office said some parts of the prison are deteriorating due to non-use.

I’ll credit Blagojevich for realizing that it is past due for the state to start using its new prison. I also realize that Stateville is a place whose best days are in the past. I have been inside Stateville on a few occasions (as a reporter, not an inmate), and what always amazed me was seeing the same spots that were used in the late 1948 film “Call Northside 777.” What was once fresh and new had become rather decrepit by the time I saw it 50 years later.

A shift from Stateville is a move that should have taken place some time ago.

THAT, OF COURSE, will not stop political people from trying to get involved. State Sen. Debbie D. Halvorson, D-Crete, says she will oppose any shift of inmates away from Stateville because that also means Corrections Department jobs moving from Will County to Carroll County.

State officials concede that about 400 jobs will be shifted from the Joliet-area if the move takes place.

In the big picture (that of the entire state), the jobs factor is irrelevant – the actual payroll will remain the same. Some might even argue that in the small picture, it is not that important because another Illinois area would suddenly gain a batch of jobs. It all balances out.

But Halvorson is running a campaign to move up to the House of Representatives, and Stateville is in the territory encompassed by the congressional district she wants to represent in Washington.

SHE WANTS TO appear as though she will fight for local jobs, and figures Rep. Phil Hare, D-Ill., whose Quad Cities-area congressional district would gain from the Illinois Corrections Department change, can fight his own battle to support the shift.

This issue is not an easy one for most Chicagoans to understand because most of us are living here in part because we would never want to live in the kind of isolated community that usually attracts prison facilities.

About the only place in Chicago that has anything resembling a prison atmosphere is the Little Village neighborhood, which abuts the Cook County Jail complex. But that neighborhood’s historic character is one where newly arrived immigrants live for a bit before moving up in life. Even the current Mexican population that lives in “La Villita” will some day move on to better places. Nobody in Chicago stays long-term in a jail atmosphere.

In fact, the reason Joliet got to be the unofficial prison capital of Illinois is because it used to be fairly isolated. Officials a century ago never envisioned the suburban sprawl that would spread itself out from Chicago in all directions and turn Joliet and its surrounding communities into just more suburbs of the Second City.

BUT THERE ARE people who will vehemently fight on both sides of this issue. Joliet area officials, while they would enjoy cleansing their public image of the prison ties, also enjoy the economic benefits of a steady employer like Illinois government.

Most of the people who work at the prisons are not the kind of people who would be able, or willing, to make a sudden move across the state just to keep a job.

Likewise, Carroll County, Ill., is an isolated place. While on the Mississippi River, Carroll County is the rural space that falls between the Quad Cities and Galena, Ill. Getting this prison to finally hire people and open itself is likely the biggest economic opportunity the county of just over 16,000 people (by comparison, the typical ward in Chicago has about three times that many people) will ever see.

For Thomson itself, the prison will put the town of 559 people (it’s the self-proclaimed “Melon Capital of the World”) on the map, just like no one ever paid attention to Tamms, Ill., until they got to be the location of the state’s only “super maximum” security prison.

IN THE BIG picture, Carroll County will gain more than Will County will lose. After all, Joliet still has two of the biggest moneymaking riverboat casinos in Illinois, a racetrack that hosts major auto racing events and an independent league professional baseball team. A lot of Illinois communities (many across the Midwest, to be honest) would love to be in Joliet’s position.

Honestly, the most negative aspect I can think of for Joliet is that officials will have to figure out a way to explain to future generations who watch reruns of “The Blues Brothers” film just why the blues singer character portrayed by John Belushi was nicknamed “Joliet Jake.” After all, the day will come when the nickname no longer makes sense.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Illinois corrections officials have used the Joliet area as the site of two (http://www.idoc.state.il.us/subsections/facilities/information.asp?instchoice=sta) of its most intense-security facilities for more than eight decades.

We’ll see how pleased Thomson (http://www.thomsonil.com/) is to have a maximum-security prison after the first incident that takes place within its walls.

Inmates who have spent their time within Stateville’s walls all had their own ways of coping (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,951815,00.html) with the mental anguish of being locked up.