We continue to look into recent incidents involving drugs at Illinois correctional facilities. Those incidents have happened at several facilities including Menard, Pinckneyville and Big Muddy Correctional Center.
CARTERVILLE, Ill. (WSIL)-- We continue to look into recent incidents involving drugs at Illinois correctional facilities. Those incidents have happened at several facilities including Menard, Pinckneyville, and Big Muddy Correctional Center.Â
For many the issues with drug exposure behind prison walls is just that, but for Jake Ridge, he’s seen the problem up close and personal when he spent time behind bars.
“I mean, it's bad, the drug epidemic. It's not just our prisons, you know? And they're not doing anything to get anybody clean in there,� Ridge said.
Ridge says he’s seen countless drug exposures, and not in the ways you’d think.
“You're dealing with some whacked-out dude in the shower. Some get all high and then, you know, they're dipping stuff on letters,� Ridge said.
There have been several incidents reported in recent weeks at correctional facilities in Illinois where people have been hospitalized for drug exposure.
Some have resulted in hospital trips for officers, staff, and even EMTs who respond to the calls.
CARTERVILLE, Ill. -- Multiple incidents have been reported in recent weeks at correctional f…
Illinois State Senator Terri Bryant has been collecting reports on each incident, and says in her recent tour of the Big Muddy Correctional Center in Ina, Illinois, an exposure was reported 30 minutes after she toured a cell house.
She says it's not just guards and staff worried about exposure.
“I'm finding out more and more that we have sometimes one or two or more ambulance responses at almost every medium or maximum facility in the state,� Senator Bryant said.
Senator Bryant says her main focus is figuring out how the drugs are getting into the prisons, and how to stop that.Â
“But 90% of what's coming in is coming in through the mail. And the reason we know that it is in the legal mail is because the documents that I have clearly show that it would be legal mail, like in the property box,� Bryant says.“One of the reports that I gave you guys from Lawrence Correctional Center shows that it was on what appeared to be photography paper.�
She says that inmates would take the paper and roll it up into homemade cigarettes.
Bryant says one of the things she wants to do like other facilities, is electronically scan the mail and not give inmates the hard copies.
“We've found six states now that are already doing electronic mail scanning. It's already being done just in this listening area,� Bryant says. “I know I've talked to the sheriff in Jackson County, Jefferson County, and Randolph County. Those three counties electronically scan in the jail. So if a jail can do it, a prison can do it.�
She knows a lot needs to be done, but she wants to work with other legislators and administrators in the prison system to get it done.
As for Ridge he thinks it really comes down to prison reform, and says some people come in addicted and leave addicted.
“I mean they're already puking their brains out, sick, half dead having all kinds of issues, you know, and then they put them in gen pop with us. Them guys, they just become victims,� Ridge said.
She hopes to work with the Pritzker Administration to address the issue.
