U.S. District Judge Andrea R. Wood on Aug. 9 ruled that the State of Illinois must relocate most of the prisoners at the century-old Stateville Correctional Center some six miles north of Joliet.

The Chicago judge cited the penitentiary’s broken-down condition, and ordered the move completed within two months.

Meanwhile, the Illinois Department of Corrections had already planned to rebuild Stateville with a new prison on the same site on Ill. Route 53, in Crest Hill, and also replace the deteriorating Logan prison for women in Lincoln, possibly at a site adjacent to Stateville.

Gov. Pritzker proposed the building project in March, hearings were held, the General Assembly debated it, and on May 31 included it in the Fiscal Year 2025 budget. House Democrats approved the measure (HB 4582) 72 to 38, authorizing the issuance of bonds for capital construction projects, including for the five-year demolitions and rebuilds of Stateville and Logan prisons.

Elsewhere, mostly missing have been other voices, including inmates and their families.

Here’s a sampling of prisoners’ suggestions for what Illinois could do with $900 million instead, featured in the Spring issue of the “Stateville Speaks” newsletter, produced in partnership with Northeastern Illinois University:

• “If the $900 million was spent on the ‘before,’ we wouldn’t need it for the ‘after.’ A $450 million prison? I’ve never seen one $450 million high school. What if we spent it on nine $100 million community educational resource centers in under-resourced communities?” — Michael Bell
• “The $900 million should be used to declare poverty a public-health crisis. Invest in curing the symptoms of poverty — which are violence, mass incarceration, political, economic and educational inequity — rather than building prisons to disappear marginalized bodies.” — Robert Curry
• “I would use the money toward reentry because many people leaving prison need help, and without security there is recidivism. Money needs to go into transitional housing, recovery homes, mental-health facilities, and domestic-violence shelters for people upon release. I would work toward making prisons extinct.” — Mishunda Davis
• “Instead of spending $900 million to rebuild two state prisons, our governor could use the principles of equity to address the inequalities that exist in the undercurrent of society. Illinois has environmental and social issues that should take precedence over rebuilding prisons. When we have a government that sees human caging as a priority over community building, this is a government that should concern us all.” — Michael Sullivan

Illinois university professors Erica R. Meiners (Northeastern), Beth E. Richie (University of Illinois-Chicago) and Ash Stephens (University of Illinois-Chicago) last month elaborated on such ideas and the overall concept of imprisonment, writing “These suggestions came from people in classes at Illinois’s Stateville and Logan prisons, both of which were recently slated for closure and a whopping $900 million rebuild (despite the 12,000 already vacant prison beds that exist in Illinois).”

The three — who also teach in these prisons “because incarcerated people are valued members of our communities and working with them is part of our commitment to the people of Illinois” — report that “Illinois locks up more people than France, the United Kingdom, Canada and Portugal combined. Yet, we are not any safer.

“This moment requires intervention and organizing, not prison expansion,” they continue. “The futures we are building do not involve life on either side of a prison wall.”