Stateville Correctional Center
Stateville Correctional Center is a maximum security state prison for men in Crest Hill, Illinois, United States, near Chicago. It is a part of the Illinois Department of Corrections.
History
Opened in 1925, Stateville was built to accommodate 1,506 inmates. Parts of the prison were designed according to the panopticon concept proposed by the British philosopher and prison reformer, Jeremy Bentham. Stateville's "F-House" cellhouse, commonly known as a "roundhouse", has a panopticon layout which features an armed tower in the center of an open area surrounded by several tiers of cells. F-House was the only remaining "roundhouse" still in use in the United States in the 1990s. It was closed in late 2016 but the structure will remain standing due to its historical significance. A duplicate of the prison, the Presidio Modelo, opened in Cuba in 1936, but has since been abandoned.In 2009 a 40-year-old man from Chicago, Richard Conner, murdered a 37-year-old Will County man named Jameson Leezer, who had originated from Lisle and Bolingbrook. Both were inmates placed in the same solitary confinement cell together. The killing made the state of Illinois change its rules in housing two prisoners together during solitary confinement; the prison authorities now must take into account both inmates' histories of violence.
Execution site
Stateville Correctional Center was one of three sites in which executions were carried out by electrocution in Illinois. Between 1928 and 1962, the electric chair was used 13 times at Stateville, including the state's first electrocutions on December 15, 1928 of three convicted murderers.The state's other electrocutions were carried out at the Menard Correctional Center in Chester and at the Cook County Jail in Chicago.
Stateville Correctional Center conducted 11 executions by lethal injection until March 1998 when the site of executions was moved southwest to Tamms Correctional Center in Tamms, Illinois.
On March 9, 2011, Governor Pat Quinn signed into law legislation ending the death penalty in the state of Illinois.
Current use
Today the prison holds an average of over 3,500, at an annual cost of over $32,000 per prisoner.Stateville's 1,300 employees make it a Level 1 facility; the highest of eight security level designations. There is also a minimum security unit commonly referred to as the Stateville Farm, which is a Level 7 facility, located within the new Northern Reception Center, located just south of the main facility. The Northern Reception Center, accepts incoming prisoners from the county jails in the northern two-thirds of the state.
Stateville is located two miles north of Joliet, Illinois, on a site of over, of which are surrounded by a concrete perimeter with 10 wall towers. Stateville is often confused with the former Joliet Correctional Center, which closed in 2002. Located in the nearby city of Joliet, the former Joliet Prison is much older and smaller. It is located about southeast of Stateville on the corner of Woodruff Rd. and Collins St., across the Illinois and Michigan Canal.
Notable inmates
- Floyd Cummings - Served 12 years for murder and later became a noted professional boxer, tying in a fight with Joe Frazier.
- John Wayne Gacy – Serial killer and rapist convicted of the murders and rape of 33 boys and young men in 1980. Transferred from the Menard Correctional Center to Stateville Correctional Center for execution by lethal injection on May 9, 1994, and declared dead at 12:58 a.m. the following morning.
- Jordan Hill – One of the four participants in the 2017 Chicago Torture Incident of a mentally disabled man that was captured on Facebook live.
- Nathan Leopold – Transferred from Joliet. Half of the infamous 1924 Leopold and Loeb case. Loeb was killed by another inmate in the prison.
- Richard Loeb - Transferred from Joliet. Other half of the infamous 1924 Leopold and Loeb case.
- Paul Modrowski – Convicted February 17, 1995 of first degree murder of Dean Fawcett.
- Richard Speck – Convicted April 15, 1967 of murdering eight women.
- Edward Spreitzer - Convicted April 2, 1984 for his participation in the murders of an estimated 18 women at the hands of a satanic cult known as the Chicago Ripper Crew. He was formally given the death penalty on March 20, 1986. Governor George Ryan granted him clemency in 2003. After 17 years on death row, his sentence was reduced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Further information
- In the 1940s through the 1960s, the US Army tested malaria vaccines on the prisoners, who in return received good time considerations. See main article, Stateville Penitentiary Malaria Study.
- Stateville is where Leopold and Loeb were incarcerated. Stateville was also where Richard Speck was housed, and where the infamous Speck videotapes were shot.
- Prior to the opening of Tamms Correctional Center's Closed Maximum Security Unit section in March 1998, executions were carried out at Stateville Correctional Center.
- A photograph of the interior of the F-House is used to demonstrate the concept of the panopticon in some editions of Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish.
- MSNBC created a documentary about the Stateville Correctional Center: MSNBC Investigates Lockup.
- The prison-riot footage and scenes of a prison warden rushing down a hallway in a herd of reporters in the 1994 film Natural Born Killers were filmed in vacant buildings at Stateville while most of the prison was still in use housing inmates. Actual inmates played extras during the riot scene with rubber knives and guns. After three weeks of shooting the inmates caused an actual riot and the remainder of the film was filmed elsewhere. The roundhouse was featured in the main scenes.
- John Wayne Gacy was executed at Stateville.
- The characters on the ABC soap operas All My Children, One Life to Live, and General Hospital and the CBS soap opera As the World Turns are occasionally sent to a fictional version of Stateville to serve prison time. Similarly, in the fictional TV and movie universe of Police Squad!, characters are regularly sentenced to the Statesville Prison.
- The Stateville F-House is featured prominently in Call Northside 777 as the location where Frank Wiecek is held.
- The F-House also appears briefly in Bad Boys.
- The fictional alleged assassin of George W. Bush in the dramatic mockumentary Death of a President is incarcerated at Stateville Correctional Center.