Ten Years Too Long
Monday, April 28th
by Daniel Tucker (Unpublished Report Back)
Mary L Johnson, hasn’t been able to touch her son for ten years. Living on a fixed income, she tries to go visit him at Tamms C-Max Prison whenever she can. But Tamms is in the very southern tip of Illinois and Johnson lives in Chicago, 360 miles away. It takes over seven hours to drive there. “I often have to sleep at rest-stops when I go to Tamms, because I cannot afford the hotel. And I have endured all the humiliation it takes just to get approved to go into Tamms” in order to visit her son. No phone calls are allowed to the men at Tamms. She believes that if the legislators in Illinois had family members in the same cages that her son and others are forced to live in at Tamms, that they would join her in her fight for justice.
Early Monday morning, a group of nearly 50 gathered in the rain in front of the Thompson Center to protest the conditions Tamms C-Max, at a downstate “supermax” prison. The prison opened ten years ago this year and the coalition of concerned citizens, family members of the incarcerated, lawyers, human rights activists and formerly incarcerated men say that it has been “ten years too long.” The multi-racial crowd gathered to rally before a press conference and hearing with the Illinois Prison Reform Committee inside the Thompson Center.
Once inside, we heard from Illinois State representatives like Eddie Washington (60th District) and Elga Jeffries (26th District). Allan Mills, a lawyer with the Uptown Community Law Center, said that “40 % of the population at Tamms has been there since the first year it opened” despite promises from Illinois Department of Corrections and the State Legislature that it would have clear ways in and clear ways out and no inmate would be held longer than one year.
Daniel Tucker 