A state legislator from western Illinois is pressuring the Department of Corrections to stop illicit drugs from getting inside state prisons.
State Sen. Jil Tracy, R-Quincy, toured Western Illinois Correctional Center in Mount Sterling at the end of October.
“The officers would kind of whisper in my ear as we were going along the tour and say, this is really happening. It’s scary, it’s dangerous,” Tracy said at a Capitol press conference last week. “This has been going on for a very long time, years actually. Later when we met in the conference room to summarize our visit, some of the tactical force brought in plastic bags and you could see the mail that had been put in these plastic bags had a funny look, being soaked in something.”
According to a recent report from AFSCME Council 31, drug use has exploded inside Illinois prisons over the past two years, with correctional officers and mailroom employees regularly exposed to harmful substances including fentanyl, synthetic drugs, and paper coated in roach spray.
Prison workers picketed across the state in October to call attention to the issue.
Tracy said she spoke with a 35-year-old employee of Western Illinois Correctional Center who was taken by ambulance to Illini Community Hospital in Pittsfield after being exposed to smoke from illicit drugs. The father of young children went into atrial fibrillation on the way to the hospital.
A week before Tracy’s visit, a mailroom employee at the Mount Sterling prison had an extreme coughing fit.
“Imagine coughing so hard that you have to have an ambulance come and get you. She was taken to the ER because of this coughing spell,” Tracy said. “Most likely, I believe it was caused by this exposure to these tainted papers.”
Tracy and other legislators are imploring the Department of Corrections to address the situation. She said the department has a contract in place for incoming mail to be scanned and viewed electronically, but it will take seven months for that to be implemented.
“To me, that’s unacceptable,” Tracy said. “Come up with a temporary fix. It's got to be done. And not only is it the staff at DOC that's being exposed, the residents likewise. Some of the residents aren't participating in this and they are being exposed.”
Tracy said she was recently asked by DOC to publicize openings for correctional officers, but has concerns about sending people to work in an unsafe environment.
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