By Cynthia Grau/WJEZ News
Union members from Pontiac Correctional Center held a demonstration Wednesday afternoon across the street from the prison for the purpose of discussing the increase in staff assaults by inmates.
Regional Director of AFSCME Council 31 Eddie Caumiant discussed the fact that staff needs rules in place and stick to those rules.
“What happens when the rules are removed, typically inmates act out until a new set of rules are put in place. The challenge for the department, given all the pressures, they know they have to change the rules, but they always seem to put that before good planning on how they’re going to do it. What we’re saying is when something happens inside, it has to have consequences. There has to be a set of rules that apply that apply firm, fair and consistently across every basis and that’s not happening inside Pontiac and a lot of correctional institutions,” Caumiant said.
AFSCME Local 494 President William Lee gives people a glimpse inside the job correctional officers do every day.
“It’s a very serious job. We are the police inside the box that nobody sees and nobody knows. We live in the same towns and pay taxes like anyone else. The job itself is very challenging, very real, very dangerous. We risk getting diseases, HIV, AIDS, broken bones and everything else somebody can do to another human and we face that every single day, and you don’t know if you’re going to get out and go home to your family every day,” Lee said.
Executive Director of AFSCME Council 31 Roberta Lynch explains one big request the union has for the Illinois Department of Corrections.
“We want to have employees involved to make sure when you’re making that determination, when you say you’re going to reduce seg time, when you say you’re going to give inmates more freedom within the facility to move around without handcuffs on. An inmate moving around without handcuffs on is essentially an inmate that is free to assault, and so you want to do everything possible to make sure the inmates who have that privilege are not likely to assault somebody,” Lynch said.
Lee said it was important to do Wednesday’s demonstration to let people know what is happening inside the prison walls.
“As the union doing the picket, we’re the ones getting the word out because the State will not voluntarily call the media and let them know about anything that happened inside the prison on any particular day, so by us doing this, we get the word out and brings attention to our cause, otherwise, nobody would ever have any idea,” Lee said.
Lynch says one big thing they’re hoping for is an increase and a change in staff at the prison.
“The 1,600 inmates are there on all three shifts, but the 792 are not. They’re divided among three shifts. So we don’t think there is enough staff. That is certainly a part of the problem. One of the things we’ve pointed out is there needs to be a command staff. A sergeant, because they have better equipment in some cases and especially in very dangerous situations, they’re not present, because there aren’t enough sergeants and not enough staff,” Lynch said.
