A watchtower and prison yard at the Thomson Correctional Center in Thomson, Ill., in 2009. Eight people have died at Thomson since 2019, making the facility one of the most dangerous federal prisons. highest in the country.
David’s Greedy / Getty Images
hide captions
switch captions
David’s Greedy / Getty Images
A watchtower and prison yard at the Thomson Correctional Center in Thomson, Ill., in 2009. Eight people have died at Thomson since 2019, making the facility one of the most dangerous federal prisons. highest in the country.
David’s Greedy / Getty Images
The Federal Bureau of Prisons is shutting down the notorious Special Management Unit at Thomson Prison in Illinois, following frequent reports of violence and abuse.
An inquiry last year by NPR and The Marshall Project found that Thomson has quickly become one of the deadliest federal prisons, with five suspected murders and two suspected suicides since the unit opened in 2019. The report also uncover the conditions that cause violence, where prisoners are fickle. locked together in small cells for nearly 24 hours a day, often despite repeated warning signs.
A spokesperson for the Bureau of Prisons said in an email Tuesday that it “recently identified significant concerns about the institutional culture and compliance with BOP policies” in Thomson, asking ” immediate remedial measures.” Officials would not comment on where people previously detained at SMU in Thomson have been moved. People in the general community and minimum security camps will remain.
The move comes just weeks after another man in Thomson, Victor Gutierrez 32 years old, was found unresponsive in prison and dead, according to a Justice Department press release. The ministry has not released its cause of death.
Men in Thomson also have report abuse at the hands of an employee, including being confined to four painful points for hours or days at a time. Prompted by NPR and the Marshall Project report, the Justice Department’s Inspector General issued an inquiry in deaths and alleged abuse.
The original special management unit was located at the Lewisburg Penitentiary in Pennsylvania, a facility known for its similarly high rates of violence among inmates and staff shackles. It is unclear whether the unit, which aims to separate the most disruptive people in federal prisons from the general population, will reopen elsewhere. A federal official familiar with prison affairs said the men transferred from Thomson would be held at “an equivalent level of security in a different facility”.
Corrections officials at Thomson have called for the warden to be fired in recent months, pointing to a high rate of staff vacancies and officer sexual assault. Association officials say there are 100 vacancies at the prison, despite numerous job fairs and recruitment bonuses.
Jonathan Zumkehr, Local 4070 president of the Federation of American Government Employees, the union that represents Thomson employees, said he was told he would not lose his job at the prison, but that the vacancies would. not filled. “This is vandalism, and it will devastate the local community,” he said.
Thomson was built in 2001 as an Illinois state prison, but was abandoned for many years until it was acquired by the Department of Justice. Lawmakers including U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, both Illinois Democrats, have cheered the opening as a way to bring hundreds of jobs and millions in revenue to the area. . both have since then calls for more supervision of the prison.
“We have been informed by the Department of Justice that Prison Bureau leadership is taking corrective action to address the deeply troubling findings of a recent review of the facility,” said Durbin and Duckworth said in a joint statement Tuesday. “We have been assured by the Attorney General that these changes are temporary and that Thomson will continue to play an important role in the Bureau of Prisons system.”
Lawyers and men’s advocates in Thomson said the closure was “long overdue”, but concerns remained. “Those who have been transferred [out] Jacqueline Kutnik-Bauder, deputy legal director of Washington’s Commission on Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, a legal nonprofit, said: sued Bureau of Prisons for Special Management Unit treatment. “Our main concern now is that this is simply turning an issue. Thomson is particularly appalling, but there is a culture within the BOP that needs to be addressed and changed.”
