Recently, Governor Pritzker announced that all staff working in Illinois prisons will have to be vaccinated for COVID-19 by mid-October. Sadly, rather than engaging with the governor, AFSCME, the guards' union, immediately announced that it was opposed to any requirement that staff be vaccinated. The union instead proposed that it will continue to educate staff, in the hope that more staff will agree to vaccinate voluntarily.

The undersigned organizations fully support the governor's mandate regarding vaccinations for prison staff...

The United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois certified all 28,000+ state prisoners to be part of a class Monday in a class action lawsuit challenging IDOC's excessive use of solitary confinement.

Prisons and their surrounding communities would be safer. And a dangerous backlog of people in county jails awaiting transfer would be reduced.

On June 15, 2021, the United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois certified a class action challenging the constitutionality of the excessive use of extreme isolation (various forms of solitary confinement) by the Illinois Department of Corrections ("IDOC). The Court certified a class of all state prisoners (over 28,000) represented by Winston & Strawn LLP and the Uptown People's Law Center. Accordingly, the ruling expands the case from the six named plaintiffs to a class of all state prisoners seeking declaratory and injunctive relief against the IDOC's policies and procedures resulting to the excessive use of extreme isolation.