UPLC's last mental health lawsuit against IL Dept. of Corrections lost its judicial oversight in 2022. Since then, IDOC has abandoned any and all reform efforts made. UPLC has filed a lawsuit alleging systematic failure to provide adequate mental health treatment to the nearly 13,000 people with mental illness in Illinois prisons, approximately 44% of everyone in IDOC custody.
The complaint details disturbing conditions and practices within IDOC facilities, including:
- Fire-setting incidents: Disregard for people’s mental health has led people in multiple facilities to set fire inside their locked cells, even to their own bodies, while IDOC staff stand by and allow it to happen. These desperate actions have resulted in grievous harm, injury and at least two known deaths.
- Inadequate crisis intervention: Individuals in crisis are often ignored until they resort to self-harm, with some prison guards encouraging self-harm.
- Punitive responses to mental health crises: Instead of providing treatment, IDOC responds to mental health crises with force and punishment, including tactical team cell extractions, pepper spray, physical violence, emergency enforced medications, solitary confinement, and painful four-point restraints.
- Harmful isolation practices: IDOC routinely holds “lockdowns” wherein people are locked in cells with little to no activity, fresh air or exercise for days or even weeks—a de facto solitary confinement, even when it's not disciplinary segregation. Solitary confinement exacerbates symptoms of existing mental illness and can also cause new symptoms to develop. Furthermore, IDOC’s use of “crisis watch” (where people are stripped naked except for a “suicide smock” and left alone with not even a book to read) to treat people experiencing suicidal ideation is not just counterproductive for mental health, but punitive towards it.
- Failure to provide adequate levels of care: Despite investing millions in constructing treatment facilities, many beds sit empty while individuals in need of care wait months for transfers to appropriate treatment settings.
Attorneys: Nicole Schult, Uptown People’s Law Center; Amanda Antholt, Jessica Gingold, Sophia R. Lau, Equip For Equality
Date Filed: April 16, 2025
Court: United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division
Judge: Judge April Perry, Magistrate Gabriel Fuentes
Status: Active
Case Number: 1:25-cv-04117
Documents
Uptown People’s Law Center and Equip for Equality filed suit against IDOC Director Latoya Hughes on behalf of the nearly 13,000 people with mental illness in the state’s prisons — approximately 44% of the population.
"It’s a check-the-box. People aren’t actually getting individual treatment, getting therapy, getting individualized psychiatric care."
