Joliet Prisons

Joliet Prisons

Speck tape may produce changes

By John Whiteside

Maybe Richard Speck will do something worthwhile at last. Perhaps his voice from the grave will finally accomplish some prison reforms. The shocking videotape of the mass murderer snorting cocaine, flashing $100 bills and having sex inside Stateville while he brags about killing student nurses has shocked the Legislature. It has angered the attorney general. It has embarrassed the Department of Corrections. And they're all talking about some possible reforms in state prisons. Well, if it takes something as crude as that 1988 videotape to bring new discipline inside this state's maximum-security prisons, then good. Reform here is long overdue.

For too long, the animals have been running the zoo. Although prison officials often minimize the influence of gangs, it's pretty much known that gangs are controlling a lot of the action inside the tall walls. Even the President of the United States recently wanted to know how a gang chief was controlling his gang from an Illinois prison. Just talk to a guard. If you don't quote him by name, he will tell you what's going on in the joint. Chances are his description will be frightening.

I remember a few years ago when one of the guards handed me a Úquot;hit listÚquot; put out by the convicts at Stateville. This was right after a guard was murdered there. The victim's name was at the top of that hit list. Many years ago the prison complex at Joliet was known throughout the world as one of the best. Others came here to study this system as a model for their own prisons. In those days, Warden Joe Ragen ruled with an iron hand. I didn't know him. But I knew the late Frank Pate, who was a Ragen protege and also a Stateville warden.

In a 1986 interview, Pate told me he had continued Ragen's philosophy: keep them busy. Úquot;We fed them adequately, gave them necessary medical attention, provided some recreation and put them to work,Úquot; Pate said then. Úquot;The person who said, 'The devil will find things for idle hands to do' must have been in prison work.Úquot; The prisons here then had shops and factories and a farm operation with dairy herds and hogs and crops and bee hives. And every convict without a doctor's excuse went to daily work in a meaningful job. He was too tired at night to plan gang activities, the murder of guards or make videotapes with sex, drugs and brag. He went to bed early because another work day was coming after the one he had just finished.

Convicts then made little rocks out of big rocks with their backs and arms. They didn't sit in cells watching cable television, work out in gymnasiums and gather to plan gang events. They worked. They sweated. And that helped the taxpayers pay the bills. If Richard Speck's dirty videotape brings back just one tiny bit of that ol' prison philosophy, then it's good. Perhaps it's the only good thing Speck ever accomplished with his miserable life.