WESTEFER v. SNYDER
725 F.Supp.2d 735 (2010)
United States District Court, S.D. Illinois.
July 20, 2010.
A. There are no provisions to deny offenders any activities in general population once they've transferred out of Tamms. The only exception to that is if an offender is transferred from Tamms in segregation to another facility in segregation his privileges are restricted. In seg you don't have access to education programs.
Q. By virtue of being in segregation?
A. Right. But if an offender is transferred from administrative detention to the ADRMP to the general population he has access to school, he is eligible for security reclassifications. In fact, there have been offenders who are transferred out to a maximum security prison and have gone through reclassification and been processed to Big Muddy or Pinckneyville or wherever. So that means they've reduced their security level so they've not been denied transfers. They also do have access to substance abuse programming if the facility that they're at offers substance abuse programming. They have access to education. They may or may not have access to E.D. or work release by the nature of their committing offense, not by the nature of the offense that they committed to go to Tamms. So ...
Q. Thank you. That's what I needed to know.
Id. (Testimony of Yolande Johnson) at 48-49. As the foregoing testimony by IDOC Director Randle and Chief Administrative Officer Johnson makes clear, contrary to the views of counsel for Plaintiffs and the class, the IDOC has no policy of discriminating against former inmates of Tamms based on their prior assignment to the supermax prison.
The Court finds the testimony of IDOC Director Randle and Chief Administrative Officer Johnson credible, particularly in light of the fact that, as the foregoing testimony by IDOC Director Randle points out, the institutional interest of the IDOC is in helping IDOC inmates either to avoid Tamms or to complete successfully their term of confinement at Tamms. The IDOC has no interest in discriminating against former Tamms inmates or in setting up a situation in which such inmates re-offend and wind up back in Tamms, given that the IDOC must spend considerably more to house inmates at Tamms than at other prisons in the IDOC system:
Q. I take it also that it's relatively more expensive to keep a prisoners at Tamms than it is, say, Pontiac?
1. The Court notes that there is also a minimum security prison at Tamms; all references to Tamms in this Order are to the supermax prison there.
2. This perhaps is the place to note that this Order is intended to be a concise account of the bench trial conducted on the procedural due process claims in this case, and to that end only matters deemed by the Court to be credible, material, and relevant will be reported. The reader should presume that evidence omitted from the Court's findings of fact was considered by the Court to be irrelevant or in any event less persuasive than competing evidence. The Court notes in passing that, in addition to alleging violations of procedural due process, Plaintiffs Von Perbandt, Taylor, Sparling, Sorrentino, Santiago, V. Rodriguez, E. Rodriguez, Lasley, Knox, Horton, Harper, Felton, Combs, Clayton, Chapman, Burrell, Bivens, and Cunningham also assert claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 alleging that they were assigned by Defendants to the supermax prison at Tamms in retaliation for filing grievances and lawsuits and engaging in other protected activities challenging the conditions of their confinement, in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. These retaliation claims have been resolved in a series of jury trials, and they are not at issue here.
3. In fact, statistical data assembled by the IDOC shows that the average time served for the current population at Tamms is 73.4 months, or over six years. See Ten-Point Plan (Plaintiffs' Exhibit 7) at 6. Seventy of the 243 inmates (28.3%) have been at Tamms for at least ten years, and more than half have been at Tamms for over five years. See id. at 8. Over three-quarters (76.9%) or 190 of the inmates at Tamms have been there for over three years. See id., Table 4.
4. The Court recognizes that it is assuming here that, were work, education, and substance abuse programs available at Tamms, inmates of the supermax prison would participate in such programs. This assumption seems reasonable to the Court. Participation in such programs doubtless would be a happy alternative to the crushing monotony of being confined alone in a cell for up to twenty-four hours a day that currently is the lot of Tamms inmates. Also, it seems probable that Tamms inmates would welcome the opportunity to earn money by participating in work programs, in order to purchase small items like walkmans or arch supports that make life in a place like Tamms somewhat more bearable. See Doc. 433 (Testimony of Adolfo Rosario) at 50-51 (the witness, a Tamms inmate, complained that the shoes issued to him by Tamms correctional personnel lack arch supports, but he cannot purchase shoe inserts at the prison commissary because he is indigent and has no money to spend at the commissary).
5. Finally, although strictly speaking Point Two of IDOC Director Randle's Plan is not concerned with the issue of whether or not an inmate should be placed at Tamms, it is worth noting that Point Two protects inmates from spending an unnecessary amount of time in the supermax prison. Under the Plan, as already has been noted, upon arrival at Tamms new inmates of the supermax prison will be advised at orientation of the probable length of their stay at the prison, expressed as a range of possible terms of supermax confinement; further, inmates will work with counselors to ensure that they achieve the behavioral levels necessary to be transferred out of Tamms in the least possible time. See Ten-Point Plan (Plaintiffs' Exhibit 7) at 16; Doc. 522 (Randle Testimony) at 13-14.