Joliet Treatment Center replaces former youth prison By BOB OKON September 15, 2017

JOLIET – The former youth prison in Joliet has been turned into the state's largest residential treatment center for inmates with mental illness.

The Joliet Treatment Center on McDonough Street will have the capacity to treat 422 residents.

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"Here it's all residents, and it's all rooms," Assistant Warden Edward Godwin said during a tour of the facility Thursday. "We don't have cells. We have rooms."

The former Illinois Youth Center-Joliet also has a second line of fencing around the perimeter – added security, since it has been turned into an adult facility.

No new buildings have been added. The big change is that rooms have been made "suicide resistant" – beds and tables have rounded edges, and observation windows have been added to the doors and walls of rooms.

Although residents will have rooms, the rooms lock from the outside and are guarded by correctional officers. But officers are called correctional treatment officers, and bachelor's degrees are required for the job.

Officials with the Illinois Department of Corrections – who led tours for community leaders, the public and the media at the 55-acre facility – said the ultimate goal is improved mental health for people who are returning to society once their prison terms are done.

"I can't stress this enough," said Dr. Melvin Hinton, chief of mental health services for the Department of Corrections. "The majority of people are leaving. They're going out to the community. They're not staying in the Department of Corrections."

Ultimately, Hinton said, improved treatment should reduce recidivism.

"It makes sense," he said. "If you go into the community and you're unstable, you tend to get into trouble."

Joliet is one of four such residential treatment facilities that the Department of Corrections is opening. The new facilities were created as part of a settlement of a class-action lawsuit initiated in 2007 seeking better treatment for inmates with mental illness.

Hinton said more than 12,000 of the 42,000 inmates in the state prison system have some form of mental illness.

Department of Corrections spokeswoman Nicole Wilson said the Joliet facility is expected to open before the end of the year, but she also said it could be any week before then or sometime in early 2018.

As of Thursday, 90 employees have been hired in Joliet. The facility will be fully staffed at 296, including about 64 mental health professionals.

Joliet will be the only stand-alone residential treatment unit. Two other units have opened at Dixon Correctional Center and Logan Correctional Center. Another will open at Pontiac Correctional Center. An Elgin Treatment Center for the severely mentally ill will provide hospitalization.

The primarily goal in Joliet is treatment.

"Our ultimate goal is to increase their functional ability," Hinton said.

Residents at the Joliet center will receive treatment beyond what they would be able to get at the prisons from which they come. Ultimately, if they improve, they will be sent back to prison. But Hinton repeated more than once that the ultimate goal is to prepare inmates for society outside of prison.

The sprawling Joliet facility, which includes 22 buildings with more than 222,000 square feet of space, offers a unique opportunity for treatment that previously did not exist at the Department of Corrections, Hinton said.

If the state was forced into opening the treatment center by the class-action lawsuit, it was hard to tell from the glowing comments made by Department of Corrections officials Thursday.

They included DOC Director John Baldwin, who told a crowd of community leaders before tours how "excited" the department was about the new Joliet Treatment Center.

"We need to have a response for all the people who come to us with a mental illness," Baldwin said. "It's our responsibility. It's our duty."

JOLIET TREATMENT CENTER Address: 2848 W. McDonough St. Treatment capacity: 422 Beds: 486 Total size: 55 acres Facilities: 20 buildings with 222,058 square feet Source: Illinois Department of Corrections

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