AFSCME Says Understaffed & Overcrowded Prisons Unsafe

Dixon, Illinois - Across the state thousands of correctional employees picket today in protest of understaffing and overcrowding at Illinois prisons. Since 2001 the Illinois Department of Corrections has cut more than 1,800 positions although the inmate population has stayed the same. A trend that the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees says is putting correctional employees in harms way. Lori Gaston, President of Local 817 AFSCME said "We`ve had inmates murdered, two employees raped. We had our hostage situation here at Dixon and its warning signs of things that are yet to come." Last month a female Dixon employee was held hostage at knifepoint by an inmate for 25 hours and was sexually assaulted. AFSCME officials say this was not an isolated incident. In February an employee was strangled and raped by an inmate at the Jacksonville Correctional Center. Most of those on the picket line at Dixon Tuesday had been assaulted in their career. Jim Farmer Sr. a correctional officer at Dixon for the past nine years has been physically assaulted. He remembers the first incident clearly. "I was doing a shakedown of a call and an inmate came in and asked me a question and I gave him an answer. And before I knew it, he punched me right in the chin and he hit me pretty good. If it wasn`t for the fact that he wasn`t very aggressive at the time...I don`t know, he incapacitated me on the first punch," said Farmer. A retired Dixon correctional officer, Mary Burgess was assaulted during her career at the correctional center. Her story was too difficult to relive. "You`re always going to have assaults but the more staff you have reduces the number of assaults and the severity of the assaults," said Burgess.