Tag: Central Illinois Department of Corrections

Level System Still in Place

The cancer treatment is going well. On the 28th of September I was given a complete cat scan of my body. The good news finally came. I caught a break. The cancer has not spread to any other part of me.

Soon I will go out to get the two spots on my liver removed. Then I will finally be cancer free. A long three years of real hell-on-earth there. I beat the colon cancer. My body is finally healing up and starting to work right again. So at sixty-three years of age I am a lean and mean, ready to go another round with the Grim Reaper, not ready just yet to go quietly into that dark night.

So now I can focus again on my prison reform efforts. The website freerockynation.org is a prison platform for all U.S. Citizens, and our foreign neighbors.

Continue reading “Level System Still in Place”

Soy Diet Colon Cancer

Common Sense is Not So Common

From 2008 until April of 2016, I received a medical No-Soy diet. The IDOC industry meat substitutes made me sick. I proved this up. In 2016, my diet was denied. Danville C.C.’s staff saw that the other prisoners wanted the same medical diet I was given. The Health Care Unit administrator in the Danville Correctional Center saw their requests as a problem. The answer was to stop MY diet, and possibly silence the other prisoners. I was told I could eat the soy-laden prison food. 

Continue reading “Soy Diet Colon Cancer”

Compliance Check

In the late nineties a politician from Pike County, Illinois need to find a job for his son. Power breeds corruption. It always has and always will. This was how Donald Snyder from Pittsfield, Illinois became the new director of the Illinois Department of Correction. He came with the get-tough-on-crime rhetoric. He removed a lot of good policies in place to rehabilitate the prisoner. His famous line of B. S. was, “The Illinois prisoner is being treated like a pampered baby. They were sent to prison to be punished, and I will punish them.” He came, and hell came with him. Continue reading “Compliance Check”

Illegal Holding of Prisoners Beyond Release Date

Mandatory Supervised Release

In the year 1977, then Governor Thompson signed into effect the “Truth In Sentencing Bill,” a public act law that changed the sentencing structure in the Illinois criminal court system. No longer would the Illinois Parole Board be a part of the sentencing structure. From the date of January 1st, 1977, the men and women sent to Department of Corrections would serve a definitive sentence.

No longer was the convicted murderer Continue reading “Illegal Holding of Prisoners Beyond Release Date”

Something Wrong Here?

In Illinois the Public Safety Act guarantees that the Department of Corrections and the Illinois State Police get their budgets, no matter what, in order to protect the public.  For we cannot have our prisoners escaping out into the public. So the excuse that “the state Is broke” does not float here. It simply will not hold water.

But the Shawnee Prison is in serious disrepair. Money was appropriated to replace the windows for the cellhouses here. But only the windows in Three and Four House was replaced—the rest of the money disappeared, with no investigation into the millions missing. Continue reading “Something Wrong Here?”

A Day in the Life of a Jailhouse Lawyer

My celly Justin, “Captain Crunchy,” as we called him, was released from the Illinois Department of Corrections on December 8 at 1 a.m. He caught an Amtrak train to Chicago. From there he jumped on the bus for his final leg of his journey. As I draft this blog, I hope my old celly has arrived to see his little girl. For she is the reason I helped him get home on time. Continue reading “A Day in the Life of a Jailhouse Lawyer”

The Right To Be Free From Illegal Punishment

In the prison system you have the cellhouse, a building where four wings intersect at a hub in the center. This hub is a circular control booth with windows facing toward the four wings. The front of each wing, whether it is A, B, C, or D, is full glass from the floor to the ceiling, so that the staff has a complete view of each wing. Continue reading “The Right To Be Free From Illegal Punishment”

The Law Does Not Apply to Prison Staff

People are sent to prison for breaking the law. But prisons have laws also, and the prison staff is obligated to follow those laws. For example, the law has clearly established that prisoners are to get a minimum of five hours of out-of-cell exercise per week, in order to keep their bodies healthy. Exercise is one of the rights given under the Eighth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution. This is to prevent cruel and unusual punishment where the conditions of confinement cause the body to deteriorate. Continue reading “The Law Does Not Apply to Prison Staff”

The High Cost of the Soy Diet

In my last blog, I described the change in diet at the Illinois prisons, from mostly meat to mostly soy. According to the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC):

  1. There is no proof that soy diet makes men sick.
  2. I am a “Chronic Complainer” and have no real case against the diet.

Let me set the record straight on both of these assertions. Continue reading “The High Cost of the Soy Diet”