Illinois prisoners exploited, says government watchdog
The Illinois penal system improperly used prisoners to wash cars, shine shoes and perform other tasks at employee-led fundraisers to benefit prison workers for private use, a government watchdog investigation into the fund’s mismanagement revealed Friday.
The investigation by the state’s executive inspector general’s office led to an overhaul of the Illinois Department of Corrections’ use of so-called “employee benefit funds,” or EBFs.
This money allowed prison guards and other IDOC employees to throw a holiday party, pay for a golf outing, pay for floral arrangements for the funerals of colleagues’ loved ones, and other private functions.
Prison inmates were used to wash cars, shine shoes, give haircuts, and sell wood and plants as part of these EBF activities, which is against state rules, the IG found. One IDOC employee offered a negative sentiment about this practice in an interview with investigators.
“...He felt that using inmate labor to raise funds for the EBFs is ‘bad optics,’ ‘bad ethically,’ and ‘bad morally,’ ” according to the IG. “He added: ‘It’s really hard for me to just honestly stomach the idea that... employees benefit from offender labor.’ ”
The investigation led to a 30-day suspension for a now-former top IDOC official, Chief of Staff Edwin Bowen. But through the grievance process, Bowen was able to get his punishment reduced to a 15-day suspension last year. The IG’s findings weren’t made public until Friday, 4 ½ years after the watchdog first began its probe during the tenure of then-Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner.
EBF benefits are allowed if 40% of them are funded by proceeds from prison vending machines and employee commissaries. But in its 29-page report, the IG concluded that
IDOC violated state rules by mismanaging the funds in several ways such as soliciting money from local businesses without checking whether they already do business with the state for public matters; charging too high a markup on its sales of merchandise outside the commissaries; organizing EBF-related activities on state time; and a lack of centralized oversight for the EBF funds.
While 40% of the EBF revenue must come from vending machines and prison employee commissaries, data in the IG report shows that prison officials have routinely fallen short of that. In fiscal year 2012, for instance, EBFs reported total revenues of $711,125, and only 25% of that, or $180,127, came from the vending machines and commissaries. For each fiscal year after that through 2017, the vending machine and commissary revenues hovered between 20% and 30%, the data show.
In fiscal year 2017, EBFs from several state prisons — Big Muddy River Correctional Center, Pinckneyville Correctional Center and Sheridan Correction Center, among others — reported that more than 90% of their revenue came from sources other than vending machines and commissaries, the IG said.
What’s more, EBFs are only allowed to impose 10% markups for items sold from employee commissaries, but “a great deal” of their revenue was coming from merchandise made outside the commissaries, according to the IG. For example, according to one IDOC worker, EBFs were making much higher profits when they’d sell t-shirts for double their worth.
One IDOC employee told the IG between June 2017 and December 2018 they believed prison employees were becoming more active with EBFs to improve worker morale at that time. But in its findings, the IG stressed that they need better oversight.
“The (IG) recognizes the difficult nature of the work for many IDOC employees and understands that promoting positive employee morale at IDOC is important,” the IG wrote. “It is therefore reasonable for IDOC employees to participate in activities designed to improve employee performance and increase retention by boosting employee morale.
“As important as those goals are, however, they must be carefully balanced against IDOC’s obligation to provide good value and oversight for the taxpayer funds that pay the employees’ salaries,” the IG continued.
During the investigation, prison officials began making some changes to how these benefit funds operate. For example, in 2018, Bowen told prison wardens they were no longer allowed to hold raffles, the IG learned, though investigators were also told “raffles may only be held through a charitable organization with all the profits going through a charity.” The IG had also learned that measures were put into place prohibiting EBFs from profiting from prison inmates’ work.
The IG during its probe also interviewed John Baldwin, then-the IDOC’s acting director, who told investigators he was aware that IDOC employees “were spending some State time on EBF activities, but that he did not know how much.”
The IG found that Baldwin and Bowen mismanaged the EBFs and that both allowed “inmate labor to be used for a non-public purpose.” In May 2019, Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker replaced Baldwin with Rob Jeffreys as IDOC director.
But in January of that year, days before Pritzker took office, the Rauner administration accepted a series of recommendations from the IG including implementing and enforcing written policies regarding EBFs; taking necessary steps to ensuring the funds are following the law; directing IDOC to train its workers regarding EBF activities; and conducting regular audits of the funds.