The union representing prison employees said it was concerned over the lack of details in Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s plan to overhaul two major Illinois prisons, while advocates for incarcerated people expressed cautious optimism that the proposal could improve conditions for those locked up in the aging, dilapidated facilities.

The governor’s office on Friday announced its plan to rebuild the Stateville and Logan correctional centers in a close to $1 billion project that would take three to five years. The proposal remains subject to approval from legislators. The administration offered few details on the logistics of the overhaul, which would be particularly complicated at Stateville, since that facility would be closed and demolished before being rebuilt under Pritzker’s plan.

“Closing facilities even temporarily would disrupt and potentially destabilize the prison system, while bringing upheaval to the lives of affected employees and individuals in custody,” American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31 Executive Director Roberta Lynch said in a statement.

An outside review reported a year ago that Stateville and Logan were both nearly “inoperable” in their current condition. The governor’s office called AFSCME’s concerns about the project “unusual” given the union’s “continued demands to increase the safety and security of the work environment” of its members.

The John Howard Association, an independent prison monitor, praised the governor’s acknowledgement of the poor conditions at Stateville and at Logan, a women’s correctional center. Politicians representing the area around Stateville, in Crest Hill near Joliet, said they looked forward to the potential positive economic impact of rebuilding the facility.

Nonetheless, both the advocacy group and AFSCME, as well as the mayor of the town where Logan is located, said they were taken by surprise by Pritzker’s plan, and on Friday had few details about how it would be carried out.

Advocates for reducing the number of people in prison said the overhaul represented an opportunity to reduce the state’s prison capacity or move people to lower-security facilities.

“I really hope that somebody looks at this creatively as an opportunity, rather than just, ‘Oh well, we’ll just rebuild the same thing we already have,’” Alan Mills, executive director of the Uptown People’s Law Center, said.

“Stateville has been a mess for decades, frankly, and should have been shut down long ago,” he said.

The Illinois Department of Corrections in 2021 called for the conversion of Stateville from a maximum-security facility to a multilevel facility for inmates reentering society. John Howard Association Executive Director Jennifer Vollen-Katz said it seems likely that Stateville will be a significantly different kind of facility once it’s rebuilt.

On Friday, IDOC spokesperson Naomi Puzzello said the “mission” of the rebuilt facilities has yet to be determined.

Under the governor’s plan, the Stateville facility would be razed and rebuilt on the same site.

The plan for Logan, located in downstate Lincoln, is less clear, and “will depend on how the serious maintenance/repair needs progress” and the affordability of those repairs, Puzzello said in an email Friday.

The state said the reconstruction plan will save an estimated $34 million annually in the long term.

Displacement of workers and inmates, even temporarily, is a key concern for AFSCME, which questioned where those individuals would be placed during the construction period. The union won’t support the governor’s plan until questions over what will happen to the workers are answered, its executive director said.

“We certainly don’t know today that this plan is the least possibly disruptive option,” Anders Lindall, spokesperson for AFSCME Council 31, said.

The governor’s office told the union that all members will have an opportunity to stay employed during the project, the union said.

The plan will “ensure that AFSCME members can do their jobs in modern, safe facilities,” Pritzker spokesperson Jordan Abudayyeh said. “It is not fiscally responsible or feasible to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in a continuing effort to shore up facilities that have been neglected for decades and used for over a century.”

With Logan’s future site uncertain — the governor’s office said “the location of the new facility is still being finalized” — Mayor Tracy Welch of Lincoln said his fear is losing the state facility. It would be the latest in a line of economic losses for the town, after two local colleges announced they would effectively close in the past two years.

“These types of things frustrate me when we’re not given adequate notice, because these decisions impact our entire community,” Welch said.

Politicians who represent the area around Stateville see the governor’s plan as an economic opportunity.

Jennifer Bertino-Tarrant, Will County’s chief executive officer, said she saw Pritzker’s plan as good news for “long-term and short-term jobs” and noted its importance to the construction industry, noting that the area understands the impact of such facilities given that the old Joliet prison closed in 2002 after nearly 150 years in operation.

“Especially for the city of Crest Hill, it’s important in some ways because they can’t just let it go away,” said Bertino-Terrant. “Obviously, these are the people who we employ locally here.”

“We have experienced when the Department of Corrections has closed down a facility. And that does have an impact, so again, the governor being willing to work with Will County, being willing to work with Crest Hill to invest here is a very positive thing,” she said.

State Rep. Larry Walsh of Elwood echoed that sentiment, saying that rebuilding Stateville would bring in good jobs for the trades and result in “a state-of-the-art facility that’s going to meet the needs that we expect as taxpayers.”

“This is a huge investment. It needs to be done. I’ve known people that have worked out at Stateville for many, many years and the conditions of the facility have just been continuing to deteriorate,” said Walsh. “And it’s just, it’s the right thing to do.”

Yet the legislators also voiced concern about the logistics of rebuilding Stateville. State Sen. Rachel Ventura, a Democrat from Joliet, suggested that people incarcerated in Stateville, as well as its staff, could possibly be temporarily relocated to an in-patient mental health treatment center in Joliet that she said “is not fully staffed nor is it nowhere near capacity.”

She also emphasized the need to retain Stateville’s staff through the transition and assure that if the workers are temporarily transferred to other facilities, they are able to remain close to their families.

“As you can imagine, hiring for correctional officers right now has been very difficult and my fear is that if we lose these jobs, even temporarily, we may not be able to get some of these employees back,” Ventura said. “And so I want to make sure that we do everything in our power that, as we are building these new buildings, that we are safeguarding families who are here.”

Ventura said she also wants to make sure there are minimal life disruptions for people incarcerated at Stateville, especially if they’ve been a part of education and religion programming. And she noted that for these programs to be available to the prisoners, there needs to be enough corrections officers on hand to oversee them.

“We have been constantly at odds of where we can have these programs because we don’t have enough COs to watch one area and then have to be watching another area,” Ventura said.

As for those confined to the facilities, Puzzello said IDOC has successfully transferred large populations of people in custody before, and that it “will develop a comprehensive plan” for any upcoming transfers.

Overall, in a statement, Ventura stressed the need for “a fair and just transition” for everyone inside the prison.

“There is no reason incarcerated individuals should be subjected to a facility that lacks basic human necessities — from clean water to outdoor recreational space. The quality of life at the Stateville prison is beyond repair,” she said. “It’s imperative we build a new facility — but we must do so in a way that takes into account the needs of its residents, their loved ones and workers.”

Gorner reported from Springfield.