Public Accountability Report

The Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) is responsible for providing care, custody, treatment, and rehabilitation for incarcerated adults committed by the courts. The IDOC maintains and administers 29 correctional centers and manages a parole system for formerly incarcerated persons in the community. There is also an Adult Advisory Board and a Subcommittee on Women Offenders to provide guidance to the IDOC.

Achievements and Accountability

The Department continued to place greater emphasis on improving re-entry, while also making important strides to improving mental health treatment and reducing the use of restrictive housing. All these changes and improvements were part of the Department’s broader effort to write clearer policy in-line with national best practices despite the continued significant operational challenges posed by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

As part of its emphasis on re-entry, IDOC charged three facilities with new missions aimed at improving life outcomes and easing the transition back into the community. IDOC established Regional Re-Entry Centers at the Jacksonville Correctional Center and the Murphysboro Life Skills Re-Entry Center to serve individuals returning to Central and Southern Illinois respectively. The Department also created a new program at Lincoln Correctional Center focused on individuals with short sentences (18 months or less), allowing staff to specialize on the unique needs of individuals serving short sentences in IDOC. This re-entry emphasis is further highlighted by the tremendous progress IDOC has made in providing access to Medicaid for people exiting as well as the Department's efforts to finally create a program that provides individuals in custody an opportunity to receive a state ID prior to release.

As mentioned above, the Department also made meaningful and widespread revisions and updates to policies effecting every corner of the agency. It revised policies on restrictive housing and restoration of good conduct credit, among others, to bring the Department in-line with nationally recognized best practices.

Strategic Initiatives and Priorities (EDSC and EPSC)

The IDOC made major updates to the way it awards sentence credit based on changes made in the Safe-T Act, as well as internal policy changes. The Department has a continued need to reduce the total size of the incarcerated population in response to COVID-19. As such, the agency has dramatically expanded access to both Earned Discretionary Sentence Credit (EDSC) and Earned Program Sentence Credit (EPSC), making both opportunities available to more people in more straightforward ways. These changes are allowing the Department to continue to realize its long-time goal of reducing the overall size of the incarcerated population by reducing sentence lengths for people that demonstrate a commitment to rehabilitation.