10/5/2021; UPDATED: 10/6/2021
Stats from the McLean County Jail, accurate as of the August 30th, 2021:
Jail population: 213
Proportions by gender:
24 (11.3%) are female
189 (88.7%) are male
Proportions by race:
105 (49.3%) Black
5 (2.3%) Hispanic
103 (48.4%) Persons of a Colonial Complexion
Number of people over 50: 23
Number of inmates sentenced: 22 (10.3%)
Number of inmates pretrial (felony): 171 (80.3%)
Number of inmates pretrial (property felony): 36 (16.9%)
Number of inmates pretrial (misdemeanors): 11 (5.2%)
Number of inmates pretrial for drug offenses: 46 (21.6%)
Number of out of county residences: 71 (33.3%)
The total number of inmates who have tested positive for COVID-19: 8
The total number of jail staff who have tested positive for COVID-19: 18
The current number of inmates positive for COVID-19: 0
The current number of jail staff positive for COVID-19: 0
Total number of inmates vaccinated for COVID-19 by the jail: 100
Total number of jail staff vaccinated for COVID-19: No records are being kept
The number of current inmates that have been fully vaccinated whether in the jail or on their own: No records are being kept
At Tuesday’s McLean County Justice Committee meeting, county board members voted unanimously to add tablet profitization to their existing contract with Inmate Communications Solutions, a company that profits off of telecommunications services to correctional facilities. Currently, the County generates 6-figure profit off of this contract.
The update in questions involves the inclusion of tablets that inmates are allowed to use while in their cells. Inmates have access to tablets for music, education, gaming, and more… for a price, of course. It costs inmates $.05 per minute for streaming services. Inmates can send emails at $.25 per email at $.05 a minute while typing. The county makes 25% commission on tablet revenue. Broke inmates can access Ebooks, educational material, and file grievances. You can get all the specifics received via information request from the Sheriff’s department here.
It’s worth noting inmates have had access to these tablets since approximately August of last year according to documents from the Sheriff’s department. The update to the contract makes it retroactive to October of 2020. Why exactly did it take so long for this to reach the county board? The Sheriff wrote this plea to the Justice Committee for the contract update:
The perpetually perfidious Sheriff Sandage forgets to mention the 25% profit the county makes on top of the 6-figures it already makes from the existing contract. This money goes into the county’s general fund, and there seems to be no evidence that the money is then being used to fund the jail or make the conditions more conducive to reform.
All detention centers generate profit. Doesn’t matter whether it’s an immigrant detention center, private prison, federal or state prisons, or jails; they are all sites of wealth creation. According to former-County Board member George Gordon, it costs about $200 per day per inmate. If the jail population is 213, that’s an estimated $42,600 a day1 (however, if the Sheriff would like to correct the estimated daily cost per inmate, please let me know). That money all goes somewhere: guards, utilities, food, medical, communication, and so on & so forth. All of these groups have a vested interest in the jail being as full as possible because each inmate is literally being forced to be profitable. And, the other huge interest that needs to be pointed out with regards to the local jail: the largely rural, white, and upper class residents of McLean County. The county has kept property taxes flat for years using these types of for-profit schemes. Since the beginning of the pandemic in March of 2020, the overwhelming majority (87%+) of McLean County inmates were their pre-trial on bond meaning they haven’t been convicted of any crime yet. At the same time, black bodies make up the largest plurality (if often times not a majority) of inmates based on race; this despite the fact that African-Americans only account for 8.26% of the McLean County population. We have a very real example of the confinement of black bodies for-profit benefiting an upper class made up mostly of people of a colonial complexion.
While race certainly increases the intensity of oppression with regards to incarceration, people of no color still make up a little less than half the jail population. They are a part of the working class, impoverished class, and outcast class also generating profit that benefits the same upper-class as above.
The problem is not solely race-based or class-based but is capitalist-based. Neo-liberal capitalism2 needs the iron right fist of the state to complement the invisible left hand of the market. Mass incarceration takes those people who are not productive, according to capitalist valuation, and through confinement, literally squeezes profit out of them. To be clear, it’s not as if inmates having access to tablets and other communication services is a bad thing. Nor is it unreasonable for a municipality to determine it needs to recoup the costs of maintaining a corrections facility. But it is the profit-motive activists object too; and, it’s a motive that has been central to mass incarceration and its centrality cannot be ignored. A neoliberal capitalist state, and locally capitalist municipalities, will search out profit wherever it can find it; and that includes finding it in human misery like the mass incarceration system which treats over 2.3 million people every year as a resource to extract value from.
This includes the 3,134 county jails across the country. On any given day, about 630,000 people are incarcerated in county jails. Not enough is talked about jails in discussing mass incarceration. They are largely holding areas for people awaiting trials and therefore, do very little to combat recidivism which is largely left–ostensibly–to the prison system. But, jails are literally the entry point into mass incarceration. Every year, 10.6 million people enter jails. According to the Prison Policy Initiative:
Grasping the scale of this problem is critical, as even short-term jail stays can be devastating. Suicide rates in jail dwarf those in the general population and the prison population. Just two or three days of pretrial detention increases the odds of rearrest, imprisonment, and longer sentences. Jail incarceration impairs economic mobility, contributes to homelessness, and causes disruption in medical care, essential benefits like food stamps and Medicaid, and family life.”
How long someone stays in jail can also very greatly? People unable to afford bond could be there anywhere from 6 months to several years depending on how long their trials are. So, we have vast numbers of people being held in municipal jails, sometimes for extended periods of time, where actual corrective goals are not primary in its functioning.
Now, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out Sheriff Sandage’s own statements around profiteering off of incarceration. He’ll be quick to remind us that he’s regularly in the red when it comes to jail finances. Of course, government budgets work differently than private budgets. If you’re a government department who budget is in the green, that means you have too much money and need your budget cut. If you’re in the red, it means you don’t have a enough money and need MORE!!! All of this is besides the point, because of the claim is not that the jail is generating profit for itself. The jail is a space for wealth generation that benefits a variety of interest groups including the upper class of McLean County and County government itself.
Therefore, activists must continue to keep a close eye on their local jails and continue to dismantle this institution of human misery at the local level. This contract update still requires a vote by the full county board. The next County Board meeting is Thursday, October 14th, 2021 at 5:30PM.
- It’s worth noting that determining the cost of each inmate is difficult because 1) the jail doesn’t keep a record of that so you can’t request it directly; and 2) because the cost is estimated based on a high level of different variables
- I define Neo-Liberalism as a capitalist economico-politico system, beginning in the mid-1970s, where taxes were cut on the wealthy and corporations, regulations (especially in financing) were largely rolled back, a fetish for privatization of traditionally government or non-profit fields (education, defense, etc.), the outsourcing of jobs through globalization and the subsequent shift in the West from relatively stable, middle-class union jobs to unstable, low-wage nonunion jobs, and the hypercarceration and hypercriminilization of poor communities but particularly communities of color.
