A Woman’s Voice

In the early 1990s, a woman receives a phone call that rips her heart out when she's told her son committed suicide. She knows the reason: her son could not handle life after being brutally raped in prison. She grieved; then being determined to not let her sons death go unnoticed when prison officials were ignoring her inquiries, she mustered her strength and went to talk to her local State Representative. He listened and asked her to volunteer on his staff. Although she didn't know it at the time that she went to see him, he was an Illinois State Representative who sat on the Legislative Correctional Oversight Committee (now disbanded) and together they were responsible for advancing some changes within the system.

A few years later, I found myself talking to my Mother about a problem I was having with an Assistant Warden at the Joliet Correctional Center and how prison administrators were attempting to cover the situation up. Little did I know that my Mother would become enraged at what I had said. I never asked how, but, somehow my Mother finds the woman and State Representative out of all the people in the world; what were the chances back in the ‘90s. After explaining things to them, the State Representative asks my Mother to speak about what was going on to the Correctional Oversight Committee at its next session meeting. My Mother jumps in her car the next day and drives from Springfield, Missouri to Springfield, Illinois to do just that.

As it happened, at that Committee meeting, the Director and Deputy Director of Illinois Department of Corrections were there to speak and were quite surprised to see a meek woman standing all of 5’5” discussing how prison officials were covering up the criminal actions of one of their Assistant Wardens at Joliet Correctional Center.

Knowing my Mother doesn’t like to speak in public, thus having to have been scared to death at speaking before a Legislative tribunal and high-ranking IDOC Administrators, she would have had to have mustered all her strength to talk about what was happening - I’m still very proud of her for her strength to hold her composure and I reflect on her bravery when I need inspiration to stand up for what I believe to be right.

After my Mother was done talking to the Committee and was being asked questions by reporters rapidly surrounding her, the Director quickly ordered the Deputy Director to pull my Mother to the side and "investigate,” so that the reporters would be prevented from asking any more questions. The investigation played out and the Assistant Warden's actions were still covered up; though, this aspect is not the reason for this writing.

It was the strangest thing that happened when my Mother did what she did, prison administrators became afraid of her because they realized that my Mother had learned she had a voice and could use it. Years later I discovered that prison officials were still afraid of my Mother when she told me that an IDOC Administrator from IDOC's Springfield office had called her so as to explain how my being fired from my prison law library clerk job was justified after I complained of prisoners being tortured and beaten in the segregation unit at Menard Correctional Center. The funny thing was that my Mother never called any prison officials to ask why I was fired.

Two and a half decades later, I still see that prison officials are afraid of a woman who has found her voice. I have to wonder if my Mother had a support group on the Internet what she would have been able to do; this is the reason I am writing..

Ladies, you have a powerful voice within each of you. I can only imagine what you could accomplish by gaining strength from each other and applying your collective determination and ideas into bringing solutions to problems within the prison system that affect your loved one(s); it is my hope that what I have said above will springboard a conversation about using your collective voices to take action.

One such problem to deal with and is easy to solve is to stop being disrespected by prison officials when you are visiting your loved one(s) . One phone call to the Director's office will cause a reprimand of the offending party; one-hundred phone calls to the Director's office in a single day will cause new policy to be issued and result in the next offending party being fired from working for IDOC —- where an employee's willful non-compliance with a prison rule creates liability upon IDOC.

My point here is not to discuss legal issues but to say that working together on this problem will provide you with experience in learning how to coordinate your activities.

Should you need ideas as to where to focus your attention, just ask. Having been incarcerated for over 30 years I know which problems are at the root of multiple problems. If you don't mind, perhaps you will allow me to interject my thoughts to your group from time to time to ask for your help in solving other issues.

Stay strong and use your outdoor voice it is called for.

Note: I originally wrote this in June 2021.