(WBBM NEWSRADIO) – The Pritzker Administration plans to rebuild two state prisons, including Stateville Correctional Center, which opened 99 years ago this month.
It would cost nearly $1 billion to tear down and rebuild Stateville in Crest Hill and Logan Correctional Center in Lincoln, a campus built in the late-1970s that houses female inmates.
Gov.
JB Pritzker estimates the project will take three to five years and depends on lawmakers’ approval of spending for the projects in next year’s budget proposal.
In announcing the plan, Pritzker said the new prisons would make it safer for staff and inmates while saving taxpayers millions.
A spokesman for the union representing prison staff said state employees would be interested to know where the inmates will be shifted while the prisons are rebuilt.
"Are other facilities equipped to receive them?" said Anders Lindall of AFSCME Council 31.
Officials at the prison reform group John Howard Association were favorable about Pritzker’s plan and would like to see other prisons phased out.
A report last year found state prisons have more than $2.5 billion in deferred maintenance costs.
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