Guards got incarcerated people to wash their personal cars, give haircuts and shine shoes at the fundraisers.
A recent investigation into the Illinois Department of Corrections revealed that prison guards there have been using incarcerated individuals to wash their personal cars, give haircuts and shine shoes at fundraisers to benefit the prison staff — in other words, they have been using the labor of incarcerated people for their own personal gain.
This information came to light after an anonymous individual at the Pinckneyville prison filed a complaint in 2017 alleging that guards had improperly raised money for the so-called Employee Benefit Fund , established to provide various perks for prison guards, including birthday parties, Christmas parties, funeral flowers, retirement gifts and Employee Appreciation Week.by the state’s executive inspector general’s office.
Additionally, EBFs were found by investigators to be open to potential fraud, to “waste” hours of staff time, and to include illegal raffles.IDOC policy requires that EBF funds only come from purchases made by guards from vending machines and commissary . But during 2012-2017, the period being investigated, the majority of revenue for EBFs came from other sources. In 2017, 80 percent of the nearly $1 million raised for EBFs in Illinois prisons came from fundraising efforts.
Stubbs recalled the pay scale would vary between $50 to $150 a month at the jobs he worked. When he first started, he said he was happy to be making money: “You actually think that it’s a come up.” Then he called home to tell family he was working, and they thought he was making minimum wage, “but you have to tell them you’re making slave wages, even though you work all day.” He soon realized, “I’m making in a month what most people are paid for in a day’s work.
Investigators interviewed EBF committee chairs at the Pinckneyville prison, and IDOC headquarters in Springfield. The chair at Pinckneyville confirmed that they held car washes, and that incarcerated people “sometimes” washed cars. In an attempt to justify this, the chair said incarcerated workers were paid for their labor, and that “they can refuse.” Records showed that the Pinckneyville EBF raised $5,923 between January 2016 and July 2017 from car washes.
At Sheridan prison, the EBF chair told an investigator that their largest expenditures were for Christmas parties. In 2015, the alcohol tab at the Christmas party came to about $1,500, paid for with EBF monies. Sheridan was successful at holding several raffles, one of which raised $30,000, split evenly between the winner and EBF. These raffles were deemed illegal and ordered to be halted.
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