Defective Cook County Jail Doors Allow Inmates To Cause Trouble

By Anna Deem in News on Oct 31, 2009 9:00PM

Inmates at Cook County Jail's oldest maximum-security prison often resort to using toothpaste caps and toilet paper to jam their jail cell doors and sneak out, but recently it seems the old locks on the doors have rendered their extra efforts unnecessary. "Some of them are so bad they can literally slide the door, give the door a little jiggle, and it will slide open," a Cook County sheriff's correctional officer said to the Chicago Sun-Times. According to an investigation conducted by the Chicago Sun-Times/Better Government Association, there have been at least 288 problems with cell doors in the 608-cell prison called Division 1, between February 2007 and last May.

Officials say the doors have been fixed, but there are still problems with malfunctioning stairwell, corridor, and tunnel doors. "It's Jail 101: The doors ought to lock," said Charles Fasano of the John Howard Assocation, a watchdog group that monitors the jail, to the Sun-Times. The jail's main concern isn't about inmates escaping though (there are other locked doors they have to deal with), but more about the fights between rival gang members that are occurring. In August, Division 1 rival gang members snuck out of their cells and began to stab each other with homemade knives.

To deal with the faulty cell doors, the sheriff's office launched a new security system in August. Now prison guards have to double-check a panel that shows whether or not the cells are open or locked, and they have to go cell-to-cell to check as well, said sheriff's spokesman Steve Patterson. The county spent $70,000 last year to fix more than 70 doors in Division 1.