Cook County Jail


The Cook County Jail, located on in South Lawndale, Chicago, Illinois, is operated by the Sheriff of Cook County.
As of 2017, Cook County operated the third-largest jail system in the United States by inmate population.
The jail has held several well-known and infamous criminals, including Tony Accardo, Frank Nitti, Larry Hoover, Jeff Fort, Richard Speck, John Wayne Gacy and the Chicago Seven.
It was one of three sites in which executions were carried out by electrocution in Illinois. Between 1928 and 1962, the electric chair was used 67 times at the jail, including the state's last electrocution, that of James Duke, on August 24, 1962. The state's other electrocutions were carried out at the Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill and at the Menard Correctional Center in Chester.

History

19th and 20th century

In the mid-to-late-1800s suspects in serious criminal matters were held at the site of the Cook County Criminal Court Building on Hubbard Street in a jail attached to the courthouse. A separate short-stay city jail called the "Bridewell" on Polk Street, officially the House of Correction, housed less serious offenders from within the city. The city Bridewell moved to the site of the present jail complex at 29th and California in 1871 but the County's serious alleged offenders did not move there until the mid-20th century. When the two facilities began to be located together, they first gained the reputation as the 'largest concentration of inmates in the free world.' Later, the County and City jails were institutionally merged by the Illinois legislature, officially called the Cook County Department of Corrections, overseen by the Cook County Sheriff's Office.

21st century

One of the largest clusters of coronavirus disease 2019 cases in the entire United States occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. As of April 22, 2020, at least 812 confirmed cases were linked to the jail; due to a lack of testing, the actual number of infections linked to the jail is believed to be higher. The jail's inmate population dropped by almost one-fifth during the coronavirus pandemic after a state judge ordered a review of cases involving low-risk, primarily non-violent detainees. At least six inmates and one guard have died.

Operations

At Metropolitan Correctional Center, Chicago female prisoners needing to be isolated, as of 2005, have been taken to the Cook County Jail as the security housing unit at the former is only for males.

U.S. Department of Justice report

In July 2008, the civil rights division of the United States Department of Justice released a report finding that the Eighth Amendment civil rights of the inmates has been systematically violated. The report found that the CCJ failed to adequately protect inmates from harm or risk of harm from other inmates or staff; failed to provide adequate suicide prevention; failed to provide adequate sanitary environmental conditions; failed to provide adequate fire safety precautions; and failed to provide adequate medical and mental health care.
Specific alleged violations that have resulted in Federal sanctions and/or class action lawsuits include:
  1. Systematic beatings by corrections officers
  2. Poor food quality
  3. Inmates' being forced to sleep on cell floors due to overcrowding and mismanagement
  4. Rodent infestation and injury caused to sleeping inmates by rat and mouse bites
  5. Violations of privacy during multiple invasive strip searches
  6. Failure to provide adequate medical care, including failure to dispense medications
  7. Invasive and painful mandatory tests for male STDs
  8. Unnecessarily long waiting time for discharge upon payment of bond, completion of sentence, or charges' being dropped. Wait times are currently routinely in excess of 8 hours, nearly all of which is spent with many inmates packed into tiny cells.

    In popular culture

The women's section of the former Cook County jail near Hubbard Street is the setting used for the musical Chicago, as well as its 2002 film adaptation. The present jail is used in segments of TV series including Chicago Fire and Better Call Saul.
B.B. King's Live in Cook County Jail album features a live recording of a concert that he performed for the jail's inmates on September 10, 1970.
A live album featuring performances by jazz musicians Jimmy McGriff and Lucky Thompson was released on the Groove Merchant label in 1973)
The song "My Long Walk to Jail" on Filter's 2002 album The Amalgamut includes a sample of an incoming call from Cook County Jail.
The Cook County Prison was referenced to by Elwood Blues in the film The Blues Brothers as serving oatmeal to inmates.
The Cook County Prison is where Bigger Thomas is held, in Richard Wright's Native Son.