Cook County Jail

The Cook County Jail, located on 96 acres (390,000 m²) in Cook County, Illinois, is the largest jail in the United States of America housing approximately 9,800 men and women. The facility is located at 3015 S California Ave in the city of Chicago. It employs 3,800 law enforcement officials and 7,000 civilian employees.

The jail has held several infamous criminals including Al Capone, Tony Accardo, Frank Nitti, Larry Hoover, Jeff Fort, Richard Speck and John Wayne Gacy.

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 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.

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.^[1][2] 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 and rapings by corrections officers.
2. Poor food quality.
3. Inmates forced to sleep on cell floors due to overcrowding and mismanagement (resulting in a $1,000 per inmate class action settlement).
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 STD's (resulting in a $200 per inmate class action settlement).
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 Cook County jail was the setting used for the musical Chicago, as well as its 2002 film adaptation.

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.

The song "My Long Walk to Jail" on Filter's 2002 album The Amalgamut with a sample of an incoming call from Cook County Jail.

References

1. ^ Federal Report Finds Poor Conditions at Cook County Jail (New York Times)
2. ^ U.S. blasts jail conditions (Chicago Tribune)

External links

• Cook County Department of Corrections Website
• Department of Justice Findings Letter

Coordinates: 41°50′36″N 87°41′46″W / 41.84327°N 87.69622°W / 41.84327; -87.69622