Joliet Correctional Center

This is an article about a men's penitentiary in Illinois in the United States. For the women's prison in Quebec, Canada, see Joliette Institution.

Joliet Correctional Center

East gate of the prison. (The Joliet Jake Gate from The Blues Brothers).
Location	Joliet, Illinois
Status	Closed in 2002
Opened	1858

Joliet Correctional Center (colloquially known as Joliet Prison) was a prison in Joliet, Illinois, United States from 1858 to 2002. It is featured in the motion picture The Blues Brothers as the prison from which Jake Blues is released at the beginning of the movie. It is also the location for the first season of Fox Network's Prison Break television show and the movie Let's Go to Prison.

History

Joliet Prison from the south.

Joliet Correctional Center, which was a completely separate prison from Stateville Correctional Center, Crest Hill, Illinois, opened in 1858. The prison was built with convict labor leased by the state to contractor Lorenzo P. Sanger and warden Samuel K. Casey. The limestone used to build the prison was quarried on the site.^[1] . The first 33 inmates arrived from Alton in May 1858 to begin construction; the last prisoners were transferred in July 1860. Both criminals and prisoners of war were confined there during the Civil War. The first corrections officer to be killed there was Joseph Clark in 1865. By 1872 the population had reached 1,239, a record number for a single prison. From the 1870s the prison had work contracts with local businesses.

The prison was slow to modernize. There was no running water or toilets in the cells in 1910. The construction of the nearby Stateville Correctional Center begun in 1917 and opened in March 1925 was meant to lead to the swift closure of Joliet. This did not happen, and both prisons operated simultaneously for the rest of the 20th Century.

A women's prison was added across the road from the main structures in 1896 but closed in 1932 when the female prison in Dwight, Illinois was opened. It then became an annex for the male prison and later the male reception unit for northern Illinois.

In 1924, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb were given life sentences to be served at Joliet (after their successful defense -- from the death penalty -- by Clarence Darrow). Their case was known as "the crime of the century" at the time after kidnapping and murdering Robert Franks.

From at least the early 1960s, the prison included a reception and classification center for northern Illinois, holding new prisoners for less than a month before their final assignments and processing over 20,000 a year. In addition to the prisoners temporarily held in the R&C unit, Joliet maintained a large population of permanent inmates.

In 1973, members of the Black P. Stone Nation and other Chicago street gangs took over a cell block and held several corrections officers hostage. The warden at the time, Fred L. Finkbeiner, spoke to the inmates through a bullhorn and promised they would not be harmed. Their primary grievance was the fact that they were being transferred to other prisons because they had too much control over other inmates at Joliet. One former gang member, Herbert "Cadillac" Catlett, had reformed and been cooperating with the administration to bring about positive change. He tried to reason with the rioting inmates and was murdered. Warden Finkbeiner was standing in Catlett's blood as he spoke to the inmates, and the hostage situation was resolved. The warden later eulogized Catlett at an African-American church in Chicago Heights.^{[citation needed]}

The number of inmates peaked at 1,300 in 1990 and was still 1,156 in 2000, although capacity had been raised to 1,300 over 1999–2000, from 1,180 previously. In 2000 there were 541 staff.

Closure

Joliet Correctional Center closed as a holding prison in 2002. Budget cuts and the obsolete and dangerous nature of the buildings were the cited reasons. All inmates and most staff were transferred to Stateville Correctional Center.

Media

Poetry

Joliet is referenced in the "Spoon River Anthology" written by Edgar Lee Masters. In the poem "Silas Dement" it reads:

When I came back from Joliet

There was a new court house with a dome.

For I was punished like all who destroy

The past for the sake of the future.

Fiction

In the Left Behind series of apocalyptic novels, Joliet Prison has been turned into a "loyalty enforcement" facility, and heroine Chloe Steele is guillotined there.

Music

Rapper Cashis tells the story about the life of a gangster, and a man who is stuck in Joliet for 20 years for murder, in his song "Life of a Rider."

"My nigga owerkella, He a fucking killa,

He doin' 20 years, Cuz he a fucking killa,

I love that nigga to death, But can he really know it,

He stuck in Joliet, How can I really show it"

Memphis Minnie recorded the song "Joliet Bound" with Kansas Joe McCoy in 1932, which was most likely derived from the same source as Noah Lee's "Viola Lee Blues." Perhaps the most well-known version of the tune was by Rory Block on When a Woman Gets the Blues. The third verse runs:

Now the judge he pleaded, clerk, he wrote it down

Mmmm mmmm

Judge he pleaded, clerk, he wrote it down

That if I miss jail sentence now, must be Joliet bound

Bob Dylan's Percy's Song tells the story of the singer's attempt to have a friend's ninety-nine year sentence in Joliet Prison commuted. The second verse runs:

Tell me the trouble,

Tell once to my ear,

Turn, turn, turn again.

Joliet prison

And ninety-nine years,

Turn, turn to the rain

And the wind.^[2]

The song, an outtake from the sessions that produced Dylan's album The Times They Are a-Changin', has been covered by Fairport Convention and Arlo Guthrie.

The humorous Steve Goodman song "Lincoln Park Pirates" centers on an infamous Chicago firm called Lincoln Park Towing. One of its lines is:

Our drivers are friendly and courteous

Good manners you always will get

For all are recent graduates

Of the "charm school" at Joliet

Television and film

Joliet Prison was featured in the 1980 John Landis film The Blues Brothers both as a filming location^[3] and as the namesake for "Joliet" Jake Blues (John Belushi).

Some characters from Saw II were ex-Joliet Prison inmates.^{[citation needed]}

• 1988 - Red Heat, a 1988 film which starred Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Belushi
• 1999 - the Columbia Tristar show Early Edition, season 3 episode 13 (The Last Untouchable). Fictional mobster Antonio Birelli played by Ernest Borgnine is released from the prison.

Since its closure, Joliet Prison has been used much more as a set for various film and television projects.^[4]

• 2005 - Derailed, a 2005 film which starred Clive Owen and Jennifer Aniston
• 2005-06 - the Fox Network shot the first season of its show Prison Break on location in the old facility. This prison was known as Fox River State Penitentiary on the show
• 2006 - Let's Go to Prison, a 2006 film which starred Dax Shepard and Will Arnett.
• 2007 - the Fox Network show Bones, season 2 episode 12 (The man in the cell). The prison where serial killer Howard Epps was held was known as 'Bay View Federal Penitentiary' on the show
• 2011 - Breakout Kings on A&E featured T-Bag from Prison Break escaping from Fox River, again.

The Joliet Prison collection of photographs by inmates is maintained at jolietprison.com

See also

	Illinois portal
	Chicago portal

• List of Illinois state prisons
• Fox River State Penitentiary

References

1. ^ History of Will County, Illinois (Chicago, 1878), pp. 711-14
2. ^ Percy's Song | Bob Dylan
3. ^ The Blues Brothers (1980) - Filming locations
4. ^ Titles with locations including Joliet Prison

External links

• "Joliet Correctional Center" Illinois Department of Corrections (Archive)
• Joliet Prison at Google Maps
• "Stateville Correctional Center". The Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC). http://www.idoc.state.il.us/subsections/facilities/information.asp?instchoice=sta. Retrieved 2006-09-05.  Information on Joliet Prison at the bottom of the page.

Coordinates: 41°32′49″N 88°04′27″W / 41.54693°N 88.07427°W / 41.54693; -88.07427