Issue date: 3/6/08 Section: The Weekly

Jean Maclean Snyder, an attorney who has represented prisoners at Tamms, describes the surroundings as "the kind of life that would drive most people bonkers." Snyder has been using litigation as a tool to improve conditions at the prison for nearly 10 years. She filed a lawsuit in January 1999 on behalf of five men who were seriously mentally ill, contending that their medical treatment violated the Eighth Amendment, which protects detainees from cruel and unusual punishment.

"The courts are very hostile to prisoner's cases," Snyder says. "We had to strategize."

The court was willing to listen to Snyder's case because she identified severe mental illness as an outcome of the prisoner's surroundings. Her efforts were effective. The prison began screening people for mental illness and established a mental unit called "J-pod" in February 2000. Despite this change, Tamms is still an awful place, Snyder says.

Legislative hearings about the conditions at Tamms will be held on April 28, in the Prison Reform Committee of the Illinois House. The campaign is calling for an end to the torture of prisoners in Illinois. While the ultimate goal is closing Tamms for good, Year Ten will first propose alternatives to long-term solitary confinement and sensory deprivation - both practices that do no public good and are torture, Stephen Eisenman says. Laurie Jo Reynolds agrees.

"There is no right way to do the wrong thing," she says. "There is no benefit to this; no rationale, no advantage to public safety, no advantage for the prisoners or their families."

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