Investigations
What Happens When a Prison Closes? Dwight’s Demise 10 Years Ago Highlights Current Issues in Illinois Facilities
The administration building of Dwight Correctional Center in a file photograph taken Sept. 19, 2024. (Blair Paddock / WTTW News)
Ray Gubbels felt restless in retirement after a career in corrections.
So, he applied to a security gig and soon after received a call.
“Are you interested in working in an abandoned prison?” he remembered the security firm representative asking.
He was. But he would have to guard a prison he worked at for 14 years, Dwight Correctional Center.
“Man, how’d I get back here?” Gubbels said. “People I worked with, I tell them that, and they’re like, you gotta be shi----- me, you’re working back in the prison?”
Surrounded by corn and soybeans on an island of arid grass sits the decade-long closed women’s prison Dwight, where Gubbels spends his days as a security guard. He patrols the campus of derelict buildings, sometimes greeted by former Dwight workers reminiscing or stragglers from the Route 66 visitor center just down the road. Recently, two men visiting from Ireland stopped by on advice of a road trip tour book.
Weeds and trees teem through barbed wire. Some windows are scattered with bullet holes and in the parking lot a burnt car sits, an indication that the site’s sole use now is as a training location for local fire department and law enforcement.
After Dwight closed, the women incarcerated were transferred to Logan Correctional Center. That prison, along with Stateville, is now one of two state officials recently allocated $900 million to close and rebuild, the first such change to the prison system in a decade.
To gain insight into the impact of prison closures, WTTW News looked back on the last prison the state shut down: Dwight. We spoke to both currently and formerly incarcerated women and correctional workers, as well as researchers and lifelong residents in the surrounding village.
Since the prison closed, the eponymous village a couple miles east still looks for an economic north star. Women are still incarcerated in sordid conditions at the prison they were transferred to. Layoff concerns were largely remedied by filling nearby correctional vacancies. And the shell of the prison sits as a sore reminder to some.
“To see it the way it is now, it’s heartbreaking,” Gubbels said of the empty prison.
Why Did the Prison Close?
Dwight opened as a women’s reformatory in 1930, “resembling an old French chateau or English manor house, rather than a prison,” the local press wrote at the time.
“The stone arched gateway, with its ornamental finish, has a hospitable aspect which will likely appeal to the unfortunates who pass through its portals,” the article continues. “Hope of redemption has been emphasized in every detail of Illinois’ new experiment with its feminine charges.”
Mary Flott of the Dwight Historical Society on Sept. 19, 2024, holds a print of the administration building of Dwight Correctional Center. At its opening in 1930, local press said the prison resembled “an old French chateau or English manor house, rather than a prison.” (Blair Paddock / WTTW News)
But the gleam of a new correctional center for the state eventually faded after some 80 years, as then Gov. Pat Quinn’s administration announced in 2012 that the state’s only maximum security women’s prison would close.
For Quinn, it was a pragmatic cost-cutting move, but for others, it was their livelihood.
In April 2012, hundreds filled the Dwight Township High School gymnasium, dotted with “Join The Fight Save Dwight” T-shirts for the state’s Center on Government Forecasting and Accountability (COGFA) hearing over the proposed closure of the prison.
“I would like to ask the commission and the governor to reconsider this closing,” Bill Wilkey, then the village president of Dwight, said at the hearing.
Wilkey was afraid the closure could worsen the economic impact felt on the village that had recently seen two car dealerships close and a printing plant cut its workforce. The shuttering of the prison could leave incarcerated women farther from their families, he said, as many of them were from the Chicago area. It was a similar sentiment shared by Dwight residents.
“This was nothing that could be measured by a spreadsheet and a computer program; it’s personal, emotional and devastating,” Wilkey continued.
Quinn’s administration proposed several state facility closures in February 2012. Dwight was one of them, along with the Tamms Correctional Center, the state’s super-maximum security prison. Dwight was one of the state’s three women’s prisons at the time, alongside Decatur and Lincoln correctional centers.
COGFA, made up of 12 bipartisan legislators, in an advisory vote rejected the recommendation to close Dwight. The commission said there was a need for a comprehensive plan before members would be comfortable voting in favor of the proposal.
But the governor’s office has the final say on the closures, and the administration moved forward.
The department proposed a massive move for the 961 women incarcerated at Dwight. Logan Correctional Center, then a men’s prison, would turn into a female facility. Then, the female populations of both Dwight and Lincoln would transfer to Logan. Lincoln would then become a male facility. Logan and Lincoln, next door to each other, are about 100 miles southwest of Dwight.
Workers, the state proposed, could transfer to other facilities within 45 minutes of Dwight: Pontiac, Sheridan and Stateville correctional centers.
“It’s not an easy decision, but I mean, let’s be honest with each other, when it comes to government and when government makes a decision, they’re making a decision based on numbers,” a former administrator of the women and family services division with the Illinois Department of Corrections said in an interview with WTTW News. They did not want to be named as they wanted to “fully disconnect” from their previous job.
“And unfortunately, you know, you’ve got the vicarious victims of that,” they said.
What Happened to the Women Incarcerated?
While Sandra Brown was incarcerated at Dwight, a great white northern owl would sit by the window of her housing unit. During her two years at the prison, she dealt with rodent infestations: “The rats there would go through your boxes and eat your food; it didn’t matter if you locked your box or not.” She remembers the yard being considerably smaller than the one she’d see at Logan, but there were more outdoor opportunities at Dwight.
Brown now serves as a senior advisor with the Women’s Justice Institute.
One issue that wasn’t specific to Dwight, but pervasive to all prisons in Illinois at the time, was the record level of incarceration. The state’s prison population peaked in February 2013 with more than 49,000 people incarcerated and IDOC was operating at 151% its rated capacity, meaning the original designed capacity of a facility when it was constructed.
During this time, Brown said she had to fight for ice and the phone and couldn’t get access to mental health care because the caseload was so high — “I was imploding inside,” Brown said.
Sandra Brown, photographed here on Sept. 14, 2024, is a senior advisor with the Women’s Justice Institute. She dealt firsthand with the impact of the prison closure: While she was incarcerated at Lincoln Correctional Center, Dwight closed, leading to the consolidation of both prisons into Logan Correctional Center. She said the new women’s population was “not met with enthusiasm” by staff. (Blair Paddock / WTTW News)
These issues only compounded once the women at Dwight and Lincoln transferred to Logan in 2013 after the closure. It was then that Logan became one of the nation’s largest and most complex women’s prisons.
“They went from one crumbling facility to another,” said Deanne Benos, executive director of the Women’s Justice Institute.
This, according to an assessment on Logan that was released in 2016 by the Women’s Justice Institute, which also authored it. Support came from the National Resource Center on Justice Involved Women and CORE Associates.Titled the Gender Informed Practice Assessment (GIPA), it was the first-ever gender responsive assessment conducted by IDOC at any women’s prison.
The report states that Logan was “not designed to address the operational needs of a large women’s population” of up to 2,000 women of all security levels, including 770 women identified as “seriously mentally ill.” It also was the site of the statewide Reception and Classification Center to assess and temporarily house women admitted to IDOC.
“One group has been consistently left behind throughout the reform process: women, particularly women of Color. … The entire system has been designed to assess, manage and house men and attend to male-specific risks and needs,” the report states.
Brown, who transferred to Logan from Lincoln, said the new women population was “not met with enthusiasm” by staff. She remembers waiting for several hours on a bus, then entering Logan to find her to-be housing unit had fecal matter in the ice machines and ripped-out cable cords.
“Every bodily function that you can fathom was plastered across walls, across windows, across our mattresses,” Brown said.
There was insufficient training for new cadets on gender responsive practices, the GIPA report found.
“More than 50% of the prison’s correctional officers (200 of 379) were new cadets that had only recently completed a six-week training program,” the report details. “It was not until the very last day of training that they were presented with a one hour PowerPoint on gender responsive practices with incarcerated women.”
“There was a great big culture shift that we had to tackle, which I never felt satisfied, when I left, had been tackled at all,” said a former administrator of the women and family services division with IDOC. “It takes years to shift the culture, and you know, that culture was, [workers] were upset that they were getting women inmates.”
Brown recalled someone making a comment while she and others were getting processed into the newly female facility that “somebody need to get these rank b----es some soap.”
The transfer also created geographic challenges, as most of the women inside were from the Chicago area — up to 200 miles away from children, families and support systems, the report detailed. And when loved ones could make it out, the report found, the facility was not staffed or designed to support child-friendly visitation.
That was the case for Brown. It was harder for her mother and son to make the trek to central Illinois from Chicago. The visiting room could crowd to the point where visits would be terminated, she said.
“Sometimes it’d be times that seeing my son would actually give me what I needed to survive,” Brown said.
As the economic impact of a town closing a prison is in question, Brown has a counterpoint: What about the economic impact that drives people into prison?
“Can we become more skilled at reinvesting in people, in addressing those social deterrents that drive people to prison in the first place?” she asked.
To John Eason, a Brown University professor who has written on some rural towns’ economic reliance on prisons, the question of whether it’s viable for a town to rely on a prison isn’t just an economic question — it’s a moral one as well.
“Is it a viable moral project to spend billions of dollars to cage humans? And as a moral project, definitely not,” he said. “... It demonstrates that we clearly built our way into mass incarceration … So that question about viability is really, I think, it’s based on a moral question and, really, why do we do this?”
What Happened to the Workers?
While Dwight was in operation, Ray Gubbels said it was like a college campus. He remembers old oak trees on the site and beautiful stonework buildings. There was a Dog Apprentice Program where incarcerated women helped train dogs. When there was an audit of the prison, he said workers would “clean like crazy” and the warden would bring out paint for them to hide the cracks in the walls.
Memories of working in the prison were not savory for all, as another former employee of Dwight said they were glad the prison closed due to the overtime hours that “ruined a lot of families’ lives” — sometimes reaching 16-hour days. Given that this employee is still currently working for IDOC, they did not want to be named for fear of retaliation.
Long hours led them to the doctor’s office with a headache and red eyes, thinking it was a case of pink eye.
“He’s like, no. And so I tell him the hours I’m working, and he’s like, dear god, you don’t get no rest,” they said.
Walking up and down the main stretch of Dwight, pictured here on Aug. 28, 2024, the storefronts go from “open, close, open, close,” said Doug Patten of the Dwight Economic Alliance. (Blair Paddock / WTTW News)
By the time of the transition to Logan, both staff and the building infrastructure were not ready for a female population — “if you saw the visiting center at Logan, you would want to cry,” said Lynn Cahill-Masching. She retired as the warden of Dwight in 2003.
“The idea was, OK, we're just going to be able to train these men or staff to work with the women, and there was giant pushback,” Cahill-Masching said. “... The officers got blindsided that they wake up one day and all of a sudden, 800 women are moving in.”
The future employment of correctional workers was of concern for those against the closure at the time, but most were able to stay within the department, according to IDOC. Of the 351 workers at Dwight, 36 resigned or chose layoff from IDOC and 315 continued to work with IDOC — with most employees transferring to Pontiac, about 20 miles away, or Sheridan, about 40 miles away, according to the department.
“The state was very generous at the time of letting us go wherever we wanted to go as long as there was vacancies available in other facilities and counties,” said that former Dwight employee.
But staying within the department isn’t always favorable for staff. Switching to different facilities led to switching seniority levels for some, meaning some took lower-ranking jobs, the worker continued.
“They had to squeeze in there, so a lot of them took a demotion,” they said. “Like, let’s say for the rank of a lieutenant, if their lieutenant jobs are all taken at that facility, you’re not allowed to be one, you got to fit in as an officer.”
What Happened to the Village of Dwight?
On a September weekend this year, a wrestling ring illuminated by the glow of fried food stands and a Ferris wheel sat on Dwight’s main street.
An aggressive cover of “Folsom Prison Blues” came out hot through speakers as a wrestler donning denim overalls, dubbed “D.O.C,” took blows from his opponent. His partner named “Cell Block,” wearing an orange leotard and sweatpants monogrammed with his alter ego, bounced into the ring to assist. He won the pair the match; children in the crowd frenzied around the ring, hoping to meet hands with the champions.
The wrestling is a newer addition to the decades-long Dwight Harvest Days festival, said Doug Patten of the Dwight Economic Alliance. It’s an economic boost to the village, as Patten notes that walking up and down the main stretch of the village, the storefronts go from “open, close, open, close.”
Patten, a lifelong resident, never considered Dwight a prison town. But when the prison closed in 2013, he said the village felt an impact.
Workers’ and incarcerated peoples’ families would stop through, fill up on gas, shop on the main street and eat. That had noticeably dwindled after the closure.
“No matter what industry you were in … you felt the trickle-down effect,” Patten said.
However, Patten points to the economic impact being more nuanced than the force of a shuttered prison: The R.R. Donnelley printing plant, a major employer, closed in 2020, the pandemic impacted jobs, and business owners retired.
Dwight’s population has sat around 4,000 people both before and after the closure of the prison. A nearby ALDI Distribution Center and the William Fox Developmental Center serve as some of the main employers for the town, Patten said. Dwight sits on Route 66, so largely international tourists make a stop along their road trips out west. There was a pitch to build a private immigrant detention center in 2019, but Gov. J.B. Pritzker soon banned the centers in the state.
Walking down the main street, Patten lists off the happenings of each storefront: an empty front the local plumber bought but hasn’t yet made use of; a firefighter-themed restaurant that a family put their “heart and soul” into; a one-time floral shop, now empty, that had been bought by an insurance company. On the next block, the shuttered AFSCME union hall for correctional workers.
After Dwight Correctional Center’s closure, the union hall for correctional workers on Dwight’s main street shut down. The now-empty hall, pictured here on Aug. 28, 2024, was used for community events like meetings or children’s birthdays, said Doug Patten with the Dwight Economic Alliance. (Blair Paddock / WTTW News)
Pritzker told local officials this May to “not rely upon a state-run facility that’s a prison” for economic development.
But a prison can be appealing to a town, John Eason found.
In his research, Eason found that comparing places that are demographically similar, a town that gets a prison sees a “huge improvement” compared to a town that does not. There’s an increase in median home value and median family income and a decrease in unemployment and poverty.
“We build them all over the country because it is a public works project,” Eason said. “It’s a way for rural communities to repair their reputation … not just economic, but political and social decline … That’s why locals don’t fight prisons”
So, when a prison closes, he said it could “lead to other institutional failures,” impacting public works programs in an area, like schools, hospitals and local businesses.
A town’s reliance on a prison is “not healthy for the economy,” Patten said — “you need variety in anything you do in life, let alone a small town’s economy.”
For Sandra Brown with the Women’s Justice Institute, that dependency is larger than economics.
“I find myself deeply concerned that someone would think that their only livelihood lies in the oppression of people, in the incarceration of people,” Brown said.
How 2024 Mirrors 2013
In March, Pritzker’s administration announced plans to close and rebuild Logan Correctional Center, the same prison the state shuttled women to the last time a facility closed.
Logan, a multi-security women’s prison, sits southwest of the city of Lincoln in central Illinois.
Like 11 years ago, AFSCME Council 31, local government leaders and a purely advisory state board are opposed to closing the prison. And like 11 years ago, the governor is moving forward with closures. But there’s one difference this time: Formerly incarcerated women, many of whom transferred from Dwight to Logan one decade prior, shared their thoughts.
In June, Dyanna Winchester spoke to a crowd of hundreds of correctional workers and their supporters in green shirts stating “Logan CC belongs in Logan County.” It was the state’s procedural COGFA hearing at the Lincoln Junior High School Auditorium. Winchester, now with the Women’s Justice Institute, was incarcerated at Dwight and transferred to Logan.
“The most important thing I must share is that like most of the incarcerated women in this state, I grew up in an abusive environment. … As a young mother, I did not get the help I needed to deal with those issues or to help keep my children safe,” Winchester said. “... When I was transferred to Dwight prison to Logan with thousands of other women and mothers, all it did was move me out, further away from my already small support system of my family.”
She said she doesn’t want the prison to exist, but if it does, she supports moving a smaller facility closer to Chicago, as more than 40% of women in Logan come from Cook County or the collar counties, according to IDOC. The only other women’s correctional center in the state is Decatur Correctional Center, a minimum-security facility in central Illinois.
The testimony of a woman currently incarcerated in Logan was read: “Logan is the worst facility I have been in. I have a lot to say about why this institution should be closed down immediately, but I am also aware of the retaliation that would likely take place against me if I choose to speak out, however, I will pray for God's protection and guidance.”
In turn, current and former workers spoke of the economic impact it might have on their town. Lincoln residents said that they have already suffered economic blows as two local colleges closed over the past couple years.
“If you close Logan, you’re going to destroy my hometown,” said Marcia Mibbs, who testified at the hearing that she and family members have worked at Logan.
Kenny Johnson, who said he has worked at Logan for 13 years, said Logan workers have the knowledge to serve a unique population, like transgender women. The prison would lose “vital staff” to serve that population if closed, he said.
The state is also closing and rebuilding Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill. It’s proposed that both the new Stateville and Logan are to be built on Stateville’s sprawling 2,200-acre property.
AFSCME Council 31 supports building a new women’s correctional facility, but strongly opposes the facility’s relocation. The move could disrupt the lives of some 450 workers who would have to move to stay employed and worsen staffing shortages, the union argues. IDOC said there are approximately 850 vacancies at two facilities within 40 miles of the prison and four facilities within 90 miles.
“The department says that there will be sufficient vacancies for the people working at Logan, but lists locations up to 90 miles away as possible solutions,” said Marrisa Hayes, a correctional officer at Logan. “We cannot be expected to drive 180 miles in a single day to get to work.”
As opposed to budgetary reasoning with Dwight, Pritzker announced the closures because a state-commissioned report found Logan is “inefficient, ineffective, and unsuitable for any population,” while Stateville is “not suitable for any 21st century correctional center.” The report also found that Logan had more than $115 million in deferred maintenance needs; Stateville topped $285 million.
After this hearing, COGFA, by the books, was set to hold an advisory vote over the proposals. But that vote didn’t happen, as quorum was not met: Just three of the 12 legislators of the bipartisan group showed up. Those who did said the state’s plan was “not shovel ready.”
But, as with the last closure, the governor’s office gets the final say. Before the hearings, Pritzker had already signed the 2025 budget that includes $900 million for capital investments to rebuild Logan and Stateville.
Illinois isn’t alone in closing prisons. New York, whose prison population declined by half from 2008 to 2021, is looking to close up to five prisons. California is also seeing its lowest prison population point in more than 30 years, as residents in Blythe just lost a recent fight against the closure of the prison in their town, which closed this year.
And Illinois is also seeing a decline in prison populations with the lowest population in nearly three decades. But, unlike other states consolidating, Illinois is rebuilding.
While the state has started this closure process, it’s a long march forward, with five years being the projected rebuild timeline. In the meantime, the state proposes, Logan will stay open until the new Logan facility is built in Crest Hill. And, as with Dwight, those who live in the town, work in the prison and are incarcerated are left in a period of uncertainty over economic impact, where their jobs will go or how far loved ones might have to travel for a visit.
It’s the second time Angela Wells has gone through this closure process. Incarcerated for more than 20 years, she went from Dwight to Lincoln to Logan, where she’s currently housed. “To be honest, I’m tired of this … There is really no place that up to date on all repairs that is safe and healthy for the women,” she wrote in a letter to WTTW News.
“I don’t want to transfer again. I want to go home,” concludes her letter.
An October 2024 letter sent to WTTW News from Angela Wells, who is currently incarcerated at Logan Correctional Center. The impending closure of Logan would be the second time she’s gone through a prison closure process, as she went from Dwight to Lincoln, then Logan as Dwight closed, prompting facility consolidation.
Contact Blair Paddock: @blairpaddock | [email protected]
