Tamms Prison Closing

The notorious Tamms Correctional Center in Illinois officially shut its doors on January 4th, 2013. Like other "supermax" prisons, Tamms symbolized the ever more punitive, dehumanizing, and ineffective state of our criminal justice system, in which entire institutions are built to hold prisoners in extreme solitary confinement. With Tamms closed, we are one step closer to stopping solitary.

06/21/2012

Solitary Confinement

Closing Tamms Supermax: A Chance To Reevaluate Solitary Confinement

By Ed Yohnka, ACLU of Illinois at 5:43pm

This is a good week in Illinois. Yesterday, Gov. Pat Quinn announced that he would close the “supermax” facility at Tamms Correctional Facility, where prisoners are held in long-term solitary confinement.

01/04/2013

Tamms Prison Closing

Refusing to Disappear: Prisoners at Tamms and their Families Conducted a Sustained Advocacy Campaign to Shut this "Supermax" Down

By Alan Mills, Legal Director, Uptown People’s Law Center at 3:58pm

Tamms was sold to the public as necessary to control the “worst of the worst” prisoners in Illinois. Yet when it opened in 1998, the majority of prisoners had virtually no disciplinary history at all.

01/04/2013

Tamms Prison Closing

Tamms "Supermax" Prison, with its Inhumane and Ridiculously Expensive Solitary Confinement Practices, is Officially a Thing of the Past!

By Amy Fettig, ACLU National Prison Project at 11:00am

Here’s to starting the New Year right. The notorious Tamms Correctional Center in Illinois, with its practice of housing human beings alone in cells for 22-24 hours per day with little or no human interaction or outside stimulus, officially shut its doors today.

American Civil Liberties Union