Correctional officer shortage putting crunch on jails

The law enforcement officer shortage that’s plagued police departments across the country in recent years also is having serious consequences for jails and prisons.

The point was driven home this week both in the suburbs and downstate.

On Wednesday, Lake County sheriff’s officials — citing a staffing crisis — announced they had reached a deal with their peers in McHenry County to send up to 150 inmates to their neighbor’s jail starting next week.

Between a record number of job vacancies, correctional officers on family and medical leave, and other absences, staffing at the Lake County jail is down nearly 40% from normal levels, officials said.

That means correctional officers not only are monitoring more inmates than ideal, but also working at least one 16-hour shift every pay period, leaving them fatigued and creating a potential “recipe for disaster.”

“It was creating a very unsafe situation for our correctional officers as well as the people they look after,” sheriff’s Deputy Chief Christopher Covelli told us. “We’re trying to prevent a situation where a correctional officer or inmate could be seriously injured or killed.”

While officer shortages aren’t unique, it presents a greater challenge for Lake County because of the relatively uncommon way the sheriff runs the jail. While most jails have officers monitoring inmates from behind glass or through cameras, Lake practices “direct supervision,” putting correctional officers in jail pods with inmates.

While it can be harder to find correctional officers who want to work in that environment, Covelli said there are significant benefits to direct supervision, including a reduction in violence and threats among inmates, and better outcomes when they are released.

“It’s a philosophy we’ve really embraced for a long time,” he said. “It has been successful and it’s not something we’d like to see go away.”

Here’s the deal

The agreement between the Lake and McHenry sheriffs runs for one year, but could be extended for another if the two sides agree to it. Lake will pay McHenry $100 per day per inmate, and the McHenry sheriff will be responsible for making sure inmates make it to and from their court appearances.

The Lake sheriff says that with an expected reduction in overtime costs and meals/medical care for inmates, the agreement should not have much impact on its bottom line.

In the meantime, Covelli said his office will use the next 12 to 24 months to boost its staffing. That includes asking the county board for funding to offer better pay and other inducements such as retention and signing bonuses.

Downstate woes

It’s not just here where the officer shortage is creating problems. On Sunday, the Franklin County Juvenile Detention Center in downstate Benton was ordered closed by a judge due to its lack of staffing.

Judge Melissa Morgan ordered the closure, determining that the facility that served 26 southern Illinois counties didn’t have the workforce needed to comply with state requirements for juvenile detention, according to Capitol News Illinois.

The closure comes more than a year after the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice described the center as a “facility in crisis,” CNI reported Thursday. It did not provide the required mental health care, schooling and recreation for the children in custody, and staff locked youth in their rooms for up to 24 hours for behavioral infractions or because of short staffing, according to the state agency.

Elsewhere in the state, prisons are dangerously short staffed, the executive director of the union for prison workers wrote in a 2022 letter to the head of the Department of Corrections , according to WBEZ.

The national outlook is no less grim. A recent report from the National Institute of Justice indicated that correctional officer vacancy rates in some state prisons approach 50%, while the federal Bureau of Prisons had a 40% shortage, according to the American Federation of Government Employees.

Supremes side with St. Charles man

It’s a disturbing violation when someone shares an intimate sexual photograph of you without your permission.

But whether you’re the victim of a crime may depend on whether you can be identified from the image, according to the Illinois Supreme Court.

In a 5-2 decision handed down Dec. 29, the state’s high court ruled that Justin Devine, a former worker at a cellphone store in Huntley, did not commit nonconsensual dissemination of a private image when he sent himself intimate photos from the phone of a woman who had brought it in for service.

The woman had used her phone to take photos of her genitalia two days prior, authorities said.

A Kane County judge in 2021 convicted Devine of felony nonconsensual dissemination of a private sexual image and sentenced him to 18 months probation and six months in the county jail.

However, a state appellate court overturned the verdict, ruling that prosecutors did not prove that the woman was identifiable through the images. The court instead reduced the conviction to misdemeanor disorderly conduct.

The supreme court agreed last week.

“The harm comes in someone else being able to identify the victim,” Justice Elizabeth Rochford wrote in the majority opinion.

Devine is now awaiting sentencing for disorderly conduct. The St. Charles man’s next court date is Jan. 12.

Kane County State’s Attorney Jamie Mosser said prosecuting people who commit nonconsensual dissemination of private sexual images is important to protect victims from psychological harm and embarrassment. The ruling makes clear one issue — whether sending materials to one’s self is dissemination, she said.

“Although we disagree with the majority opinion that the images were not identifiable ... it was very important that the Supreme Court ruled that dissemination of images can occur even when a person sends images to himself,” Mosser said. “Since this is a fact pattern that can occur often, this Supreme Court case settles the threshold issue of whether that act is dissemination under the law.”

Crimo Jr. bankruptcy

Robert Crimo Jr., father of the man accused of killing seven people in the mass shooting at Highland Park’s 2022 July 4 parade, has another date in court next week. Federal bankruptcy court, that is.

Crimo filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy Oct. 13, several weeks before he pleaded guilty to reckless conduct for helping his then-under-21 son obtain a firearm owners identification card.

According to the bankruptcy filing, Crimo Jr. made $74,000 in 2022. But now he grosses $946 a month working for Goodwill Industries. He listed monthly expenses of $1,400.

The filing says he has assets of $500,000 to $1 million ‒ mostly a Highland Park house on which a bank has filed foreclosure, and $180 in a checking account. He listed liabilities of at least $2.1 million ‒ including more than $535,000 owed on that house, plus a personal loan, consumer debt, parking fines, utility bills, ordinance-violation fines and more.

The liabilities do not, however, include any judgments against him in 12 pending lawsuits by victims of the parade shooting.

Tuesday’s court date is about whether the holder of the mortgage on the house can get a stay lifted so it can proceed with the foreclosure.

Meanwhile, his son is scheduled to return to court Friday morning, his first formal court appearance since declaring last month that he wanted to serve as his own attorney. He faces 21 counts of first-degree murder and dozens of other charges stemming from the parade shooting.

* Got a question, comment or idea? Email us at copsandcrime@dailyherald.com.