The Road Less Traveled

By: Fernando DiazThe white van pushes out of a frozen South Side parking lot in the dark on a winter Saturday morning. Ed Paschal’s handful of passengers, mostly strangers to each other, are headed to a pair of downstate towns they might never have known existed if it weren’t for their loved ones. The riders—three women and two teens—will spend the next five hours talking or watching a movie, but mostly dozing off. The Chicago radio station’s smooth jazz will eventually fade to static as Paschal drives mostly in silence, his eyes fixed on the road and his omnipresent Bluetooth earpiece blinking every so often.

A sunrise, a sunset, 15 counties, 620 miles and 14 hours back and forth at $70 a head. And for what? For a chance to see a son, brother, husband or father. Someone who crossed the line and broke the law. Tried and convicted, most of Illinois’ criminals come from Chicago and suburban Cook County but are sentenced to do their time downstate, far from their families and homes.

For some families of the incarcerated, visiting their loved ones is an expensive, time-consuming and rare trip. The Chicago Reporter’s analysis of data provided by the Illinois Department of Corrections shows that inmates at prisons within two hours driving distance of Chicago were nearly two-anda- half times as likely to receive visits as inmates in prisons more than five hours away.

In addition, the Reporter found that:

* On average, inmates at the five prisons within two hours of Chicago received about 11.4 visitors each in 2007, compared with 4.4 visitors for inmates at prisons more than five hours from Chicago.

* Sixty percent of Illinois prisons, 17 of 28 facilities, are more than a 3-hour drive from Chicago.

* On average, female inmates received nearly twice as many visitors as male inmates. All three female prisons are within three hours of Chicago.

Such findings seem to support studies that have revealed distance as among the most significant barriers to family visitation.

A team of researchers from the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that has produced several studies on the impact of incarceration, including longitudinal studies on re-entry, surveyed 230 Chicago-bound Illinois prisoners about their lives and contact with family before, during and after prison.

According to a 2005 article published in the Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, the researchers said that just 13 percent of the prisoners reported having in-person contact with family or children during their incarceration.

“More than two-thirds of respondents reported that staying in touch with family was difficult, with the most frequently cited barriers to contact being that the prison was located too far away and that telephone calls were too expensive,” the authors wrote.

The distance, in many cases, is a result of a prison building boom that began in the 1970s, focused on revitalizing lagging economies of rural farming communities, according to Michael A. Boester, assistant professor of geography at Monroe Community College in Rochester, N.Y., who studied the social impact of three downstate Illinois communities that successfully lobbied for prisons in the late 1990s. “The economic impact weighed more than the social impact,” he said.

Research has shown that maintaining the bonds between family and inmates, if they existed at all, can help reduce recidivism and promote rehabilitation.

“One of our biggest findings has been the importance and role of family support in successful reintegration, not just providing a place to live or supporting people in staying drug-free but [by providing] basic emotional support,” according to Nancy La Vigne, a senior research associate at The Urban Institute’s Justice Policy Center, where she is director of the institute’s Returning Home study.

Some believe that visitation can also help children whose parents are incarcerated, though research in this area is woefully inadequate.

Many of those left behind rely on a handful of organizations and a loose network of drivers to shuttle them from pick-up spots dotting the South and West sides of Chicago to prisons scattered throughout the state. Women’s prisons are closer to Cook County while the majority of men’s prisons are considerably farther away. And while the number of programs for incarcerated mothers has increased in recent years, the overwhelming majority of state prisoners—more than 94 percent— are men.

Though corrections officials spend millions of dollars each year to reduce recidivism through substance abuse counseling, mentoring, transitional housing, parenting classes and a host of other programs, not a dime goes to transportation for families to see each other. Officials said they have not considered getting involved in transporting families to facilities; both the expense and logistics would make any possible venture prohibitive.

“I don’t know if we are able to take that on,” said Roberta Fews, deputy director of programs and support services for the Illinois Department of Corrections. “Fiscally, that would be a very huge issue.”

Without a vehicle and often having few resources, many families have turned to independent businesses to visit their loved ones. Some companies have been in the game for decades. Others come and go. Paschal calls them “fly-bynights” because just as soon as they start up, they fold. Some are started by ex-cons who know there is a market and think there is money to be made. Others get into the business just looking to make a buck. And most are nothing more than a name and a disconnected telephone number, or an answering machine whose message informs callers that service has been suspended until further notice.

For some, getting to see someone in prison is yet another gamble in a world of uncertainty. They might have saved up their money and managed to take the day off. They make it to the pickup spot before the vans take off. But when they step out of the vehicle, in a rural town whose population is smaller than their neighborhood, they find out that an incident has put the prison on lockdown and visits will not be allowed. Their loved one could have been transferred to another facility.

On Paschal’s January trip down Interstate 57, past Kankakee, Champaign, Effingham and a handful of other towns they would never know or see, two kids learned that a visit to their father could last no more than two hours. Pinckneyville Correctional Center was on “lockdown level four.” The other riders, who were visiting inmates at Big Muddy Correctional Center in downstate Ina, Jefferson County, would also get just two hours. According to Paschal, they were lucky. At least they got in.

Over the years, some visitors have been left without rides back to Chicago. According to chatter at www.illinoisprisontalk.com, an online forum for relatives of the incarcerated, two women were allegedly placed on visitation restriction after corrections officials searched their car and discovered a marijuana blunt in the backseat.

Neither of them was allowed in that day, according to the Web site.

Worse has happened. Weather and driver error have been blamed for at least a dozen deaths to downstate prisons in the past decade. In 1998, one woman was killed and several others injured when their van blew a tire and flipped several times on Interstate 57 near Champaign. In 2001, a head-on crash with a tractor-trailer on Interstate 55 claimed the lives of 11 people who were on their way to prisons in Dwight and Pontiac. In 2003, two children were killed and 16 others were injured outside Kankakee while on their way to Big Muddy River Correctional Center. In 2004, the driver fell asleep at the wheel of a van transporting 13 people along Interstate 57 to Big Muddy River and Centralia correctional centers. The vehicle left the road and flipped several times, killing the driver and injuring his passengers.

A retiree, who spent 34 years working for the Chicago Transit Authority, Paschal is a grandfather who spends his weekdays doing whatever he wants, during the summer that means sitting in front of his southwest suburban Orland Park garage watching the world go by. He struggles to understand why, after nearly eight years of Saturdays and Sundays driving to prisons, he doesn’t just hang up the keys. “Sometimes I think I’m addicted to this highway,” he says.

There is nothing for him in the small towns were he takes his riders; after all this time, he has never once been inside a prison. He has also heard his share of horror stories, about vans that don’t roll because a low turnout won’t make the trip profitable, refunds that never come and buses that leave families stranded. He knows how much it means for inmates and their families to see each other. He was one rider short of breaking even during the January trip. He said he spent $11,000 in gas last year. It would take one full tank, 32 gallons, to get the van to Pinckneyville and another to get back. “What I’m doing is keeping doors open,” he said.

Sixteen-year-old Marlon and 17-year-old Dominique weren’t about to miss this trip. When the van doors opened at the Pinckneyville Correctional Center, their grandmother, Shirley Burgess, provided a brief orientation. Dominique would have to take off most of her rings. They would need to have their identification ready. Cars were sparse in the parking lot but Paschal suggested it might be a while before they were processed.

Neither of the siblings, who share the same father but live with each of their mothers, had been to this facility before. But they had come all this way to see their dad, Wilbur Driver, 35, a father of four. The teens were excited.

Driver’s children are among an unknown number of children in Illinois with a parent behind bars. There is no definite number of how many children have one or both parents locked up, but last year, The Reporter placed the estimate at about 47,000. Officials at the Illinois Department of Corrections said they don’t know exactly how many inmates are parents because the information is volunteered, and some parents might not want or be eligible for contact with their children. Some think, “I’ve got to do this piece on my own,” according to Derek Schnapp, an Illinois Department of Corrections spokesman.

According to data released by the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2000, based on a 1997 nationwide survey of inmates in state and federal prisons, there were an estimated 1.5 million children with parents in U.S. prisons in 1999, nearly 500,000 more than in 1991.

The national survey found that almost 57 percent of men in state prisons had never received a visit from their children while incarcerated.

Burgess is committed to staying in touch with her only remaining son, who is serving nine years for a crime she still finds difficult to discuss.

“It’s a terrible thing that happened,” Burgess said of the last incident that landed Driver in prison. After several drug and robbery arrests that spanned back at least to the mid ’90s, Driver was convicted of two counts of aggravated battery of a child—his own daughter, who is now 4.

“He dropped her,” Burgess said. “They said he did it on purpose.”

Driver’s 4-year-old daughter— a “real pretty little girl,” according to Burgess—was just eighteen months old at the time. “She goes to school. She can talk and play, but she can’t walk yet,” Burgess said. In addition to Dominique, Marlon and the four-yearold, Driver also has a twoyear- old girl. Both of his youngest daughters live with their mom.

With 14 grandchildren, Burgess works two jobs and managed to save the $210 for the January trip. She hopes she and the teens will make it back in March or April, and said she will ride with Paschal again.

Burgess and Driver’s two eldest children both expressed a desire to stay in touch with Driver, despite a career of arrests and incarceration that has kept him from many of their childhood milestones. Driver has been in prison since Dominique’s freshman year of high school, and he missed her eighth-grade graduation. He won’t be there when she graduates high school in June. “It kind of sucks,” she said.

Dominique said she used to hate her dad, but she has since forgiven him. The first thing the teens did in the visiting room that Saturday was hug him. They played checkers and dominoes and talked more than they thought they would.

“When you’re on the phone you have to limit your time talking,” Dominique said, “When you’re writing you can’t really say much. Coming to see him is better for him,” she said of her dad.

Both of the kids are in school and aware of the stereotypes that surround children of the incarcerated. Marlon believes staying out of trouble is something that takes work. He listens when his father tells him to stay in school. “He doesn’t want me winding up like him,” Marlon said.

It will be years before Driver is ever living back in a place without bars. “He was a negative person,” Marlon said, “He ain’t did nothing positive when he was out.”

The teens seem to think that prison is right where Driver should be, a place where he can hopefully turn his life around for good. He’s been locked up since 2005 and isn’t scheduled for release until 2009.

“I think it’s better that we see him in jail than go visit him at a cemetery,” Dominique said. “That was the first time I actually got to see him and give him a hug in probably like, six years,” she said.

The Illinois Department of Corrections offers several life skills programs and officials believe parenting programs are important to a comprehensive re-entry strategy. But resources are still lacking, and officials concede more staff and funding would help expand currently available options.

Fews, of the Illinois Department of Corrections, said officials recognize “we have a responsibility. We don’t have as many parenting classes as our women and family division.”

“We’ve got only a small group of people who are seeing this is not an individual matter, it’s a family matter and a community matter,” said Creasie Finney Hairston, dean and professor at the Jane Addams College of Social Work at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “Those who are seeing this are approaching it from the children … but it’s a small group of people and it’s just beginning.”

Ultimately, Burgess is hoping she can create a stable place that Driver can one day call home. “I just want him to come on back and get himself back together, and I want my grandkids to not go through this anymore,” she said.

“We’re looking for him to be a man, just be here,” Burgess said. “If you can get out and you have a roof over your head and stuff, you don’t have to go back out there.”

Contributing: Alden K. Loury