Former Illinois Governor Jim Edgar has concerns about the state closing the Tamms super-max prison.Governor Pat Quinn is pushing to close Tamms because he says it costs 64 thousand dollars a year to house an inmate there while other prisons are a third of that. Tamms is a so called super maximum security prison where inmates are essentially held in solitary confinement. Tamms was built under then Governor Jim Edgar. The former governor says if it were to close he would be worried about the reason why Tamms was built. Edgar says that was because often you just had a few inmates that caused the problems in the prisons. He says he would be very nervous about taking the troublemakers and putting them back into the general prison population. Edgar says reintegrating Tamms prisoners back into other prisons could lead to more fights resulting in thousands of prisoners across the state spending more time on lockdown, and less time in classes and activities.
Edgar says as governor he built a lot of prisons and he supports closing some of them but he says shutting down Tamms needs to be done very carefully.