When COVID-19 hit the U.S., residents of the Rushville Treatment and Detention Facility—a facility for people sentenced under the Sexually Violent Persons Commitment Act (725 ILCS 207) — were buzzing with hopes of going home or the terror of possibly dying. As it is, once probable cause is found, a life sentence generally ensues. Unless you get lucky, and a judge lets you out, or the attorney general drops the petition, you’re stuck.
As the news reported the beyond believable deaths, residents became more scared than hopeful. Our visits were cancelled, along with our therapy groups and writs to leave the facility. The guards — here called Security Therapist Aides or STA’s for short — are required to wear masks and face shields at all times. Residents are provided with one disposable mask to wear when we leave our units. Ultimately, it is optional for residents to wear a mask at this point.
The segregation unit was split into the punishment side and quarantine side for those newly admitted to the facility. Although, according to some staff, there have been no residents to contract COVID. However, there have been several staff reported to have COVID. They either have not showed up for work, or have been turned around at the door for exhibiting signs of COVID-19.
On July 6, 2020, the facility started to reopen, and therapy groups started again. Visits are still out of the question and no “free” calls are allowed for residents to check in with their loved ones.
All in all, and with much surprise, as of July 24, 2020, out of nearly 600 residents and about 200 staff, no resident has contracted COVID-19.
Sincerely,
Benjamin Harbaugh
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Here are our ground rules:
- You must credit Prison Journalism Project. In the byline, we prefer “[Author Name], Prison Journalism Project.” At the top of the text of your story, please include a line that says: “This story was originally published by Prison Journalism Project” and include a link to the article.
- No republishing of photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission. Please contact inquiries@prisonjournalismproject.org.
- No editing the content, including the headline, except to reflect changes in time, location and editorial style. For example, changing, “today” to “last week,” or San Quentin to San Quentin, California. You can also make minor revisions for style or headline size, and you can trim stories for space. You must also retain all original hyperlinks, including links to the Prison Journalism Project newsletters.
- No translation of our stories into another language without specific permission. Please contact inquiries@prisonjournalismproject.org.
- No selling ads against our stories, but you can publish it on a page with ads that you’ve already sold.
- No reselling or syndicating our stories, including on platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. You also can’t republish our work automatically or all at once. Please select them individually.
- No scraping our website or using our stories to populate websites designed to improve search rankings or gain revenue from network-based advertisements.
- Any site our stories appear on must have a prominent and effective way to contact you.
- If we send you a request to remove our story, you must do so immediately.
- If you share republished stories on social media, please tag Prison Journalism Project. We have official accounts on Twitter (@prisonjourn), Facebook (@prisonjournalism), Instagram (@prisonjournalism) and Linked In.
- Let us know when you share the story. Send us a note, so we can keep track.