Reform advocates: Why Illinois should reconsider its $1.1 billion prison project

On Aug. 6, Illinois issued a call for architecture and construction companies to bid on a $1.1 billion capital contract.. The proposed facility's two campuses will have room for 2,750 people and provide education, vocational training, medical and mental health resources, food service and dining, laundry service and recreational spaces. Guiding design principles call for green space, natural light, color and art. Certainly, our communities need these facilities, and Illinois' talented architects are well equipped to deliver spaces to meet those needs. But this resource-intensive initiative is not an affordable housing development, a community center, a medical facility or a school. The project, known as Rehabilitation and Restoration Inside Safe Environments, or RISE IDOC, which will rebuild and replace the Stateville and Logan correctional centers, is essentially a $1.1 billion prison. These new correctional facilities are neither what Illinois communities need nor what they want. Incarcerated people and their allies have made their position clear: A new prison would drain state resources without improving public safety, meeting community needs or solving the very real harms of incarceration. Illinois has already tried and failed to improve inhumane prison conditions with expensive design projects. The state hailed the Joliet Treatment Center, which opened after renovations in 2017, and unveiled a new, award-winning building in 2022 as a 'state-of-the-art facility' serving as a 'national model for mental health treatment in corrections.' Today, the Joliet center is plagued by widespread conditions of solitary confinement, rampant violence and endemic self-harm. People in crisis incarcerated in Joliet have set over 60 fires since summer 2024, including eight cases of self-immolation and, after guards impeded access to lifesaving care, at least one death. Despite architects' attempts to 'prioritize human dignity' in its design, the Joliet Treatment Center remains a site of desperation and despair. Illinois' billion-dollar prison project would also require architects to violate their own code of ethics. After members pushed the professional association to reckon with its role in perpetuating systemic injustice in 2020, the American Institute of Architects enacted an ethics rule prohibiting members from knowingly designing spaces 'intended for torture, including indefinite or prolonged solitary confinement.' AIA Chicago is the second biggest chapter in the national association. If built, the new prison campuses would include 'restricted housing units,' the state's euphemism for solitary confinement. The practice, which international human rights standards and survivors of solitary confinement recognize as torture, causes extreme, lasting psychological harm. Yet the practice is shockingly commonplace in Illinois prisons: From March through May this year, the Illinois Department of Corrections reported over 350 restrictive housing placements exceeding 15 days — the human rights standard recognized in the AIA Code of Ethics. At least nine people in Illinois' restrictive housing died by suicide since June 2025. The situation is so dire that on Aug. 10, men in the Lawrence Correctional Center's restrictive housing unit launched a hunger strike to protest conditions of solitary confinement. Architects considering the prison design contract should be on notice: Working on this project will open you up to complaints and potential sanctions by the AIA's National Ethics Council. Bids for RISE IDOC's design work are due on Sept. 25. Architects committed to their ethical obligations should seek other opportunities, rather than risking discipline for designing spaces recognized as torture chambers by leading, bipartisan national and international experts. The upcoming closure of Logan Correctional Center creates opportunities for bold and creative redevelopment projects. Illinois architects can and should pursue these alternative life-affirming projects. Imagine if Illinois spent $1.1 billion on housing, healthcare, education, parks and other spaces that support its constituents. Illinoisans should demand state investments that serve struggling communities, instead of needlessly expanding the misery of our prison system.