Stateville Correctional Center is a maximum security state prison for men in Crest Hill, Illinois, USA.[1]
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Opened in 1925, Stateville was built to accommodate 1,506 inmates. Parts of the prison were designed according to the panopticon concept proposed by the British philosopher and prison reformer, Jeremy Bentham. Stateville's "F-House" cellhouse, commonly known as a "roundhouse," has a panopticon layout which features an armed tower in the center of an open area surrounded by several tiers of cells. F-House was the only remaining "roundhouse" still in use in the United States in the 1990s.[2]
The Stateville Correctional Center was one of three sites in which executions were carried out by electrocution in Illinois. Between 1928 and 1962, the electric chair was used 13 times at Stateville, including the state's first electrocutions on December 15, 1928 of three convicted murderers.[3]
The state's other electrocutions were carried out at the Menard Correctional Center in Chester and at the Cook County Jail in Chicago.
When the method was changed to lethal injection, Stateville was the only site where executions were carried out until 1998 when death row was relocated to the Tamms Correctional Center.
Today the prison holds an average of over 3,500, at an annual cost of over $32,000 per prisoner.[4]
With nearly 1,300 employees, Stateville is a Level 1 facility, the highest of eight security level designations. There is also a minimum security unit commonly referred to as the Stateville Farm, which is a Level 7 facility, located within the new Northern Reception Center, located just south of the main facility. The Northern Reception Center, aka NRC, accepts incoming prisoners from the county jails in the northern two-thirds of the state.
Stateville is located two miles (3 km) north of Joliet, Illinois, 16830 IL RT53 Crest Hill, IL 60403 (815) 727-3607, on a site of over 2,200 acres (8.9 km2), of which 64 acres (260,000 m2) are surrounded by a 33-foot (10 m) concrete perimeter with 10 wall towers. Stateville is often confused with the former Joliet Correctional Center, which closed in 2002. Located in the nearby city of Joliet, the former Joliet Prison is much older and smaller. It is located about 2.5 miles (4.0 km) southeast of Stateville, across the Illinois & Michigan canal.