Shortly before Stateville Correctional Center opened in 1925, officials laid out their ambitious goals for the prison: “Warden John J. Whitman in his dedication address declared the function of the model prison would be the reformation of men who had run afoul of the law not merely a place of punishment,” the Tribune reported on Dec. 7, 1924.
Seven years later, amid criticism in one corner that inmates were being pampered, and in another that conditions were unfair, another warden reported that to fulfill Whitman’s lofty promise he had to steer a course between equally perilous ways of dealing with inmates.
“If we are too good to them, they could trample upon us. If we are too harsh with them they might riot or mutiny, and we’d have to kill them,” Maj. Henry C. Hill told the Tribune…