The Illinois prison system is expected to take a big hit under proposed cuts Governor Pat Quinn announced Tuesday. State prisons may see major layoffs and that could lead to early release for thousands of prisoners.

Governor Quinn says layoff notices are going out to more than 26-hundred state workers, in an effort to chip 185 million dollars out of the state's roughly eleven billion dollar budget deficit.

"We have to understand that in this tough, tough time that Illinois faces, we have to reduce the size of government. That does mean cuts," says Quinn.

The cuts announced Tuesday include one thousand workers from the state department of corrections. A DOC spokesman tells us the layoffs are planned in two stages, with 500 announced Wednesday. Those cuts would hit six downstate prisons and take effect at the end of September.

We also spoke with Harold Hunt, he's the union president for the local AFSCME chapter representing Dixon prison workers. He does not expect Dixon's 600 union employees to be affected.
Hunt estimates that at any one time, there's only 140 security officers on duty monitoring 2,200 inmates.

"Dixon is severely short-staffed to begin with. Laying one person off simply means they're going to have to pay somebody else time and a half to cover," says Hunt. He adds, "Whether you cut directly with security, or indirectly with program staff, either way it's going to affect the security of the institution."

A DOC spokesman says to offset the layoffs, they are considering releasing some prisoners early from the six impacted prisons. Those would only be low-level, non-violent prisoners, within a year of their release and they would be placed under supervised parole. The DOC is still hoping legislators will find another way to avoid these layoffs.

So far there's no word on when the second round of cuts may come, or whether Dixon might be impacted in that set.
Governor Quinn is also asking other state workers to take twelve unpaid furlough days.