Even though Gov. JB Pritzker issued an executive order for the Illinois Department of Corrections to resume the transfer of inmates from county jails to state facilities last summer, Monroe County Sheriff Neal Rohlfing said his jail is not seeing much relief.

As of last week, state inmates made up approximately 10 percent of the Monroe County Jail population. Rohlfing said this figure has reached approximately 20 percent at certain points during the COVID pandemic.

Rohlfing said housing state inmates cost Monroe County taxpayers $51,590 last year and nearly $30,000 so far this year, and has tripled the amount of work for jail staff.

“By law, (the IDOC) is supposed to accept these state-remanded inmates, and they’re not doing that,” Rohlfing said. “They’re still using this COVID as a crutch and they’re leaving these inmates in these county jails, which has been nothing but burdensome for county budgets. (With) the liability for housing these individuals, the medical (expenses of) trying to take care of these individuals, the costs are just through the roof and there’s also overcrowding because rare is there a county jail that’s so big that there’s just plenty of space, we’re always running out of room. Now we’ve got the state of Illinois refusing to come and get inmates for several months at a time.”

Executive Order 2020-50, signed July 27, 2020, tasked the IDOC director with scheduling transfers while taking into consideration the following factors: reception center capacity limits, if the transfer has quarantined for two weeks and their COVID test results. It states the director must consult county sheriffs during this process. 

“We test the individuals for COVID, we quarantine them, we’ve even offered to give COVID shots to the inmates, and none of that matters,” Rohlfing said. “The Illinois Sheriff’s Association has been trying to work with (the IDOC), and they just won’t work with the local sheriffs.” 

A recent Illinois Sheriffs’ Association letter addressed to IDOC Director Rob Jeffreys echoes Rohlfing’s sentiment that the lack of transfers is not a matter of being health conscious. 

“At this point, any effort by IDOC to keep persons safe appears to simply be an effort to keep things easy and that violates the governor’s order. You are mandated to accept persons remanded to your custody in his order,” the letter read. “Yet as the positivity rates have collapsed, the total number of positive persons in your custody has dropped, the overall availability of testing and hospital beds has increased, IDOC has not increased transfers as would be logical and obvious given the governor’s opening of the state.” 

While there have been some transfers, Rohlfing said the process is taking months, while it took just a few days in the pre-COVID era. He said the IDOC said this is because they must quarantine inmates at state facilities after their transfer and they do not have room to do so. 

While the Monroe County Jail does get paid to temporarily house federal inmates, they are not receiving funds to house the surplus of state inmates. 

Some politicians, such as former State Senator Paul Schimpf (R-Waterloo), are calling for this to change. Schimpf is running for governor in 2022.

“I call on Governor Pritzker to order the Director of the Illinois Department of Corrections to reopen and start transferring prisoners in a safe and regular fashion, to pay each county the DOC’s arrears for housing prisoners, and pay counties the cost of housing those DOC inmates in the future,” Schimpf said in a press release.