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| Firing of prison wardens across Illinois going largely unnoticed |
| By WQAD.com |
| Published: 10/27/2003 |
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It's a change few in Illinois have noticed. Since Governor Rod Blagojevich took the oath of office in January, many of the state's prison wardens have found themselves out of a job. In many cases, their replacements are former county sheriffs and deputies without any experience in a prison, and, some are questioning if they're even qualified for the job. Knox County Sheriff Jim Thompson tells NewsChannel 8's Chris Minor he is very close to being the next warden at the prison in Galesburg. If so, the Democrat would be the latest new hire within the state's Department of Corrections during a massive, unpublicized shakeup in the system in which several warden positions have been left up for grabs around the state According to the prison website last week, at least six prisons are without wardens or with acting wardens. And without fanfare or press release, new prison director Roger Walker Jr., a former sheriff, and democratic chairman and personnel man, John Gianulius, are hiring and firing wardens from the old republican regime. Even the East Moline Correctional Center has a new warden, retired Rock Island County Sheriff's deputy and former Democratic candidate for sheriff Gene Jungwirth. Gianulius backed him in the 2002 Sheriff's race. He is a former county jail administrator, but has no prison experience. Union workers we talked with say they're concerned about the top jobs in overcrowded and understaffed prisons across the state being filled perhaps not with experience and education, but what they call politic patronage. A spokesperson for the Department of Corrections says that's not true. He says some prison administrators have been retained by the agency, and the law enforcement background of some of the new wardens is a perfect fit for prison leadership. Since the beginning of October, the state has fired seven wardens, four of them in southern Illinois. One warden will lose her pension after 20 years in the Illinois prison system. |
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