Sorry for the delay: We’re just getting back from the District of Columbia, where I moderated a panel on filling gaps in the crisis care continuum at the Association of Healthcare Journalists’ Summit on Mental and Behavioral Health. In this month’s Diagnosis: Injustice, we’ll talk to two reporters from the Illinois Answers Project — Meredith Newman and Grace Hauck — about their ongoing investigation into the use of restraint chairs in prisons and jails across the state of Illinois.
Restrained for days
Keith Clark is the most restrained man in Illinois jails and prisons. Between 2019 and 2023, he was tied to a chair for more than 200 hours. Once, Clark, who has severe mental illness, was restrained for the better part of five days, according to new reporting from Meredith Newman at Illinois Answers Project released Monday. For months, the Illinois Answers Project has been investigating how often Illinois jails are still using restraint chairs. It’s a practice that the United Nations calls torture — and one that U.S. experts say should only be used as a last resort and never for such long periods. The reporting reveals that Clark, who often landed in restraints following suicide attempts, isn’t an outlier. There’s also Amos Fenderson, who was restrained in a chair for nearly an entire week — the longest period of restraint of any of the 5,500 incidents Illinois Answers Project looked at. Clark, Fenderson and a majority of the men and women restrained in Peoria County Jail for more than 10 hours have severe mental illness and were placed there as a result of self-harm. “I feel like I am being punished for being mentally ill just because Peoria County cannot deal with or treat my mental illness,” Clark wrote in a letter to a judge. The consistent usage of restraint chairs against people with mental health issues is emblematic of the mental health crisis — not just in Peoria County Jail, but jails across the state.
Read more about what that investigation found here .
“Painful, traumatic and torturous”: Reporters from Illinois Answers Project talk about the use of restraint chairs on mentally ill detainees
Back in 2022 at Franklin County Jail, Travis Wade Braden sat restrained in a chair for 68 hours. He was one of two detainees at the jail improperly restrained for hours and provided inadequate medical and mental health care in violation of state standards and county policies, according to a report from an Illinois disability rights watchdog group. The “horrible” experience still haunts his nightmares, he said. “Being restrained in them is like being in closed extremely tight spaces without any ability to move or scratch an itch or wipe sweat from your head,” Braden wrote in a message to the Illinois Answers Project.
That report comes on the heels of reporting from the outlet, which featured Braden’s story in its statewide investigation that found
county jails restrain people on average more than 1,000 times a year – often in ways that violate their own policies and last longer than manufacturers recommend. The investigation also raises questions about oversight. While state standards require jails to report every use of a restraint chair, that didn’t happen in nearly 40% of the 5,500 incidents investigated by the news outlet. MindSite News spoke with Illinois Answers Project reporters Meredith Newman and Grace Hauck about what their stories reveal about the state of mental health in jails in Illinois. This conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.
McGhee: What has this reporting taught you about the treatment of those suffering from mental health issues in Illinois prisons and jails? Hauck: Records show that many of the people restrained over the five-year period were
grappling with mental health and substance abuse issues , and, in many cases, staff used the chair to deal with people who were in withdrawal or trying to harm themselves. Some said being restrained injured or traumatized them. Some were restrained numerous times (one man over 40 times), which experts say may indicate the chair is used as punishment or in lieu of treatment. A majority of jails last year did not meet minimum state requirements for facility management and services and were cited for understaffing, overcrowding or not regularly supervising detainees. Sheriffs and jail administrators say they are ill-equipped to properly care for people with mental illness and substance abuse disorders and face delays in getting people transferred to state psychiatric hospitals.
Why were detainees at Peoria County Jail restrained so often for so long? Newman : The two men who were restrained for some of the longest periods of time in 2023 – about four and five days – had a history of self-harm and suicide attempts while at the jail. The Peoria County sheriff, who declined to be interviewed for the story, wrote in an email that people are placed in the chair when there is a “clear active threat to themselves and or others.” He said staffing levels do not factor into people being restrained, but our reporting shows the jail had the highest number of restraint chair incidents in 2023, when the jail was struggling with a staffing shortage. In one instance, the jail superintendent cited staffing issues as the reason why a man remained in the chair for an extended period of time, according to emails we obtained.
How often are restraints used to prevent people from hurting themselves and what’s the harm of this process? Newman : In Peoria County, we found the jail restrained people more than 350 times from 2019 to 2023, with an overwhelming majority of the incidents involving some type of mental health issue, such as people attempting suicide or harming themselves. The sheriff said restraint chairs are used to protect people with serious mental illness. He noted instances in which someone was not initially put in a restraint chair and was later hospitalized for a severe injury. The sheriff said this could have been prevented if he or she was in a restraint chair. However, people we spoke with described their experiences being restrained as painful, traumatic and torturous. As Amos Fenderson put it: “It kind of broke me in a way.”
How unusual is Braden’s story? Hauck: Braden is currently incarcerated in a facility for people with severe mental illness. Another man with mental illness was also restrained for 27 hours at Franklin County Jail. Both of those incidents lasted far longer than the 10-hour limit set by the chair manufacturer, and both violated state standards and county policies. Those weren’t the only prolonged incidents over the five-year period that Illinois Answers Project analyzed. Our reporting revealed at least 70 restraint chair incidents that lasted more than 10 hours, as well as nearly 20 that exceeded 20 hours. (For context, the U.S. Justice Department previously found a Pennsylvania prison unconstitutionally restrained people with mental illness in chairs for 20 hours.)
Is Illinois an outlier when it comes to its use of restraint chairs in jails and prisons? Hauck : It’s not immediately clear how Illinois compares to other states, as not all states collect and publish statistics on restraint chair usage. Data out of Pennsylvania, which has a slightly larger population than Illinois, shows jails there reported using restraint chairs
just under 1,000 times a year over the same five-year period we analyzed, which is slightly less than in Illinois. It’s important to remember, however, that this data is self-reported by jails to the state and is likely an undercount. Meanwhile, prior reporting by other news outlets has linked restraint chairs to more than 50 deaths in the United States since the late 1990s, and, to our knowledge, none of those happened in Illinois.
Are there any solutions to these problems or anything that could be done to improve the situation? Hauck : At the state level, our reporting has pointed out holes in the oversight and accountability of county jails, and multiple state lawmakers have called for reform. At the county level, staff in jails across Illinois
have indicated the need for improved intake screening procedures, increased counseling hours, padded cells, faster access to emergency medication, full-time mental health and medical professionals on site and more state psychiatric facilities. Experts have also said Illinois needs greater access to mental health and substance abuse treatment facilities and resources embedded in communities statewide. You can read
the Illinois Answers Project article on Travis Wade Braden’s 68 hours in a chair here and work with the outlet to find out more about chair restraints in your state.
If you or someone you know is in crisis or experiencing suicidal thoughts, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline and connect in English or Spanish. If you’re a veteran press 1. If you’re deaf or hard of hearing dial 711, then 988. Services are free and available 24/7. The United Nations has declared that chair restraints are torture. But Illinois jails use them routinely, according to this story from the Illinois Answers Project. TikTok content on dissociative identity disorder (DID), a rare mental illness, exploded among teens and youth during the pandemic. Why?
