Between Darkness & Light | Joliet Correctional Center

Secrets run naturally among the urban exploration community. In Hamilton, Ontario, secret locations were common, and hiding the actual name of the location was common practice. But the Chicago community took things to a whole new level with good reason. By the time I started to explore the area briefly, there was already a great deal of tension between different groups. In the long run, I got into a better group. It netted me a chance to visit one of the prime locations in the local catalogue, and even now, more than ten years later, I still feel weird exposing the name and history of this spot, the Joliet Correctional Center. It’s 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark… and we’re wearing sunglasses. Hit It.

The original State Penitentiary for Illinois opened in 1831; despite being a state facility, the prison itself was operated as a private prison. It quickly gained a reputation for poor conditions. It drew the attention of Dorothea Dix, a noted prison and asylum reform advocate. In 1847, Dix successfully petitioned the state legislature to build a modern state-run penitentiary. Lorenzo Sanger won the construction contract, and the town of Joliet was selected as the home of the new prison. The site was near a quarry site to provide the raw materials, and a small prison structure was completed. Like other prisons of the era, convict labour would be employed to construct the central jail, with the first labourers arriving on 22 May 1858. A mix of civilian and prison labour would be used to quarry the limestone and create the prison structures. Additional prison labour was moved to the new facility as the structures were built. By 1860, the last inmates had transferred from the old penitentiary. Joliet would be a mixed prison, housing male and female inmates in segregated cell blocks. During the American Civil War, Joliet also housed prisoners of war. Starting in 1870, local businesses could lease prison labour from the penitentiary. This practice is still used today in the US Correctional system. By 1880, the population had reached 2,000 inmates, a record number for any prison in the United States. To help alleviate the population, a prison specifically for female inmates opened across the road in 1896 and appeared as a miniature version of the central prison. While the world moved on, conditions in Joliet remained stuck in the mid-19th Century. Word of the horrendous and backwards conditions at Joliet began to filter into the public eye at the start of the 20th Century. The state authorised the construction of a new prison, the Statesville Correctional Centre, which started in 1917 but was not completed until 1925. During this period, the cells at Joliet were also upgraded to include running water and electricity in the cells. While Statesville had been designed to replace Joliet, operations at the old jail continued.

The early 20th Century brought several changes to the correctional systems; Joliet began programs to help educate the inmates to allow for better reintegration into society once their sentences came to an end. This included vocational training and education programs allowing access to schooling and earning a high school education. By 1933, a new women’s prison had opened, which allowed the central jail to use the old 1896 women’s prison to help house the growing prison population. During the mid-century, Joleit took on a second role as the reception and intake centre for Cooks Country. Any new entrant into the correctional system would go first to Joliet and be processed before moving on to their final assignment. The US Army would seek volunteers from among the prison population as part of a program to isolate the Hepatitis A virus, which includes having the inmates be exposed to the virus. One thing that stood out is that until now, the prison had been quiet and avoided any significant incidents of violence. Despite overcrowding, the noted brutal treatment of the population kept things calm. In 1975, a Chicago street gang managed to take control of sections of the prison. The efforts of Warden Frank Finkbeiner managed to resolve the situation without resorting to violence and minimal injury to inmates or correctional staff. The prison had been constantly constructed as new buildings were needed to expand its capacity. The 1980s and 1990s brought the construction of several new buildings. The population never dropped below 1,000 inmates when it closed in 2003. The intimidating presence had attracted Hollywood back when the Blues Brothers film was first released, and after closure, it quickly became a backdrop for both fiction and non-fiction films and television shows, its most noted appearance in the first season of the show Prison Break. The local historical society first took notice of preserving the historical building after a couple of arsons in 2012, 2013 and 2017, which resulted in the destruction of a few vocational buildings on the property. The local history museum successfully petitioned for the site to be included in the state heritage registry and operates exterior site tours.

I remember being somewhat nervous driving out to the old prison. I had only met the two other explorers the previous night in person, and my car was not with me. Oddly enough, I wasn’t nervous about the people but rather the location. An old prison in the middle of town that the locals were keen on protecting, already two fires had been lit, and arson was suspected. We got there, parked some distance from the prison, and walked in along the river. Thankfully, it was later in the day, and people were still busy with work. The actual access proved a lot easier than I was led to believe. I did not do a lot of heavy climbing or weird entry; the easier, the better, and we managed to slip in undetected. The place was vast and old; I didn’t know much about the history. But the real trick was figuring out what was original to the prison and what had been added later as part of its second life as a TV set for Prison Break. Either way, once inside, things got pretty casual; the original two guides had to leave, but a third arrived to get me out and back to Chicago. The real trick was timing; we didn’t want to stay in after dark because we would be noticed leaving, but also not too early, or we’d be going. Thankfully, we had daylight on our side in May, and the weather was pretty grim, which kept heads down in public. I had never done anything like that before in my exploring, and even in Hamilton, I knew the timing, but this was a whole new location in a county where I could get in real trouble. Thankfully, the third person knew the lay of the land and got us out without any problem. Not too shabby. Looking at the digital files, I spent almost two hours inside the place, and for a location that wasn’t overly large, that’s pretty good. I also found a tonne of leftover items, from interesting keys to various parts of the prison, including a vehicle lock up and a gate to inmate records left behind when the prison closed up in 2002. Interestingly, those cards were mugshots, fingerprints, and race, with those of particular racial backgrounds being stamped in red ink.

I like these photos, but I also had two hours to work to pay closer attention despite the high-risk nature of the location. I felt comfortable here and certainly in my element. Joliet was not my first time being in prison, but it certainly was the largest I had ever explored, but it wasn’t the oldest. I have a mix of images from carefully composed shots using a tripod and long exposures to quick snaps from around the exterior. I used a lot of leading lines and flat compositions with those that I carefully produced. And there was no shortage of subject matter here. I was still doing some HDR work here and got some excellent results, including the featured image in the post. I’m glad I quickly figured out how to produce and edit HDR images tastefully. I am happy that I got at least an interior shot of the first building on the site that convict labour would build the prison around. Like any jail, there is a limit to how many times you can photograph a prison block. I also loved the results I got here with my Rolleiflex and HP5+, and with good reason. Two years earlier, I got fantastic results with this combination in Pittsburg’s Eastern State Penitentiary. I only regret not bringing more film or shooting my weekly roll of Tri-X here (which was the 52-project this year).

I’ve had the chance to visit a lot of abandoned prisons, a lot more than I first realised. But Joliet stands out as the oldest and longest-serving prison (before that, it was the former Don Jail in Toronto, which opened in 1864, a few years short a decade after Joliet opened). I had the chance to explore. I wish I could have visited the prison one more time with a sole focus on film as the medium for photography. The nice thing is that such a trip would be possible as a legal tour. Although it would be limited to exterior work. You can purchase tickets for a tour of the former prison through the local historical society. Of course, suppose you want to check out the interior of a prison of a similar age. In that case, there is an Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia (watch for this one later next year). You can also check out the rest of my photos from Joliet over on Flickr.