Support for HB 3665: The Joe Coleman Medical Release Act
PUBLISHED: March 2021
UPDATE: May 2021 – The Joe Coleman Medical Release Act (HB 3665) passed both chambers of the Illinois General Assembly and now awaits the signature of the Governor. Click here for more information.
The Joe Coleman Medical Release Act (HB 3665), introduced by Representative Will Guzzardi, allows for the early release of medically incapacitated and terminally ill people to Medicaid-approved outside care facilities. The bill addresses the lack of resources the state has to adequately care for the immense number of seriously ill people imprisoned in the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC).
Joe Coleman was a decorated Vietnam War veteran with four purple hearts, a loving husband and father of six, and an active member in his community who was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of a robbery in 1981. Despite this grim future, Mr. Coleman was committed to helping others given life sentences find purpose and self-worth, and the warden of Menard Correctional Center consistently honored Mr. Coleman for his contributions. Despite these contributions — both to the country and his peers — and his age as an 81-year-old, Joe Coleman died alone behind bars after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. Although his children were eager to care for him in his final days and better medical care was accessible outside of prison through his veteran benefits, Mr. Coleman was instead treated in under-resourced IDOC medical centers and died alone behind bars while awaiting clemency.
IDOC is responsible for providing medical treatment for more than 1,000 incarcerated individuals over the age of 65 and almost 750 veterans (200 of whom are 65 and older). Nearly 20% of people in IDOC are elderly — a proportion which has doubled since 2010 and likely will continue as a consequence of the implementation of stricter sentencing laws since the 1980s. Seniors comprise 20% of the Illinois prison population; IDOC pays 2-to-5-times more to incarcerate an elderly person than they do to incarcerate younger people, due to their declining health and greater medical needs.
Releasing just older adults that have already served 20 years or more could save Illinois $200 million every year.
For decades, people in prison have fought for better healthcare alongside advocates and lawyers. In 2011, IDOC patients filed an action about how the unconstitutional lack of healthcare they were provided put them in serious harm. As a result of this lawsuit, the court appointed a federal monitor to oversee the healthcare system’s function in Illinois prisons. The monitor’s 2018 report details staffing shortages and unqualified doctors; delays on necessary surgeries; preventable deaths; refusals of physician-ordered specialist visit requests; and the overarching poor health administration from Wexford Health Sources, the healthcare provider contracted with the Illinois prison system for $1.4 billion.
Under the current system, the Governor of Illinois can grant executive clemency to release seriously ill prisoners, but the process rarely results in a release. Joe Coleman died while awaiting clemency; his story is only a glimpse into the sad reality of the Illinois prison healthcare system, where 1 in 7 people will die behind bars.
Across the country, steps toward progress similar to HB 3665 have been made in the past several years. Compassionate release legislation was signed in California in 2016; the federal First Step Act strengthened rights through compassionate release by expanding the eligibility criteria and providing new features such as assistance support, notification, and visitation in 2018. Through the same lens, the Joe Coleman Medical Release Act is a piece of common sense legislation that allows Illinois to provide better, more humane care to its seriously ill population and save millions of dollars in the process. In 2015, Illinois spent over $171 million on healthcare costs and three times more on the healthcare costs of people over 55 years old compared to their younger counterparts.
HB 3665 amends the Unified Code of Corrections and provides the Prison Review Board (PRB) discretion to grant early release to medically incapacitated and terminally ill patients. Under the Joe Coleman Medical Release Act, a committed person or a family member, medical professional, prison official, or an attorney can petition the PRB for someone’s release. The amendment explicitly defines both ‘terminally ill’ and ‘medically incapacitated’ for clarity and the legal empowerment of both prisoners and the PRB, and dictates that the resources for applications and expedited medical clearance must be made clear to the public on their website.
Within three days of receiving an initial application, the PRB must order a medical evaluation for the individual to inform an assessment. The bill also outlines a set of considerations — beyond diagnosis — that the PRB must consider in their decision, including: likelihood of someone’s recovery; impact continued incarceration has on the provision of medical care in IDOC; present ability and probability for the petitioner to pose physical danger to a specifically identifiable person; victims’ statements if applicable; and the cost of healthcare to the State should the person remain incarcerated. Comprehensively evaluating people’s health and wellbeing within the prison system helps ensure that the PRB’s decision extends beyond just cost-saving to provide the best results for all parties.
Allowing suffering people to receive important medical care outside of prison is the humane thing to do — but it also relieves the financial burden of caring for seriously ill prisoners, allowing the State to invest those funds into holistic and community-based resources unrelated to the correctional system.
Some may argue that releasing older, sick people from prison would be harmful to public safety, but the reality is that seriously ill and incapacitated individuals have a meager re-arrest rate. In Maryland, 200 elderly people who were convicted for “serious violent crimes” were released with reentry resources; the group’s recidivism rate was less than 3%. Ultimately, concerns about compassionate medical release are reflected in the considerations that the PRB must use to grant or not grant release (i.e. public safety, costs to the state, the victim’s desires, and more), therefore any arguments against HB 3665 are addressed inherently through the process of release.
The passage of HB 3665 is critical to reduce IDOC’s budget, provide seriously ill people with adequate care, and build a more humane and equitable system. After a costly lawsuit, scathing reports of the current prison healthcare system, and recent attention brought to the severe inequities of our criminal punishment and imprisonment system, it ought to be at the forefront of legislators’ priorities to support the Joe Coleman Medical Release Act.
This common sense legislation effortlessly chips away at both the negative consequences of the current healthcare system and that provides the State more ability to improve the failures highlighted by Dr. John Raba. This bill is a critical step in improving the quality of care in the IDOC and a straightforward method to saving Illinois millions of dollars every year. Beginning with the Joe Coleman Medical Release Act, Illinois has a myriad of opportunities to improve the prison healthcare system that need to remain a priority in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Click here for a one-pager fact sheet about HB 3665: The Joe Coleman Medical Release Act. For more information on Chicago Appleseed’s 2021 legislative agenda, visit ChicagoAppleseed.org/Community-Resources.
Contributor: Sophia Artola, undergraduate intern for Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts and third-year Political Science and Global Health major at Northwestern University with a minor in Environmental Policy and Culture.