Jussie Smollett’s new digs are actually pretty terrifying – as you’d expect from a prison. The Cook County Jail where the ‘Empire’ act...
Jussie Smollett’s new digs are actually pretty terrifying – as you’d expect from a prison.
The Cook County Jail where the ‘Empire’ actor will spend the next 150 days has faced hundreds of lawsuits over the years, with inmates alleging overcrowding, violent treatment and insufficient protection from other inmates.
In the past few months alone, a person behind bars has accused the prison of forcing him to share a cell with someone who tested positive for coronavirus.
And in another lawsuit filed earlier this year and obtained by The Post, another inmate accused prison officers of using ‘excessive force’ on him to the point that he was ‘passing unconscious’.
“When I returned I was face down in a pool of my own blood with a gash on my forehead,” the man said in the original complaint, filed January 13, 2022.
In 2008, prison conditions were apparently so poor that the United States Department of Justice conducted an investigation and published a report which concluded that the prison had “failed to adequately protect inmates from harm or risk of harm from other inmates or staff; failed to provide adequate suicide prevention; failed to provide adequate sanitary environmental conditions; failed to provide adequate fire safety measures; and failed to provide adequate medical and mental health care.
The report also claimed that inmates were forced to sleep on cell floors due to overcrowding, leading to a class action lawsuit and settlement.
In a more recent incident, in 2018, a huge and violent the fight broke out and dozens of detainees have been hurt.
According to Chicago Human Rights Authority, approximately 100,000 people pass through the prison each year. The daily population is on average 7,500 people, mainly detainees awaiting trial and not yet sentenced.
Situated on a colossal 96 acres, the prison is considered the “largest single-site prison in the country,” its website states. It is made up of 10 divisions, each including a day room for eating and watching television. There is also a health services facility, a privatized food service and commissary section, and four sheriff’s departments on site.
Smollette, who was sentenced of five crimes, including lying to police about a hate crime, was placed in the Division 8 section of the jail – the Residential Treatment Unit, or RTU, which is usually reserved for inmates injured or sick.
In a statement to the Post, a representative from the Cook County Sheriff’s Office said that while Smollett “is not held in solitary confinement” — a practice “abolished” at the jail in 2016 — the artist “is housed in his own cell. , which is monitored by security cameras in the cell and by an officer wearing a body-worn camera who is posted at the entrance to the cell to ensure Mr Smollett is under direct observation at all times.
“As with all detained persons, Mr Smollett has the right to spend a great deal of time outside his cell in the common areas of the level where he is housed, where he can use the telephone, watch television and interact with staff” , the statement continued. “During these out-of-cell periods, the other detainees will not be present in the common areas. These protocols are commonly used for people in custody who are potentially at risk of harm due to the nature of their charges, their profession or their notable status.
“The safety and security of all detainees, including Mr. Smollett, is the sheriff’s office’s highest priority,” the department concluded.
After the judge handed down his sentence, the “Empire” actor continued to deny any wrongdoing, even though he was taken to the Cook County Jail.
“I am innocent!” Smollett, 39, said as he was taken away in handcuffs. “I could have said I was guilty a long time ago!”
“I didn’t do this and I’m not suicidal and if anything happens to me when I go there, I didn’t do it to myself and you all should know that,” he said. underline.
Although sentenced to five months, he could be released from prison in two months due to overcrowding.
Smollett will serve this as part of the 30 months probation Judge James Linn sentenced him to, alongside orders for Linn to pay the City of Chicago $120,000 in restitution and a $25,000 fine following his guilty verdict on five counts of criminal disorderly conduct.
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