But this prison's days could soon be numbered. The Illinois prison system is bursting at the seams, with about 14,000 inmates beyond capacity. Meanwhile, the Tamms Supermax typically holds fewer ...

Before 1990, only one U.S. prison used solitary confinement exclusively, and that was a federal prison. The idea of “supermax” prisons and the use of prolonged isolation exploded in the 1990s ...

A three-bedroom house in the small, rural Southern Illinois community of Tamms goes for about $35,000. A one-bed prison cell costs $120,000 to build. The state Department of Corrections is spending… ...

State figures show Illinois has sent more than 540 prisoners to Tamms in 11 years, amounting to just .14 of 1 percent of the people who have gone to Illinois prisons in that time.

One of the more contentious episodes in the history of Illinois penitentiaries ended Friday as the last inmates held at the "supermax" prison in Tamms moved out and Gov. Pat Quinn's administration ...

When President Donald Trump commuted the federal prison sentence of former Chicago gang leader Larry Hoover, it may have marked the first time a form of clemency was granted on a current inmate of the ...

Illinois’ new $60 million supermaximum-security prison, designed to hold the 500 worst offenders in the corrections system, will not be built within the six-county Chicago area.Wednesday was the ...

This post is the first part in our series on the closing of Tamms Supermax Prison. Here’s to starting the New Year right. The notorious Tamms Correctional Center in Illinois, with its practice of ...

The notorious Tamms “supermax” prison in Illinois has officially closed its doors following the transfer of the last of its prisoners. Prisoners’ advocates and family members led a campaign ...

Hoover and David Barksdale created the Gangster Disciples in the late 1960s, ruling as “King Larry” and “King David” until Barksdale was killed in 1974.

In 2000, more than half of the incarcerated individuals at the Tamms Supermax prison in downstate Illinois began a hunger strike protesting treatment of mentally ill prisoners and indefinite ...