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Illinois State Penitentiary

Stateville Correctional Center
Stateville Correctional Center.JPG
Location 16830 Route 53
Crest Hill, Illinois
Status open
Security class maximum
Capacity 4,134
Opened 1925
Managed by Illinois Department of Corrections

Coordinates: 41°34′43″N 88°05′40″W / 41.57861°N 88.09444°W / 41.57861; -88.09444

Stateville Correctional Center (SCC) is a maximum security state prison for men in Crest Hill, Illinois, U.S., near Chicago. It is a part of the Illinois Department of Corrections.

Opened in 1925, Stateville was built to accommodate 1,506 inmates. Parts of the prison were designed according to the panopticon concept proposed by the British philosopher and prison reformer, Jeremy Bentham. Stateville's "F-House" cellhouse, commonly known as a "roundhouse", has a panopticon layout which features an armed tower in the center of an open area surrounded by several tiers of cells. F-House was the only remaining "roundhouse" still in use in the United States in the 1990s. It was closed in late 2016 but the structure will remain standing due to its historical significance. A duplicate of the prison opened in Cuba in 1936, but has since been abandoned.

In 2009 a 40-year-old man from Chicago, Richard Conner, murdered a 37-year-old Will County man named Jameson Leezer, who had originated from Lisle and Bolingbrook. Both were inmates placed in the same solitary confinement cell together. The killing made the state of Illinois change its rules in housing two prisoners together during solitary confinement; the prison authorities now must take into account both inmates' histories of violence.


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