More than 2,000 people traveled to the outskirts of Joliet on Dec. 6, 1925, for the dedication of the new Illinois state penitentiary at Stateville.
Legislators were greeted with a luncheon at what was then known as the world’s most modern prison. Though not yet completed, construction costs were then estimated to top $10 million (or more than $180 million in today’s dollars).
Warden John L. Whitman told the crowd that the facility would become the model of reformation for men who had run afoul of the law, not merely a place of punishment.
“I believe in giving men a square deal, just reward for their accomplishments and prompt punishment for their misdeeds, teaching them that they can get that to which they are entitled only by giving in exchange that which they owe,” Whitman said.
Seven years later, amid criticism in one corner that inmates were being pampered, and in another that conditions were unfair, another warden reported that to fulfill Whitman’s lofty promise he had to steer a course between equally perilous ways of dealing with inmates.