Prison has lived many lives

DIXON – Around 1955, Greg Langan of Dixon was a counselor at Dixon State School, which served the mentally ill and disabled.

It was there he met Jules,  a man in his late 50s who was at the school largely because of the Influenza Pandemic of 1918, which had killed 20 million to 40 million people worldwide, and damaged countless others.

"There were not only people who died, but people who got meningitis. And with some people, they were OK, but with other people, their brains were affected" – they developed epilepsy or symptoms comparable to mental retardation, he said.

Jules, who was a pre-med student in college, was admitted to Dixon State about 3 years after exposure to the influenza, when his mind was still strong. Over the course of several decades, though, his mental quickness deteriorated, and he kept busy in the school's print shop, putting names on state-issued toothbrushes for the school's many residents.

He was exceptional, though, not only because of his background, but also because, despite its dramatic evolution, his illness still couldn't overcome one of his greatest gifts:

"His verbal IQ was off the charts," Langan said. "His performance was a lot less."

For Langan, a local historian, Jules will always be part and parcel of the thousands of people who created the history of what has become one of the largest prisons in Illinois.



The beginning

In 1899, the Illinois General Assembly instructed the state's charities board to make plans for  the Illinois State Colony for Epileptics. By 1913, funds were appropriated, but plans got derailed by the financial and industrial demands of World War I.

"There was not much building going on of that kind of thing," Langan said.

When the colony finally opened in 1918, there were 128 buildings, including 400 acres of residential campus and 1,100 acres of tillable farmland. The plan was to create a full-fledged, self-sufficient community.

Its role soon expanded beyond epileptics, to serve people with a broad set of disabilities. To reflect this change, it was renamed Dixon State Hospital in 1922.

As care evolved and more emphasis was placed on education, the name changed again, in 1952, to Dixon State School. It was taken over by the state Department of Mental Health in 1961.

Around that time, the needs of the mentally disabled were gaining attention at the state and federal levels – Otto Kerner was elected to his first gubernatorial term in 1960 on a platform based on expanding mental health services, among other things.

President John F. Kennedy also was elected that year. His brief but historic legacy included sweeping legislation designed to improve the quality of life for Americans with disabilities, influenced at least in part by his mentally disabled sister, Rosemary.

Rosemary also inspired their sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, to help found the Special Olympics, an athletic competition for people with disabilities.

But the subsequent state school expansion was spurred by more than just that atmosphere of change and caring in the government, Langan said.

"What really started happening is parent groups started forming," he said. "... It started out with people standing up and saying, 'I am not going to feel guilty; I am not going to be blamed for having a Down syndrome child.' So you had this outcry, and it really started with parents, not professionals."

It was around this time, in the early '60s, that Dixon State's population peaked, with more than 5,200 patients, most of whom lived on campus, he said.

But it was much more than just a mental health clinic: The school had its own hospital and infirmary, a security facility, a TV sanitarium, mending rooms, shoe and furniture repair shops, a cannery, a greenhouse, farm territories, cottages, a fire station and water purification plant, coal-fired generation system, even an area dedicated to pasteurizing milk.

Along with Lincoln State School in Lincoln, Dixon State was among of the nation's large communities for the mentally disabled.

"It was enormous," Langan said. "It was a community within itself."

By 1975, there was another name change, to Dixon Developmental Center.

The next and final one would come in 1983, with the transition to Dixon Correctional Center.



The transition

The recession of the early '80s sent crime rates skyward and strained government resources, Langan said.  Private groups were taking the care of the mentally disabled out of government hands nationwide.

Because of that, then-Gov. James Thompson sought to close state mental health facilities to free up state funds to operate new prisons.

The time was right: People's attitudes had changed, "mainstreaming" was becoming a popular concept, and society in general was more accepting of the mentally disabled, certainly more so than 8 decades earlier.

Because of that, several of the state's 10 large institutions – including Dixon, Galesburg, and Manteno – had been, or were in the process of being, phased out.

Thompson had his way: By 1984, Dixon Developmental Center was gone, and Dixon Correctional Center had taken its place.