Illinois DOC Has Failed to Improve Prison Health Care Seven Years After Order
Prisoners in Illinois can face decades of medical neglect, as in the case of Johnnie Flournoy, a 74-year-old prisoner locked up at the Pinckneyville Correction Center around five hours south of Chicago. Imprisoned since the early 1990s, Flournoy was diagnosed with glaucoma in 2002. But, according to reporting by the Chicago Sun-Times, he spent years getting shuffled from one state prison to the next—and during all that time, he never received the cheap prescription eye drops that would have allowed him to manage the condition.
Instead, when Flournoy finally received treatment following multiple grievances and winning two settlements, he had to undergo five surgeries. He’s now lost all vision in his left eye and struggles to see from his right, and he still isn’t able to access the eye drops, which are available through insurance for as little as $10. “They let me go blind,” he told the Chicago Sun-Times, “and they still ain’t doing nothing.”
Flournoy’s story is a common one in the drastically understaffed facilities that make up the Illinois prison system. Since 2019, the state Department of Corrections (DOC) has been under a consent decree to improve health care. And yet, years of reports from an independent court-appointed monitor indicate that the DOC is failing to provide adequate medical and dental care to prisoners, seven years after the agreement was first signed.
Monitor’s Report
In its latest report, filed in January 2026, the monitor highlighted a litany of disturbing deficiencies. Most glaringly, the report found that the DOC only employs 16 full-time physicians across 29 facilities that cage 30,000 people. Although the DOC receives funding for 33 full-time physicians, staffing levels remain “dangerously low” in large part because turn-over rates are alarmingly high. Since 2021, for example, 49 physicians have resigned from the DOC and around 60% of nursing positions are currently vacant.
Beyond failing to hire and retain medical staff, the DOC does not have a system for tracking filed and vacant positions. Nor did the agency provide performance reviews or disciplinary records to the monitor. This disorganization extends to patient records, which are kept on paper and not digitized—an issue that contributes to medical neglect. All of the above factors likely played a role in the demise of three prisoners who died from asthma in DOC care since 2024, each of which were deemed preventable deaths by the monitor.
The Consent Decree
The DOC’s consent decree stems from a lawsuit, and subsequent settlement, filed against the agency by the ACLU of Illinois on behalf of Don Lippert. Lippert, incarcerated at Stateville Correctional Center in 2010, alleged he was denied insulin shots and, as a result, went into diabetic shock. The suit was later expanded into a class action that included all DOC prisoners in need of significant medical and dental treatment. [See: PLN, Jan. 2023, p.12].
With the consent decree signed, the DOC pledged to initiate a large-scale overhaul of its healthcare system. These promised reforms included: hiring more staff, creating a medical record system, and improving infrastructure, among other provisions. But outside of the DOC improving its written policies, the changes largely remain on paper, as the recent monitor report revealed.
Healthcare Profiteers
Another roadblock in the way of improving conditions is the DOC’s contracts with private healthcare companies, which employ more than half of its medical staff. Until last summer, Illinois primarily contracted with Wexford Health Sources, a profiteer that has a long track record of poor care and preventable deaths [See: PLN, Jul. 2024, p. 40; see also: PLN, Feb. 2025, p. 1.] The state soon replaced Wexford with Centurion, another profiteer with a similar history and operating procedure [See: PLN, Jan. 2024, p.1.]
As reporting from the Chicago Sun-Times revealed in 2025, Illinois prisoners say that not much has changed under Centurion. They are still being ignored, denied care, and like Flournoy, forced to hold out as their complaints go unheard and their conditions worsen.
Source: Chicago Sun-Times
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