Fwd: Just published - Rushville
Spike CO
From: William Dobbs <duc...@mindspring.com>
Date: Tue, Apr 14, 2026 at 5:39 PM
Subject: Just published - Rushville
To: Eldon Dillingham <eldoncdi...@gmail.com>
Eldon - The last year or two have seen more coverage of sex offense civil commitment (SOCC) programs than usual. Here’s a new one about Rushville. The three minute video is fine but I believe the text story has more details. Once again a reporter goes digging and finds a disastrous, expensive program. This piece is a bit more than a quick read but I feel obliged to send it since journalism like this is still uncommon. You ought to send it around to your networks. -Bill
WTTW News (Chicago, IL) | April 14, 2026, 5:00 am
Investigations
How a Decades-Old Illinois Law Detains Some Convicted Sex Offenders Indefinitely
VIDEO: https://www.pbs.org/video/civil-commitment-statute-kyp3fa/
Under two different Illinois laws, people charged with sex offenses are subject to indefinite detention. More than 500 people are currently being held under the procedure known as civil commitment.
This story examines the law that continues to hold people after they’ve served their sentences, sometimes for decades. WTTW News also looked at the law that holds people who’ve only been charged with a crime — never convicted or sentenced.
At 48 years old, Jason Allen has never used the internet. He’s never learned to drive or gotten a driver’s license. He’s never had a job to earn his own income.
“There are so many more things I could list, like going to another country to visit distant relatives. But as I wrote before, it still wouldn’t answer the question,” he wrote in a letter to WTTW News.
“I have all the insecurities of my 13-year old self with the intelligence and understanding of my 47-year old self,” he wrote. “Not a good combo.”
That’s because Allen — a product of an abusive and violent home — has been in a state-run institution since he was 13 years old.
On Jan. 1, 1998, an Illinois law took effect allowing the state to commit to an institution any sex offender who’d served their time in prison, but was still found to be a danger to the public. Illinois is one of 20 states with such a law on the books.
Ten months after the law passed, on his 21st birthday, Allen was registered as a sex offender and moved from a juvenile detention facility to an adult facility at the now-shuttered prison in Joliet. Today, he is still being held in custody, but at the Treatment and Detention Facility in Rushville, 57 miles northwest of Springfield. He’s been there since it opened in 2006.
Jason Allen, 48, has been a resident of the Treatment and Detention Facility in Rushville, Ill., since it opened in 2006. Prior to that he was held in various state facilities, at first for juveniles, then adults when he turned 21. This photo was taken when WTTW News visited the Rushville facility in March 2026. (Courtesy of Jason Allen, the Treatment and Detention Facility)
Illinois State Police records show that Allen was 12 years old when he committed a sex offense against a 3-year-old girl in Kane County — a crime for which he takes responsibility.
“It was more than just I didn’t know better. There was something I was searching for and I wasn’t getting it. I understood now what it was: It was intimacy, it was closeness. And obviously that was not something I was going to get from the people I was victimizing,” he said during one of multiple phone calls with WTTW News.
Allen admits to another instance two years later of abusing another 3-year-old girl in his foster family. He claims he’s committed no other sex offenses since his early teen years.
In the 35 years since he was first taken into custody, he’s been held in various state facilities, including the TDF in Rushville.
“I was the 49th resident in this facility. Of them, 24 are dead, the other 12 are gone … out of here,” he said while sitting in an otherwise empty visitation room. “Twenty-seven years I’ve been here, I’ve had over 40 cellies.”
“Cellies” is short for cellmates.
Allen is one of 444 men currently being held at the TDF, operated by the Illinois Department of Human Services. The facility has a yearly budget of nearly $61.5 million, according to state records.
A WTTW News analysis shows, since its opening, the number of people who die in custody at the TDF in Rushville has risen steadily, peaking at 12 in 2018. The average term was more than 10 years.
IDHS data shows 102 people in civil commitment died since 2006. Collectively, they were held in custody for almost 1,100 years. About half spent 10 years or more in custody. More than seven people died per year, on average, over the past decade. Eight people spent more than 20 years in the civil commitment system before being recorded as deceased.
In eight of the past 25 years, as many or more people died each year than were released from custody.
A spokesperson for IDHS said the facility bears no responsibility for a resident’s length of stay.
“The length of commitment or release is not determined by IDHS – it is exclusively decided by the courts. Residents may be released at any phase of the program – which is also determined by the courts. While placement in the facility is involuntary, whether an individual actively participates in treatment is voluntary,” the statement reads. “... As with any long-term residential population, many residents have underlying health conditions. The facility provides access to medical care consistent with its responsibility for resident health and safety.”
But Stefan Vogler, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who studies law, sexuality and gender, criticized both the facility’s treatment methods and the length of stay for patients at Rushville — especially for people who committed offenses as juveniles.
“We’re really just giving these folks an indefinite, and for many of them what ends up being a lifetime or 20-plus year commitment, often with nothing to show for it,” Vogler said.
How Sex Offenders Are Evaluated for Civil Commitment
Under the state’s Sexually Violent Persons Commitment Act, the Illinois Attorney General’s Office petitions a state court to commit to an institution anyone who has been convicted of a sexually violent offense and suffers from a mental disorder.
“The purpose is to protect the public by offering treatment to sex offenders deemed dangerous, due to their likelihood of reoffending, until they can be in the community in a safer way,” an official with the Illinois Attorney General’s Office explained in an email to WTTW News.
When someone who has been convicted of a sex offense reaches the end of their prison sentence, they’re screened by a licensed clinical social worker. If that professional finds the individual meets “statutory criteria” they are referred on to receive a full evaluation by a psychologist or psychiatrist. If that evaluation finds the individual still meets the criteria to be considered a sexually violent person, the Attorney General’s Office petitions the court for commitment as a sexually violent person.
“Then you’ll be tried in a civil commitment trial, which actually looks very much like a criminal trial here in Illinois, because it’s the same standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt as you would have in a criminal case,” Vogler said.
In that case, either a judge or jury decides whether someone remains a threat and should be committed.
After someone is committed to treatment, to be discharged, two state licensed evaluators must agree that the individual is no longer a threat. If they don’t agree, another hearing is held where “the State must show clear and convincing evidence that the person is still an SVP,” the Attorney General’s Office writes. “Either a judge or jury will give a verdict after the hearing.”
“I go before the court once a year for a status hearing on probable cause for possible conditional release or discharge,” Allen wrote. His last reexamination was in December 2025, but he said he refused to participate because it would’ve been virtual and not recorded.
“The philosophy of the TDF program is that residents can be rehabilitated. Continued detention reflects a court determination regarding risk, not a conclusion that rehabilitation is impossible,” IDHS said in a statement.
‘This Facility … It Is Designed to Warehouse Us’
Samuel Rutherford, 39, has also been institutionalized since he was a teenager.
“It really feels like as a whole, I’ve been forgotten. I’ll have this stigma for the rest of my life. I have no interest in hurting people,” Sam Rutherford told WTTW News during a visit to the Treatment and Detention Facility in Rushville, Ill., where he’s been living since 2007. (Courtesy of Betty Rutherford)
“I’m a one-time offender. So, I offended when I was 16 years old, there was one instance of an offense, one single offense, one single assault. And I’m still here,” Rutherford said by phone. “They’re talking it’s an equivalent to a class X felony. And I’m like, ‘wait, I’m an adjudicated juvenile. How did I even end up here?’”
He describes his days at the TDC as monotonous. He has several tasks — not to be referred to as jobs, like the inmates in the Illinois Department of Corrections have. Instead of money, TDC residents earn points to make purchases at the facility’s commissary.
Rutherford spends his time working in the copy office and the library, as well as attending group therapy for a few hours in the afternoon. There are four “counts” over the course of the day, where residents are locked into their cells while staff count them. Dinner is at 5 p.m., then Rutherford waits for his assigned phone time to speak with his family.
Residents at Rushville have access to computers, but not the internet, in contrast to IDOC inmates who have tablets for both email and phone calls. Prison inmates earn a meager income for their assigned jobs and have access to educational classes. Many prison inmates can predict approximately when they’ll be released and can earn time off their sentences through good behavior and programming.
But for Rutherford and the others at Rushville, their release is predicated on the courts and two experts agreeing they are no longer harmful to society.
“There’s really not much else to do around here,” Allen said. “They don’t have any classes here, even though we have stressed the number of times that they’re supposed to be providing basic education with guys here. They don’t do it.”
Allen said he has been in other treatment programs he believes were designed to help their participants.
“This facility is not designed to help us,” Allen said. “It is designed to warehouse us.”
Vogler has heard the same complaints.
“It was supposed to be a treatment facility, but basically, the people inside say it’s very much like a prison. Conditions are similar,” the professor said. “They complain about the food. They complain about inadequate treatment.”
In response, the state said, “TDF is a secure treatment facility — not a correctional institution — and operates under a clinical model focused on reducing risk and supporting behavioral change. IDHS takes these concerns seriously. Residents have access to structured, evidence-based treatment delivered by licensed clinical staff, along with individualized treatment plans that are regularly reviewed and updated.”
WTTW News reporters visited the facility to speak with Rutherford and Allen.
The facility looks and feels like many prisons in the state: situated far from any city on a state highway or county road, high fences topped with barbed wire, heavy metal doors, pat-downs from staff and metal detector screenings before entering.
Upon entering the visitation room, the men have their shoes inspected by officers while they step into body scanners like those at airport security. Allen reports being shackled during transport to court appearances over the years.
The building for the TDF is provided by the Illinois Department of Corrections, as dictated by the state’s Sexually Violent Persons Commitment Act.
How Treatment Works
Despite the monotony, Rutherford said, “I’ve been told I’m doing well in the [mental health] program, and, you know, working towards my goals in that regard.”
“I’ve only been in treatment a short time here, so only from ‘07 to ‘09 and then again, from January of ‘23 to now. So, not as long as some of these other guys here, but I have been in treatment,” he said.
Rutherford, who says he dropped out of therapy in the in-between years out of frustration, is now in the third phase of treatment called the post-disclosure group.
“It’s where you talk about aspects of the sex offense cycle, after you’ve disclosed all the initial information they feel that’s sufficient,” Rutherford said. “They move you into post-disclosure where you can work on the ‘why’ of things and how they happened, triggers.”
Samuel Rutherford with his mother, Betty, in his late teen years, outside a state-run group home. He’d been transferred there after leaving a treatment facility for boys in Utah. (Courtesy of Betty Rutherford)
Allen, Rutherford and his mother, Betty, often refer to the mental health staff as a revolving door.
“The other reason he didn’t want to do therapy was because the therapy is outsourced to another agency, and they had interns basically doing the therapy,” Betty Rutherford told WTTW News about her son. “So every three to six months there was a turnover of new therapists, so that you would have to start all over at the beginning with the next therapist.”
Allen agrees with that assessment.
“When I point out some of the fact that I’ve forgotten more therapy than they’ve ever learned, it doesn’t exactly make things any easier,” Allen said.
Constant staff turnover, Vogler argues, can be very disruptive to a patient’s progress.
“There’s very little individualized treatment. So far, as I can tell from my work, most of it happens in group settings,” he said. “And of course, you know, group therapy is not really gonna make a lot of difference to someone who … has been adjudicated as having a … mental illness.”
Vogler said if someone is mentally ill enough to require commitment, the expectation would be more intensive treatment would be needed beyond group therapy.
IDHS defends its programming, stating the facility is “grounded in the principle that all residents have the capacity for meaningful change and that the risk of future sexual reoffending can be reduced through evidence-based, individualized treatment that promotes personal responsibility and pro-social behavioral change.”
According to IDHS, the treatment program focuses on:
- Understanding and controlling distorted thinking that has led to sex offending
- Controlling unhealthy arousal
- Avoiding triggers that impact poor decision-making
- Promoting the pursuit of a meaningful and purposeful life
“We hear a lot from people with frustration with their ability to get access to meaningful treatment,” said Amanda Antholt, an attorney for Equip for Equality, a nonprofit that advocates for human and civil rights of people with disabilities.
“There is a dearth of meaningful programming,” she said. “As a civil rights organization, that is one of the most concerning issues because that’s the whole justification for locking them up. The state just can’t lock people up because it’s scared they might reoffend. Here, the justification is the need for treatment, but the treatment is somewhat limited.”
Another major concern is confidentiality between providers and patients.
“There is no confidentiality, which, for those of us with trust issues, makes it extremely difficult,” Allen said.
That absence of doctor-patient privilege could make many patients hesitant to admit to any other infractions for fear of it being used against them in court.
“Anything they say in therapy can become part of their court records, and so if they reveal that they’ve actually had more victims than they’ve been convicted [of], for instance, that can become reason to keep them locked up even longer,” Vogler said.
But forensic psychologist Steven Gaskell, who worked as an evaluator for the state of Illinois from 2005 to 2021, said this kind of treatment can take time.
“Let’s say a person, Day 1 that they get there, goes into treatment, and they have no issue with accepting accountability, they have no issues that are going to limit their ability to get through the program as fast as possible,” Gaskell said. “They could probably get through the treatment program and get a conditional release recommendation, maybe at the quickest, maybe four to five years.”
Court documents pertaining to a 2002 lawsuit from the ACLU of Illinois show the five phases of treatment are: assessment; disclosure or accepting responsibility; self-application, which includes relapse prevention techniques; incorporation, which helps the patient form a “wellness” plan; and transition, which plans the patient’s reintroduction into the community.
Rutherford said he spent years trying to secure his release through the courts, with no success.
“I’m doing it because there’s no other options for me,” he said of the mental health treatment.
But, Gaskell added, many patients are “stuck in denial for the longest time or don’t even go to treatment to begin with.”
Jason Allen said that while he has no memory of the trip when this photo was taken, he believes it shows him around the age of 11 or 12, the age at which he committed his first sexual offense. (Courtesy of Jason Allen)
Allen admits he’s one of those who now rejects treatment. He said his last group session was in 2013 or 2014. He left out of frustration with the treatment, and signed paperwork reflecting his withdrawal.
“They wasted nine months of my time when I was going to treatment … wanting to find out information about whether my siblings were married or not, whether they had kids or not, what type of jobs they were doing, and this was for the autobiography section of my treatment progress,” he said. “And I kept pointing out, what does what my brothers and sisters are doing have to do with me committing offenses 30 years ago?”
Another part of treatment involves the controversial penile plethysmograph.
“More commonly referred to in here, in slang terms, as the ‘peter meter,’” Rutherford said.
The device is essentially a blood pressure cuff that is placed around a man’s penis while images or audio of sexual scenarios are played, Vogler said. Responses are then gauged.
“They want us to just react naturally and not try and repress our reactions. If we try and repress, they invalidate the test and say we have to take it again,” Allen said.
Vogler believes scientific evidence shows the tests are inaccurate, providing both false positives and false negatives.
A 2004 paper published in the Temple Political & Civil Rights Law Review argues the use of plethysmography “not only treads on fundamental constitutional values, it raises ethical and policy concerns of the first order.” Its author, Jason Odeshoo, presented research that also questions its effectiveness specifically on people who’ve sexually abused children and raises concerns that procedures for administering penile plethysmograph tests have yet to be standardized.
IDHS defended the use of the plethysmograph as just one of many tools “that may be used to assess sexual arousal patterns as part of a comprehensive evaluation. Its use is governed by clinical protocols and intended to inform individualized treatment planning. It is not used in isolation, but alongside other assessments and therapeutic interventions.”
The Path Toward Release
If and when Allen and Rutherford are released from the TDC, it would likely be under conditional release — similar to an individual being released from prison who has to follow strict rules.
So strict, Allen said he’d never even accept conditional release as an option.
“It’s a trap,” Allen said. He tells stories of other patients being released for minor infractions.
Documents produced by IDHS show the terms of a restrictive conditional release plan that governs a person released from Rushville. The nine-page document shows any violation — even technical or inadvertent — can result in immediate detention and return to the treatment facility pending a revocation hearing.
The Treatment and Detention Facility in Rushville, Ill., houses those who are held under the Sexually Violent Persons Commitment Act, which commits people after they’ve already served a prison sentence for a sex offense. (Blair Paddock / WTTW News)
The conditional release plan is managed by IDHS and Liberty Healthcare through a multi-agency case management team. It imposes round-the-clock GPS and in-home monitoring, strict movement and contact limits, technology and financial controls, and intensive treatment and testing, with IDHS able to order immediate arrest and detention over suspected violations.
IDHS said the TDF program averages about 2.25 successful discharges a month from conditional release.
And if residents struggle with the terms, they have the right to file a motion with the court to challenge any part of the conditional release plan.
“Conditions of release are established through the court process and are designed to support safe and successful community reintegration. While the conditions can be structured and intensive, they are intended to balance public safety with long-term success in the community,” IDHS says.
Gaskell said a patient would need to be in the later stages of treatment in order to be considered for conditional release.
Once released, an individual is on a sort of house arrest, Gaskell said, “not leaving the house without their condition or release agent being with them.”
Eventually, those released earn more opportunities for movement in the community alone, but still on electronic monitoring.
“They’re having polygraph examinations to explore whether or not they’re being compliant with conditions, and they’re attending treatment and getting random visits by their conditional release agent. So it’s very structured,” Gaskell said.
Gaskell describes the structure as necessary to help with the transition into the community.
“A lot of people have a lot of issues with it,” he said. “When they first get out, it’s the first time they’ve seen freedom in a long time, because they did their entire prison sentence, and then they’ve also had to complete however long it took them to gain conditional release from the treatment and detention facility.”
Vogler points to data showing that rates of sexual assault haven’t decreased since the advent of sex offender registries and all of the restrictions registered sex offenders must follow.
“We just don’t see associated decreases in violent crime or sex crime when we pass these policies,” Vogler said.
What’s more, he calls cases like Allen’s and Rutherford’s, where they’ve been locked up indefinitely for offenses committed as teens, unfair.
“We just know from, from reams and reams of research that most juveniles are not going to go re-offend, and that includes sexual re-offenders or sexual offenders,” Vogler said.
A 2019 report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics said state prisoners released after serving rape or sexual assault sentences were three times as likely to be re-arrested for similar charges compared with others released on other crimes.
But the Prison Policy Initiative refutes the report, arguing it fails to acknowledge the likelihood of recidivism for people convicted of other offenses. The initiative cites that people who commit sex offenses are only 5% of prisoners released and tracked in the study.
More data from the DOJ’s Office of Justice Programs shows the sexual recidivism rate for juveniles is 7%, compared with 14% to 24% for adult sex offenders, and the general crime recidivism rate for juveniles of 43%.
Since 2023, records from IDHS show one person released from Rushville following treatment was readmitted.
After Release, ‘Nowhere to Go’
Beyond completing the necessary steps for release, another avenue would be to sue the state. But many defense lawyers won’t take on such cases and few are ever successful.
“I think it’s 100% true that it’s hard to get attorneys to take these cases,” Antholt said. “There has been some successful litigation though over the last couple of years where we’ve seen a few good decisions come out on behalf of individuals, regarding their confinement and conditions, so there have been a few good cases.”
Antholt said the state legislature could make changes to the civil commitment statute to make it more effective.
“I think a lot of these older statutes [were] developed in response to issues as we understood them decades ago,” she said. “They need to be updated with the time and with the evidence and research that we have out there on how these systems should work.”
She also argues for more community-based support for people who’re on conditional release versus a restrictions-based framework.
“There’s a lot of work that needs to be done because the law says people can be committed for this one thing [mental health treatment] and then our state system isn’t living up to really providing that one thing,” Antholt said.
Meanwhile, Allen said he has resumed contact with a Kane County public defender, hoping she’ll find some way to secure his release.
Aside from resuming the mental health treatment he’s rejected for so many years, Allen sees no other option to gain his freedom. And even if he did gain his freedom, he believes he has few opportunities outside of the TDF walls.
“Let’s say I go to court tomorrow and I get my case dismissed, I have nowhere to go,” Allen said. And because he’s been incarcerated since he was 13 years old, he has few skills to earn a living. “That’s one of the main reasons why I’ve been fighting to get my case dismissed and get compensated for what they’ve taken from me. Because literally, if I walk out the door right now, I have nothing.”
(Jared Rutecki / WTTW News)
Blair Paddock and Jared Rutecki contributed to this report.
Contact Brandis Friedman: @BrandisFriedman | bfri...@wttw.com