Previous Chicago Ald. Ed Burkethe longest-serving alderman in city history, was booked into jail Monday and beyond began serving a two-year sentence allegations of corruption.
Burke, 80, was expected to report to the minimum security camp at the Federal Correctional Institution in Terre Haute, Indiana, but those plans appeared to change at the last minute.
The former alderman was instead housed at a federal minimum security camp in Thomson, Illinois, a town of about 500 in the northeastern corner of the state. A village in Carroll County, Thomson is 78 miles northwest of Moline.
Federal Correctional Institution Thomson, a low-security federal prison, houses 1,901 inmates, according to the Bureau of Prisons website. Another 133 inmates are housed at the minimum security satellite camp, where Burke was booked.
The former state penitentiary was purchased by the federal government in 2012 – a purchase intended to alleviate overcrowding in the federal system and promote economic growth in the region. At one point, the facility had been considered as a possible transfer site for detainees coming from Guantanamo Bay. That idea was dropped after vocal public opposition.
Thomson Prison was built in 2001. But budget issues prevented it from fully opening, and its 1,600 cells housed fewer than 200 inmates before the facility closed in preparation for a sale in 2009. The last inmates were moved out the following year, but the prison sat vacant for another two years before the acquisition was completed.
By the end of 2023, Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs published a report compiling the stories of more than 120 people who were detained in a high-security ward known as the Special Management Unit. Federal Bureau of Prisons closed the device earlier that year after officials found “significant concerns regarding institutional culture.” About 350 people were immediately sent to prisons across the country, where many of them report that they are still in solitary confinement, according to the Bar Committee.
The Bureau of Prisons announced the decision to permanently convert the facility to a low-security institution in October 2023.