John Ellis gave away his long underwear to another prisoner — he didn’t expect to spend another winter behind bars. He packed up his stuff and carefully tucked away important papers he’d need on the outside, like prescriptions. But when his release date finally came, the Illinois Department of Corrections didn’t let him out.

“They didn’t tell me anything. I was kind of flipping out. Like what is going on here?” Ellis said.

Ellis, 52, didn’t leave prison that day. In fact, he spent an extra year inside. The state of Illinois regularly keeps prisoners with disabilities beyond their release dates because of inadequate options for housing — though it’s difficult to know exactly how often, because the department of corrections  said they don’t track that number. A WBEZ review of facilities on a corrections department’s housing list found many did not accept people with a disability, including psychiatric disabilities. Equip for Equality, a disability rights advocacy group, said the situation could be a violation of laws meant to protect people from discrimination and costs the state more money than placing people in the community.

How ‘supervised release’ doesn’t work for those with disabilities

Most people in Illinois prisons have “mandatory supervised release” as a part of their sentence. It’s similar to parole: a period of time at the end of a sentence that is served in the community where people have to check in with parole officers. Mandatory supervised release saves the state money and keeps prisons from getting overcrowded. Under the program, recently released prisoners are required to have stable housing, and the department of corrections sometimes pays for placements in halfway houses so a person leaving prison has time to get on their feet.

Ellis, who was convicted of theft, served almost two years in prison and was eligible to serve the rest of his sentence in the community on mandatory supervised release. But that didn’t happen.

Ellis said prison staff told him halfway houses would not take him because he had been diagnosed with major depressive order. So he served all his time, including the supposed supervised release, in prison. When he finally got out, he was immediately thrust into homelessness.

“Something’s got to change,” said Ellis just a couple weeks after getting out in April of 2018, “‘cause I’m going the wrong direction already.”

Despite months of requests, the Illinois Department of Corrections refused an interview for this story In a statement, IDOC said they would like to increase the number of housing placements they provide for people on parole or supervised release, but lawmakers would need to provide the budget for that. The department said it works diligently to provide host sites.

WBEZ obtained IDOC’s housing directory through the state’s open records laws. Most facilities on the list said they would not accept a person coming from prison who was deaf, blind, or had a psychiatric disability. After calling all 75 places, WBEZ was able to identify only 13 that would accommodate someone who used a wheelchair coming from prison — one of those facilities said they had only one wheelchair accessible room and another told us that their waiting list for an accessible bed was months long.

Disability discrimination

In 2017 IDOC said 152 people were in prison, even though their release date had already passed. (This number excludes people with sex offenses, who are also routinely kept in prison beyond their release but for a different reason. ) The department of corrections does not track how many of those 152 people have disabilities. But Amanda Antholt, a lawyer with Equip for Equality, said she regularly hears from people in prison who can’t get into halfway houses because of their disability.

“As a result of that discrimination, they are spending more time in prison than they should,” said Antholt.