FIRST PRISONERS ARRIVE AT TAMMS; SIX OF ILLINOIS' WORST ACCEPTED AT NEW PRISON

TAMMS, Ill. -- George Welborn welcomed the first prisoner to the Tamms Correctional Center Monday.

"I knew him," said Welborn, warden at Tamms, the state's newest and toughest prison.

Welborn has been with the Illinois Department of Corrections for more than 20 years. He served as warden in other prisons before arriving at Tamms in January 1994 to prepare for opening of the state's first super maximum prison.

The first prisoner Monday was well-known in Illinois correctional circles.

"He's a bad actor," said Welborn. "I can't release his name at this time, but he is the most infamous prisoner in our state prison system."

The six prisoners from five state prisons who entered the Tamms center Monday have been troublemakers since they entered prison.

"The six have committed a combined total of 86 staff assaults while in prison," said Welborn. "That includes a couple of hostage situations. Original charges against the six include four murders along with kidnappings, sexual assaults and armed robberies.

"The prisoners are not here because of those original charges," Welborn said. "They're here because they have been real troublemakers since they entered the prison system."

Everything went well Monday, said the warden.

"This is a historic day for Illinois and the Department of Corrections," said Welborn. "I'm gratified that the corrections department has provided a facility like this.

"If we do our job right, Tamms will not be a nice place to do time," said Welborn. "Prisoners will have to earn their way in here, and they will have to earn their way out."

It is hoped that Tamms will be a deterrent to violence in other state prisons, he said.

Another 120 inmates are destined for Tamms. They will be transported at the rate of four a day.

The Tamms Correctional Center has 520 cells.

Welborn said the center probably never will be at capacity but will be near it by late summer.

"We're phasing in slowly," he said, "but we want to keep some spaces. There may come a time when another prison may want to send five, 10, even 20 people at one time."

Prisoners are kept in their 67-square-foot cells 23 hours a day. They will be at Tamms for at least a year.

They are fed and counseled in the cells.

The prisoners are permitted to spend an hour a day alone in an exercise yard, a concrete box with some sky showing through from a fenced room. There will be no prison jobs, no college classes, no weights. They won't even get a basketball to toss around in the exercise yard.

Tamms isn't about rehabilitation. "It's about punishment," said the warden.

The inmates are the meanest and most violent that could be found. Wardens from various Illinois prisons pick the prisoners for Tamms.

"The prisoners don't know they're coming to Tamms until early the morning they are transported," said Welborn, "and security is tight for the transportation."

The prisoner is placed in a van with two officers. An armed chase car follows the van to the Tamms prison where the van disappears behind a moving metal door. Correctional officers dressed for battle stand by as the prisoner is ushered into a small room off the garage for orientation. The prisoner is then escorted along corridors to a cell.

They enter the cell with their hands still cuffed. A space in the door allows the cell door to slam shut electronically, leaving only the prisoner's hands showing. The cuffs are then unlocked.

Tamms is designed to isolate and make prisoners so miserable that those who are transferred back to more traditional prisons will behave and counsel their friends to do the same.

"We want them to go back to other prisons and spread the word: Tamms is a place you do not want to go," said the warden.

The prison will become the new site for executions in Illinois. A specially designed execution chamber is ready, but no executions are scheduled.