This story, part of an ongoing series, was originally published by the Illinois Answers Project.
EDWARDSVILLE, IL — Samantha Slecka spent the better part of three days strapped down to a chair in Madison County Jail in the summer of 2022. It was the same jail where her fiancé had attempted suicide only months earlier.
She had been arrested and detained for meth possession and a warrant for possession of a controlled substance — a charge that was later dropped. Despairing, in withdrawal, and calling out for help in her cell, Slecka said she tried to take her own life.
In response, jail staff restrained her in a chair for 36 hours, then again the following day for nearly 12 hours. She said it was days before she saw a mental health professional.
“I was just screaming the whole time because it just … felt like I was being punished,” said Slecka, 40. “To not have even the ability to move anything — it’s just pretty traumatizing.”
In Illinois Answers’ investigation into the use, misuse, and abuse of restraint chairs in Illinois county jails, Madison County stands out. From 2019 to 2023, the jail reported more incidents exceeding the chair manufacturer’s upper limit — 10 hours — than any other jail in the state. Neighboring St. Clair County restrained more people than Madison County did, but largely for shorter periods.
Staff at Madison County Jail used a restraint chair at least 96 times over the five-year period, according to records obtained by Illinois Answers. Some of those incidents appeared to have lasted for so long that Illinois Answers asked the county to individually verify the durations listed in the records, to ensure staff hadn’t accidentally written down the wrong timestamps.
One man was restrained for five days, and several other people were restrained for 20 hours or more, with brief mandated breaks to stretch or use the restroom. Another person was restrained for the better part of 37 hours. He was eventually released after asking to be let out “due to his feet being swollen and red.”
In most cases, county records indicated the person restrained had a diagnosed mental illness or need for mental health crisis intervention. Multiple people defecated or urinated on themselves while restrained, which experts often say is evidence of extended restraint or improper care.
“That is very, very much excessive use of restraint,” said Dr. Terry Kupers, an expert on psychiatric health care in custodial settings.
Madison County also failed to report more than a dozen incidents — including multiple lasting over 10 hours — to the state unit that monitors jails, as required under state rules. Asked about the missing reports, the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) said all reports were submitted “to the best of the Unit’s knowledge.”
Madison County Jail Administrator Jerry Endicott said staff typically only use restraints if people have self-harmed, and he attributed the prolonged incidents to ongoing self-harm behavior. He said the facility is not equipped to properly care for increasing numbers of detainees with mental illness, an issue other jails have also raised.
While the jail has a full-time mental health worker, there’s typically no one to respond to crises in the evenings and over the weekends, which is when people may be restrained longer, Endicott said. In response to inquiries from Illinois Answers, he said the jail has begun updating its policies and practices concerning the use of restraint chairs.
A lawyer representing Madison County initially said she would respond to written questions about restraint incidents and current reforms but ultimately declined to comment, citing detainee privacy concerns.
Slecka said she believes jail staff handled her suicide attempt “in all the wrong manner” and “could have been a little more compassionate.”
“They weren’t trying to ease my anxiety or my pain,” she said. “And then just stuck me in the chair.”
Restrained in a chair for hours, days
Staff at Madison County Jail restrained someone in a chair for more than 10 hours in at least 28 incidents from 2019 to 2023, records show. Eight of those incidents exceeded 20 hours.
“It just strikes me as a situation where [Madison County] correctional staff are sadly unaware of the really serious harm that can be done by putting people in restraints and by holding them there for long periods,” said Amanda Antholt, a managing attorney at Equip for Equality, a Chicago-based nonprofit watchdog that monitors for abuse and neglect of people with disabilities.
Madison County’s own restraint chair policy includes instructions from Safety Restraint Chair Inc., which makes the chairs used by many Illinois jails. The instructions say detainees should not be left in a chair for more than two hours.
“This time limit was established to allow for the detainee to calm down or sober up, and if needed it allows for the handlers to seek medical or psychological help for the detainee,” the instructions say.
The time may be extended “only under direct medical supervision” and must not exceed eight hours, even with regular stretching, the instructions say. They do not recommend anyone be left in the chair for more than 10 hours total.
James Charles, 49, has been in and out of the jail since the 90s on different charges, including domestic violence, burglary and retail theft. He said he’ll never forget the black chair with gray padding used to restrain him for hours in 2020. He recalls seeing a sticker on the chair that warned against using the device for hours at a time.
In July of that year, Charles was restrained for seven hours, with three short breaks to use the restroom and drink water. Then, that October, he was restrained again, this time for 14 hours. County records say staff restrained Charles because he threatened to hurt himself and his wrists were “scratched up” and “had marks.”
Charles said jail staff fastened the straps so tight that they cut off his circulation, causing his hands and feet to go numb. It wasn’t just physically agonizing, Charles said, it was mentally and emotionally traumatizing, too. When he was finally released, Charles said he could “hardly walk.”
“It’s crazy because you’re stuck in this position. And you can’t do nothing,” Charles said, later adding, “You know how your feet go to sleep and you get that little tingling? Your feet feel like that when you’re in the chair.”
Guidelines from the National Commission on Correctional Health Care say an order for clinical restraint or seclusion “is not to exceed 12 hours.” And the U.S. Justice Department in 2013 found a Pennsylvania prison unconstitutionally used prolonged isolation on prisoners with mental illness, including restraining them in chairs for 20 hours.
“A restraint chair is only for the very acute situation. And if you have to restrain someone because there's violence that cannot be contained any other way, you put them in a restraint chair for a very short time in order to figure out what to do next,” Kupers said.
Any restraint beyond a short time, such as two hours, becomes “abusive and counterproductive” and can worsen someone’s emotional state, Kupers said, with lasting consequences.
Even now, if James Charles sits too long in a similar position, such as on a couch or at a kitchen table, he feels pain in his knees. He said he often has to stand up and move around to relieve the lingering stiffness. He believes it all stems from his prolonged restraint in 2020.
“It’s terrible,” said Charles, who lives in Colorado. “I never want to go back.”
‘A cry for help’
While at Madison County Jail in 2022, Slecka said she was in withdrawal from opiates, which was making her feel sick and causing bowel problems. She said she was having distressing thoughts of her late fiance, 32-year-old Justin Martin, who died of his injuries at a hospital two weeks after his suicide attempt in the jail.
Slecka, who has anxiety and depression, tried to strangle herself with a makeshift rope while on suicide watch, records show. In response, staff strapped her down to a chair that Monday morning.
“My suicide attempt was more of a cry for help than anything," Slecka said. "And it was just being disregarded."
Records from Madison County show many people were restrained because staff believed they were a danger to themselves. Some had hit their head on a cell door, kicked a door, made a comment indicating self-harm or had harmed themselves.
Experts say restraint chairs should not be used as a suicide prevention tool.
“Constantly putting them in a chair as your only alternative is not going to fix anything. It’s actually going to compound the problem and make it worse,” said Daniel Sheline, president of the Illinois Correctional Association.
But in Madison County, that’s routine: The jail’s restraint chair policy says the device is used to “contain” people who “repeatedly attempt to self mutilate and/or repeatedly attempt suicide.”
The policy requires staff to observe detainees every 15 minutes and to document checks. Staff are required to offer detainees water at least hourly, to release a detainee every two hours “for approximately 10 minutes” and to encourage them to use the bathroom and “walk a short distance.”
For “custody restraint” — when someone is physically aggressive, injuring themselves or damaging property — county policy requires a mental health evaluation within eight hours to assess the need for treatment. For “clinical restraint,” when someone is restrained for medical reasons, a health care professional must conduct a face-to-face observation within one hour.
Records state that a nurse initially checked Slecka’s vitals once she was strapped down. Slecka said she pleaded with staff to go to the bathroom but ended up “going” on herself because she “couldn't hold it anymore.”
More than 11 hours passed between the time when she was initially restrained and when she was released for the first time to use the bathroom, get a drink of water and walk, according to county logs. She was given another break nearly four hours later but then denied a break more than four hours after that because she was “yelling and cursing” at staff.
Slecka was asleep for hours in the chair and restrained until Tuesday evening, records show. Midday Wednesday, she tried to harm herself again and was restrained again.
“I started acting out again because I was losing my mind in there, just everything that was going on mentally, and they put me right back in the chair,” she said.
Slecka said she’d been in and out of the chair for days before she finally met with a mental health professional. A log provided by the county shows a check mark for “crisis,” indicating a visit with crisis intervention, on Thursday. Soon after that, the jail transferred her to a medical facility that serves people with mental illness.
Asked about Slecka’s case, Madison County declined to provide medical or mental health records or respond to questions about the incident. Illinois Answers, along with Slecka, requested video of the restraint, but the county denied the request for “security” reasons.
Slecka described the restraint as “scarring.” She believes she should have been evaluated by a mental health professional much earlier.
Why were people restrained for so long?
In an interview with Illinois Answers, Endicott, the jail administrator, cited a lack of mental health resources and detainees harming themselves repeatedly as causes of prolonged restraint. Other Illinois jails have cited the same factors. "We are not a mental health facility,” Endicott said. “And we are slowly going toward that." He believes around-the-clock mental health staff would help.
In 2019, the jail had a mental health professional present for 16 hours a week, an inspection report notes. But COVID made clear the need for more mental health care in the jail and more beds available at Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS) psychiatric facilities, said Deborah Humphrey, executive director of the Madison County Mental Health Board.
With few resources and long wait times to get people transferred to IDHS, jail staff were often “left to manage some very seriously mentally ill individuals,” Humphrey said. Her office secured funding to hire a full-time mental health professional in October 2023.
The facility also has emergency personnel on-call in the evenings and on weekends, but the facility typically does not use them that much, Endicott said.
Call logs show the jail called a jail nurse dozens of times during Slecka’s restraint. But it’s unclear if those calls pertained to Slecka or her restraint, or if the jail also contacted on-call personnel. Logs pertaining to three other men restrained for long periods — 37, 17 and 14 hours — do not indicate any “crisis” or medical visits during those restraints.
Asked about the investigation’s findings, Advanced Correctional Healthcare, which provided medical services for the jail from 2019 through last year, did not respond to questions, including about whether required medical or mental health checks were done. Centerstone and Chestnut Health Services, which provided additional mental health services during the five-year period covered by this investigation, did not address specific questions.
In December, the jail switched primary medical providers.
What’s happening in nearby St. Clair County?
Neighboring St. Clair County Jail used restraint chairs more frequently than Madison County Jail did over the same five-year period, but the jail typically restrained people for shorter durations. Its policies require more frequent observation checks to assess the need for ongoing restraint.
The county’s policy requires staff to monitor detainees every 10 minutes and to review the need for restraint at least hourly. The policy also requires the jail supervisor to contact a mental health professional whenever an inmate with a mental health condition is restrained.
Annual IDOC inspection reports show St. Clair County Jail staff have not been making all required regular checks on detainees. The facility has been overcrowded for four of the last five years, with dozens of people waiting to be transferred to prison or state psychiatric hospitals in each of those years.
In these conditions, staff restrained people in chairs at least 145 times from 2019 to 2023, records show. A majority of the incidents lasted longer than two hours, but few lasted longer than four. One man was restrained for 10 hours, another for nine. Logs show the county typically gave people brief breaks out of the chair every two hours.
In dozens of cases, it's unclear how long someone was restrained because staff did not document when they were released, as required by county policy. When Illinois Answers followed up with the jail to request any records indicating when the individuals were released, the county said it did not have such records.
Although St. Clair restrained people for less time than Madison County did, people who were restrained there say even the shorter incidents profoundly affected them.
Jessie Bobo, 59, was arrested in April 2023 on a warrant for driving with a revoked license. At St. Clair County Jail, he kicked and punched his cell door, so staff restrained him in a chair for two hours, records show.
“They tighten you up where your blood can’t circulate,” he said. “I was getting ready to faint.”
As in Madison County, staff at St. Clair County Jail primarily used restraint chairs to respond to people who self-harmed.
“The chair is used when a detainee has been placed on suicide watch and continues to try to harm themselves or a detainee is combative or resistive to the point the restraint chair is the safest avenue for the detainee,” the jail said in a statement.
Belleville resident Elizabeth Niehls, 24, was restrained in a chair in St. Clair County at least four times from 2021 to 2022, the longest incident lasting over four hours. She had been arrested for stalking and was restrained after cutting herself, hitting her head and fighting with staff, records show.
Video obtained by Illinois Answers shows officers strapped Niehls down at her wrists, ankles and shoulders while she wore a suicide prevention smock, her breasts partially exposed. Officers then applied additional handcuffs to her wrists and ankles and wheeled her into an empty room used for interviews.
“They just let me sit there and scream and cry,” Niehls said, crying as she recounted the experience on the phone. “That’s the worst thing that ever happened in jail, and in my life.”
Niehls recalled trying to pass the time by “watching the lights and counting the tiles on the ceiling.” She said, eventually, her hands went numb.
“I have flashbacks now from being restrained,” she said. “They could have sat there and talked to me and calmed me down.”
Several months after the last of her restraint incidents, Niehls was transferred to a state psychiatric hospital in Springfield for people with serious mental illness, according to her father, who is her legal guardian. She was discharged in August of this year.
Niehls said jail staff need to be better trained in how to work with people who have disabilities and “not be so rough.”
“Don’t throw ‘em in a restraint chair just because they’re acting out,” she said. “It’s just not the right place for people with mental illness or disabilities.”
Some extreme incidents never reported to state
Years after she was restrained, Slecka has started a new life. She recently moved to Missouri, where she has a new job, a new apartment and a new boyfriend. But she still thinks about people being strapped down in cells.
"Somebody you wouldn’t think could end up in that situation where they’re in that chair," she said. "It’s life-changing.”
Under Illinois County Jail Standards, jails are supposed to report use of a restraint chair as an “extraordinary or unusual occurrence” to the Jail and Detention Standards Unit within the Illinois Department of Corrections, the state unit charged with monitoring jails’ compliance with state standards. Madison County’s own policies reiterate this requirement.
Illinois Answers requested copies of these reports from both the county and the state and found that, while Madison County reported most restraint chair incidents to the state, neither the county nor state could provide evidence of reports for at least 15 incidents. That includes multiple prolonged incidents lasting 21, 20, 18 and 11 hours.
“That’s just a failure on that agency’s part,” said Sheline, the Illinois Correctional Association president. “If you put somebody in there, you have to document it, and it has to get sent to the state.”
In annual inspection reports, state inspectors consistently indicated the jail was properly reporting “extraordinary or unusual occurrences,” even when the jail was not, raising questions about the quality and accuracy of the inspections.
The jail saw turnover in leadership during the five-year period surveyed by Illinois Answers, cycling through two sheriffs and three jail administrators. The jail superintendent on duty during that period retired last summer. Most of the restraint chair incidents happened under Kristopher Tharp, who served as jail administrator from 2020 to 2023, during which time he also served six months in the Illinois Senate.
Tharp, when reached by phone, did not comment on prolonged restraint at the jail. But he did dispute that the jail failed to report incidents to the state. Annual IDOC inspection reports while he was in charge of the jail were “sparkling,” he said.
Endicott assumed the role of jail administrator in August of 2023. He said inquiries from Illinois Answers in early 2024 prompted him to review and reform the jail’s policies and practices around the use of restraint chairs.
A few months ago, Endicott updated the jail’s system for documenting supervision checks on people restrained, switching from handwritten logs to electronic software. He said he has increased de-escalation training, which he believes has already led to “improvements” in reducing the need to use restraint chairs.
Endicott said he also plans to require staff to video all uses of restraint chairs. That hasn’t always happened in the past. When Illinois Answers requested video of one 17-hour incident from 2019, the county said no video was recorded.
Informed of the investigation’s findings, IDOC spokesperson Naomi Puzzello reaffirmed that jails are required to maintain and submit reports, but she said the state unit is “limited in its ability to independently verify all occurrences due to its reliance on individual counties to supply accurate and detailed reports.”
Puzzello previously told Illinois Answers that the unit has no statutory responsibility to investigate “extraordinary or unusual occurrences” but that the state unit “makes every effort to ensure reports are reviewed individually and handled dependent on its content.”
That answer doesn’t satisfy Slecka. She wants greater oversight and accountability for the use of restraint chairs in Illinois county jails, and, eventually, for facilities to stop using them entirely.
“For me on a personal level, it’s over. It’s done with,” Slecka said. “But it doesn’t mean people in the future won’t be put in there.”
This article first appeared on Illinois Answers Project and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Methodology: There’s no clear definition of what constitutes a separate versus ongoing restraint chair “incident” in Illinois, where people are typically restrained in repeated two-hour blocks. For the purposes of this data collection and analysis, Illinois Answers considered an incident to be ongoing if someone was held continuously in a chair, or if they were only given brief and periodic breaks over a long period of restraint. In these cases, county jails often identified the case with a unique incident number, kept an ongoing observation log, and submitted a single, all-encompassing report to the state. Illinois Answers considered an incident as separate if someone was released from a chair for a prolonged period of time before being restrained again. In these cases, county jails often designated separate incident numbers, logs, and reports.
Database fact checking by Audrey Azzo, Doris Alvarez and John Volk.
