Prison’s first warden paved way for today

DIXON – When Nedra Chandler took her place behind the warden's desk at the Dixon Correctional Center, she was not the first woman to find herself in that seat.

Linda Giesen was the prison's first warden – and the first female warden of an all-male prison in Illinois.

After her master's studies in criminology, she took a job in 1975 with the Illinois Department of Corrections, serving at work-release centers in Chicago and Rockford.

It was a pursuit inspired in part, she said, by an undergraduate professor who said no one should criticize problems of the criminal justice system without fully understanding how the system works.

"And so he just pushed me to understand it more and more," said Giesen, now a lawyer in Dixon. "It's so complicated, and there are no easy solutions. ... I  always enjoyed being part of some solutions to the problem."

Giesen rose through the ranks at the DOC to the become warden at Dwight Correctional Center for women, near Joliet, where she served for more than 2 years.

Then, in the summer of 1982, she was offered the opportunity to head a new correctional center that was being created out of the Dixon Developmental Center.

"And then one day I got the call that, 'You're it,'" Giesen recalled. "It was truly an honor, because it told me my bosses really knew I could do the job. So, you know, you just go in and tackle it.

"I was thrilled to be recognized for what I was capable of doing, but it was very disruptive," she said. Not only was she doing extensive planning and hiring, but she also had to acclimate to a new area.

"That's what wardens have to face," Giesen said. "Wardens are rotated. You don't have a right to stay at a particular prison. You go where the boss says to go. And the other difference is, I wasn't stepping into an operating prison."

That meant Giesen was responsible for helping redesign the facility's infrastructure, devising operational procedures, and hiring and training staff.

"Truly, my job was to turn it into a prison, because ... there were [virtually] no security mechanisms in place." she said. "It was a lot of work, but it was really exciting to watch it grow into [something] I felt was really good."

Her historic appointment did come with some turbulence – inmate insubordination, a bit of resistance from staff, and a community not thrilled with having a prison.

"So I spent a lot of time interviewing, a lot of time doing public speaking, trying to educate people about what it means to work at a prison," she recalled.

"At that time, getting a prison wasn't viewed as a positive thing, like it is in this economy," she said, citing the sent-iment of Thomson-area officials who have been pushing to get the Thompson Correctional Center fully operational since it was completed in 2001.

Then there were the internal issues, which presented their own challenges.

"There was a good length of time people would test me to see if I was up to it. What you have to understand is the position of warden means certain things to inmates, and to staff.

"Prisons are paramilitary-functioning institutions. You don't get the respect of inmates by threats. They're people, and you've got to do it in a way that respects people as human beings," she said.

"But yeah, it was an issue. Some former retired staff and I still  laugh about how they did test me, but all worked out well."

In fact, Giesen said, it was her experience at Dixon Correctional that helped shape her desire to attend law school, which she did 3 years after leaving the prison.

"Prison was a big reason I went to law school, because I said, 'I've got to understand more about this law business to understand some of the things that didn't seem right to me.'"