The Corrections

It was a routine day at the Joliet Correctional Center reception area one day in 1980. David Grant was a sergeant involved in prisoner intake.

One of the most notorious and infamous serial killers in the nation’s history entered the facility. He had just been convicted and sentenced to death for killing 33 young boys over a span of a decade. His name was John Wayne Gacy. He was well known to Grant and other corrections officials at Joliet that day. Grant, a resident of Sun City since 2012, tells it this way:

“He came up to where I was and said with a straight face, ‘They got me for the wrong crime, they should have charged me with operating a cemetery without a license.’ He was not making a serious statement, he didn’t laugh, and nobody else who was present did. We strip-searched him and put him in a yellow jumpsuit like we did to all inmates. He was transferred shortly after that to Menard Correctional Center in downstate southern Illinois.”

Gacy was eventually executed 14 years later. Grant went on to complete an impressive and honored 25-year career in the state’s corrections department, rising to the rank of major and retiring in 2002 at the unusually young age of 49. He compiled a spotless record of service, and received several letters of commendation for his work.

Grant didn’t decide to be a “prison guard” simply because he was good at it and jobs in the field were available in the 1970s. He did it because he saw corrections as an opportunity to help people.

“Initially, law enforcement work and the criminal justice system appealed to me as a career. I wanted to help people turn their lives around. I’ve been a Christian believer since I was a youngster. I never believed early on that my faith pushed me into corrections. But I began to believe later in my career that I was called to do this line of work. My faith also motivated me to take my job seriously and do it with a lot of dedication and integrity. I tried to do everything the right way.”

“He was never disciplined in any way during his entire career,” his wife Karen said.

It took some patience and various job experiences before he landed in the corrections field, however. Born in Evergreen Park in 1953, he grew up on the south side of Chicago and graduated from Downers Grove High School in 1970.

“I had a lot of interests as a youth, and I was drawn to law enforcement, aviation, and science,” he recalled. “I started to take courses in all three areas in junior college.”

He received an associate degree from College of DuPage in 1972. Two years later, he earned a bachelor’s degree in administration of justice with a concentration in corrections and a minor in psychology from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.

“But then I found out there were no job opportunities in this field at that time, so I did various jobs for awhile.”

Did he ever. With an honors degree on his resume, he pumped gas and repaired trucks at an Illinois Tollway Authority oasis, evaluated intake applications for the Cook County Department of Public Aid, returned to SIU to do graduate work, met his future wife, Karen, through mutual friends, got married, and moved to California after hearing about an improved job market out west. He hooked up with Amoco Chemicals where he worked with hazardous materials, including benzene. Then for awhile he sold shoes at a local retail mall. Four years went by.

In late 1978, a friend told him they were hiring in corrections. He returned to Illinois and got a job as a corrections counselor at the Joliet Correctional Center. It was the lowest job on the prison pay scale.

“Initially I thought I wanted to be a criminal psychologist, working directly with inmates,” he said. “But they told me I had to spend a year as a prison guard. That wasn’t the formal job title but that’s what I did.”

For the next 24 years, he worked his way fairly quickly through the ranks, from corrections officer to lieutenant, captain, and major.

“The officer hierarchy was similar to the military ranks,” Grant recalled. “My biggest break came fairly early, when I got to know a major who was in charge of security. He needed an aide who would assist him with some of the administrative work. He worked primarily on transportation of inmates from one facility to the other, which was a major ongoing project for many of the officers.

“The Joliet Center was an intake facility for prisoners coming from all counties north of Springfield,” he said. “We had as many as 350 prisoners a week come to us, and most of them were processed and sent to other institutions. By the 1990s, the prison system had grown so much we had 45 prison facilities throughout the state. A lot of my time for several years was supervising transfer trips all over the state in old school buses and vans. During that time, we persuaded the state authorities to get customized buses built especially for transportation of prisoners. I made a lot of trips to Menard Psychiatric Center and worked with medical technicians dealing with mental health issues.”

He became a captain in charge of intake in 1987, and in 1999 was promoted to major and became chief of security at Stateville, located a few miles from the Joliet Correctional Center.

“We had 3,000 inmates there, and I worked many 16-18 hour days and it was exhausting,” Grant said. “These were hard core inmates, and procedures had to be precise and disciplined.”

“He would often come home after an 18-hour day, totally exhausted, and go to sleep,” Karen said. “Then the phone would ring, and he’d head back to take care of some security matter.”

“I was very fortunate that I never got involved in threatening, dangerous, and violent situations,” Grant said. “The big riot in Pontiac occurred in 1977, just before I was hired. One other time, I heard about a parole violator who escaped during a transfer trip downstate. The people on that job were severely disciplined, and a short time after that, a policy of zero tolerance for mistakes on transfer trips was started.”

Grant retired on Dec. 31, 2002, at the age of 49.

“I took advantage of a special retirement program offered to officers for a six-month window, and I just figured it was time to get out.”

In addition to Gacy, Grant had contact with such famous prisoners as Richard Speck, murderer of a group of nurses in Chicago, who died in prison while serving a life sentence, and Henry Brisbon, the infamous “I-57 killer,” who eventually was incarcerated at Stateville.

“Henry was always a problem, because he just was a mean, dangerous man whose contact with other prisoners had to be severely limited.”

He said he did not have any contact with former Illinois Gov. George Ryan, who was convicted of corruption during Grant’s service but who was incarcerated in federal prisons elsewhere.

“People would react to his job in some funny ways,” wife Karen said. “One time, when Dave was in charge of a religious education program for young people at our church, someone asked him about his job, and they were surprised and curious to hear that he worked in a state prison.”

“I was privileged to work with, and make friends with, many highly professional, dedicated prison officers,” Grant said. “They knew I was a Christian, and they observed how I did my job. I couldn’t share my faith with prisoners, but some of them responded to me positively. I saw changes in the lives of some inmates. I remember one prisoner was changed in a better way while serving a natural life sentence.

“That’s what prisons are all about, trying to change people.”

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