Every county jail in Illinois is subject to annual compliance monitoring by the Illinois Department of Corrections' Jail and Detention Standards division. On June 12, 2024, IDOC inspectors visited the Will County Adult Detention Center (WCADF) at 95 South Chicago Avenue in Joliet to conduct their scheduled review. The results were made public in IDOC's 2024 jail inspections archive — a transparency mechanism that allows families, advocates, and the public to see how county jails are measuring up against state standards.
What the 2024 Inspection Covered
Illinois county jail inspections evaluate compliance with the Illinois County Jail Standards, a regulatory framework that covers physical plant conditions, medical care, staffing ratios, supervisory procedures, programming access, and the treatment of detainees. Inspectors review records, observe operations, and interview staff and, in some cases, incarcerated people.
Key areas that IDOC monitors in Will County and every Illinois county jail include:
- Supervisory checks — how frequently staff are physically checking on each housing unit and individual cell
- Medical care access and documentation
- Grievance procedures and complaint handling
- Use of force incidents and documentation
- Fire safety and emergency procedures
- Sanitation and physical plant standards
- Programming and access to services
The Key Finding: Supervisory Checks Improved to 95%
The standout finding from the 2024 inspection was an improvement in supervisory check compliance, which rose from 89% to 95%. Supervisory checks — sometimes called welfare checks or security rounds — are scheduled walk-throughs by staff to visually confirm the status of every person in their housing unit. They are one of the most basic but critical safety mechanisms in a detention facility, particularly for identifying medical emergencies, mental health crises, and self-harm attempts.
The improvement from 89% to 95% means that in a prior period, approximately 1 in 9 required supervisory checks was not being completed on schedule. At 95%, that gap has narrowed to approximately 1 in 20. This remains below 100%, which Illinois standards require, but the upward trend is documentable progress.
ACA Accreditation: Over 20 Years
The Will County Adult Detention Center has maintained American Correctional Association (ACA) accreditation for more than 20 years. ACA accreditation is a voluntary process in which a facility is evaluated against the ACA's nationally accepted standards — currently encompassing 385 standards covering all aspects of correctional operations. Maintaining accreditation requires passing periodic re-accreditation audits, during which facilities must demonstrate compliance with the vast majority of applicable standards.
ACA accreditation is not a perfect measure of facility quality, but it is a meaningful benchmark. Maintaining it for more than two decades requires sustained institutional commitment to documented policies, staff training, physical plant standards, and accountability processes. It distinguishes Will County from many county jails in Illinois and nationally that have never sought or maintained accreditation.
Facility Scale and Recent Expansion
The Will County Adult Detention Center is a large facility. It originally opened in March 1989 and underwent a $70 million expansion completed in May 2009, which grew the facility from 156,000 to 318,000 square feet and increased capacity from 322 to more than 1,000 inmates. The 55-person medical staff provides 24-hour coverage, and dental care is available at least twice weekly — levels of medical access that exceed what many county jails provide.
What Families Can Take from the Inspection
The public availability of IDOC's jail inspection reports gives families a documented baseline for understanding conditions at the facility. If your loved one reports a specific concern — about cell check frequency, medical access, or grievance response — the inspection report provides context for whether what they are describing is consistent with or inconsistent with what inspectors observed.
If your loved one has a serious concern not addressed through the jail's internal grievance process, the IDOC Jail and Detention Standards division accepts complaints about county jails. The division can be reached through the IDOC main website at idoc.illinois.gov.
Will County Adult Detention Center: 95 S. Chicago Street, Joliet, IL 60432. Main line: (815) 727-8895. Will County Sheriff's Office website: willcosheriff.org.