Cook County Jail ‘Supe’ Joclede Benn has died; gave inmates respect, got it back

Everywhere she went, fights seemed to follow a particular Cook County Jail inmate who was unfazed by the threats of punishment or losing privileges.

But the inmate had a good relationship with Joclede Benn, a superintendent at the jail, even confiding in “Supe” that she hated one correctional officer so much that she thought of killing her.

“The only reason I haven’t,” she told her, “is because I respect you more than any human being I’ve ever met. You treat us like human beings.”

Mrs. Benn “knew this little one wasn’t playing,” according to Doris Jones, then an administrative assistant at the jail. So she moved right away to minimize contact between the two women.

Mrs. Benn, who died of cancer April 26 at her Calumet Heights home, commanded respect throughout “County’’ and at the women’s state penitentiary in downstate Dwight, where she’d been an assistant warden.

“She always walked the cell block, she always walked the tiers,” said Jane Higgins Quinn, a former warden at Dwight and assistant executive director at the county jail. “I can still hear Jo: ‘We can be fair and firm. We don’t have to be disrespectful.’ ”

One time, when a correctional officer at the county jail was about to undergo chemotherapy, it looked like her treatment regimen might conflict with a rigid work schedule. But Mrs. Benn “went to war for her,” Jones said. “She was, like, ‘You are talking about her life!’ And she was able to get the officer’s shift changed.”

Ultimately, Mrs. Benn was responsible for hundreds of men and women inmates in two county jail divisions, some of them suffering from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, Quinn said.

Mrs. Benn “had a way with people, both the ones who were inmates and correctional officers,” former Sheriff Michael Sheahan said. “I really respected her. She was innovative.”

She backed programs that strengthened bonds between incarcerated women and their families. At Dwight, one of those programs allowed children of some inmates to visit for a weekend summer “camp,” complete with tents.

Another effort she backed, at the county jail, taped prisoners reading bedtime stories and gave the recordings to their kids.

At County, lights out was supposed to be by 9 p.m. But when a week went by without any serious fights, Jones said, Mrs. Benn arranged for those being held to watch Sunday night football — with snacks to go with the extended curfew.

And with the help of some inmates and a correctional officer — all of them licensed stylists — she brought in rinse sinks to set up a hair salon. “She said if you look good, you feel good, and you act better,” Jones said.

Leslie Brown Simmons was an inmate at Dwight when she met Mrs. Benn. “She was very open and very loving,” said Simmons, whose sentence for arranging the contract killing of an abusive husband was commuted by Gov. James Thompson in 1988. She went on to found Leslie’s Place, a nonprofit that works to ease women back into society after incarceration.

Mrs. Benn was born Joclede Johnson in Memphis. The Johnsons came north to Chicago, where her parents landed jobs at Nabisco. Her father Gus was a baker, and her mother worked on a Fig Newton machine, according to her niece Ashleigh Johnson. She went to St. Dominic’s High School and Roosevelt University.

In 1971, Mrs. Benn began work as a juvenile parole officer with the Illinois Department of Corrections. She moved to Dwight in the 1980s, Quinn said, and then to the county jail in the early 1990s. She retired in 2001.

As a girl, she loved dressing up, her niece said. She had an eye for antique lace, beaded bags from the 1920s and Lucite purses from the 1950s. That grew into a business. She’d scour estate sales and sell her finds from a charmingly curated table, sparkling with 1950s glassware, vintage perfume atomizers and Lalique and Waterford crystal, at the Kane County Flea Market and Randolph Street Market. “She liked things that would bring people together as a family,” said Sally Schwartz, who produces the Randolph Street Market.

Her husband George preceded her in death. She is survived by her son Geoffrey, sisters Charlene Carter, Brenda Moore, Carol Lemieux and Mary Kay Dyer and brothers Augustus Jr. and Kenneth and Kevin Johnson. Visitation is at 10 a.m. Saturday, followed by an 11 a.m. mass at St. Columbanus Church, 331 E. 71st St.