Tamms Correctional Center

The Tamms Correctional Center is a closed Illinois Department of Corrections prison located in Tamms, Illinois. Prior to its 2013 closure, the prison housed people in two sections: (1) a 200-bed minimum security facility, opened in 1995, and (2) a 500-bed supermax facility known as the Closed Maximum Security Unit ("CMAX"), opened in 1998, that housed people defined by the prison leadership as most disruptive and dangerous.

Prior to the March 9, 2011 abolition of the death penalty in Illinois, the State of Illinois conducted executions by lethal injection in an execution chamber located within the CMAX section of Tamms Correctional Center. Andrew Kokoraleis, the last person to be executed in the state before Illinois suspended capital punishment, was executed at Tamms in 1999. He was the only inmate executed in Tamms death chamber.

Prior to Illinois Governor George Ryan's January 11, 2003, commutation of death row sentences, male death row inmates were housed in Tamms, Pontiac, and Menard correctional centers. After the commutations, only Pontiac continued to hold death row prisoners.