A man with mental illness who says he was strapped down to a chair for three days at Williamson County Jail reached a settlement in his civil rights case against the county.
Jail staff restrained Travis Braden, 39, to a chair in 2022 after he expressed suicidal ideation and swallowed a piece of metal. He filed a complaint against the county months later, represented himself from prison and settled in January for $27,500.
“To me, it wasn’t enough,” Braden said. “… And the sad part of it is, there’s no accountability behind it.”
The Illinois Answers Project previously featured Braden’s story in a statewide investigation into the widespread and prolonged use of restraint chairs in county jails, and an expert opinion later filed in Braden’s case cited the investigation’s findings.
County records indicate jail staff restrained Braden in a chair on a Friday morning in May 2022. The records do not state when Braden was released from the chair, but Braden claims he was restrained until Monday morning as a “punishment exercise,” with no medical care.
“I had spent over 72 hours in restraints and only let out of the restraints a handful of times for no longer than 3 minutes,” Braden wrote in the complaint. The chair manufacturer recommends limiting restraint to two hours at a time and no more than ten hours total, but Illinois jails often surpass those limits.
In his complaint, Braden alleged jail staff were deliberately indifferent to his medical needs and used excessive force and unlawful restraint, among other allegations. He said the prolonged restraint caused significant emotional distress, extreme pain and psychological trauma.
“I suffered cuts, abrasions, joint stiffness, back pain, scars from the excessively tight cuffs and shackles on my wrists and ankles cutting into my skin,” Braden wrote.
Braden filed the complaint against the jail months after the incident. When he later requested video of the incident, the jail said video wasn’t available, records show.
Williamson County’s restraint chair policy allows staff to use the device if a detainee exhibits “violent or uncontrollable behavior and to prevent self harm, injury to others or damage to property when other control techniques are not effective.” The policy requires medical staff to be notified and prohibits staff from restraining someone as punishment.
Braden said staff should have provided medical attention and followed policy. “You shouldn’t be going in that restraint chair in and out repetitively for days and days and days,” he said. “There’s nothing in this world that was more terrifying.”
Braden’s settlement with Williamson County, which names current and former sheriff’s office employees, does not include an admission of misconduct and states that the defendants “continue to deny any and all wrongdoing and liability.”
“The fact that the case was settled does not have any bearing on the strengths or weaknesses of Mr. Braden’s claims or the county’s defenses,” said defense attorney Bhairav Radia.
Braden also has an ongoing case in Franklin County, where jail staff restrained him in a chair for 68 hours in 2022. A state disability rights watchdog group concluded that the jail violated state standards and county policies in improperly restraining Braden, as well as another mentally ill man who was restrained for 27 hours. That case entered a settlement conference in March, after the judge denied defendants’ motion for summary judgement.
The Williamson County sheriff did not respond to requests for comment. Franklin County’s sheriff and defense lawyer in the ongoing federal case also did not respond.
Illinois county jails restrain people in chairs more than a thousand times a year, even though groups such as the United Nations Committee Against Torture and Amnesty International have urged U.S. officials to ban their use as a method of restraining people in custody.
Like Braden, many of the people restrained in Illinois have a mental illness. Jail officials say their facilities are overcrowded, understaffed and ill-equipped to handle detainees in crisis, and that they face major delays in transferring detainees to state psychiatric hospitals.
Braden was released Wednesday from the Joliet Treatment Center, an Illinois Department of Corrections facility for people with severe mental illness, after serving over two years for theft under $300 and aggravated fleeing police. Back home in Benton, he said mental illness is always a struggle. “But I’m better,” he said. “I’m doing better.”
This story was made possible by a grant from The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation to the Illinois Answers Project. Have a tip for our state investigations team? Email us at stateinvestigations@illinoisanswers.org.
more stories from this series
How three states are addressing the use and abuse of restraint chairs
The “Strapped Down” series investigated the use of restraint chairs in county jails. For the final stories in the series, we’re examining how three other states have addressed the use and misuse of restraint chairs.
Cook County Jail restrained people in chairs 874 times — and never reported it to the state
State standards require jails to report the use of restraint chairs on incarcerated people. Cook County Jail never did.
Champaign County Jail Begins Tracking and Reporting Use of Restraint Chairs to the State for the First Time
Champaign County Jail updated the way it documents, tracks and reports use of restraint chairs after an Illinois Answers Project investigation raised questions about the facility’s record-keeping practices and failure to report incidents to a state oversight unit.
