From prison detainee to garden manager at Cook County Jail, Jammie Williams runs a program that transforms lives through work, skill and second chances.
Williams was an individual in custody when Sheriff Tom Dart walked through the Cook County Jail and saw something in him. Years later, Williams runs the entire operation.
Williams, a native Chicagoan, started as an IC (in custody), the term for people held at the jail, working in the gardens at the facility’s California Avenue garden and the Mental Health Transition Center garden at Rockwell Avenue. When a peer navigator position opened, Dart connected him with Kerry Wright, the garden manager at the time. Wright became his mentor.
“She helped me a lot,” Williams said. “She’s like, ‘You belong here. This is the right place for you.’ “
When Wright moved to another position, Williams stepped into the manager role. Now, nearly three years into the job, he oversees three staff members, schedules work crews for two farmers market visits each week, manages harvests, teaches incarcerated persons how to grow food, runs the aquaponics system, and maintains the beehives.
“I have a lot of responsibilities,” he said.
A Garden Born From Vision
The Cook County Jail’s garden program started in 1992 as Sheriff Dart’s vision for rehabilitation through work and skill-building. What began as a single plot has expanded across two main sites; the California garden and the garden at Rockwell, which now spans two acres including beekeeping and aquaponics operations.
Antonio Porter, Director of Programs who oversees the program’s expansion and operations, describes the philosophy simply: “It’s therapeutic for individuals in custody to be out here learning a skill, but then also just being out here doing the work.”
The garden is massive—rows of tomatoes, celery, lemon cucumbers, Swiss chard and slicing cucumbers that grow to nearly two feet long. Everything starts from seed. Williams and his crew weeded the entire California Avenue garden in less than a week.
The 12-Week Master Gardener Program
Incarcerated individuals can enroll in a 12-week master gardener certificate program that combines classroom instruction with hands-on work in both gardens. The curriculum covers planting from seed, weeding, plant identification, and the full horticultural cycle. Those still in custody when the program ends can continue working in the gardens.
Beyond gardening, participants learn minimal landscaping—cutting grass and maintaining grounds—through partnerships with other jail program staff. The goal is practical: give people marketable skills they can use after release.
“Some of the former participants go on to be landscapers, to grow their own gardens,” Porter said. “And then the business side of it, they get a business skill.”
Farmers Markets and Honey
The program operates on three levels: therapeutic, educational, and economic.
Incarcerated workers sell produce at two public farmers markets— the SOAR (Streeterville Organization of Active Residents) Farmers Market and the Daley Center Market downtown. At these markets, they learn to market, sell, and interact with customers, giving the gardeners real business experience.
The beekeeping operation adds another dimension. The jail maintains 12 hives across both sites—six at the California Avenue garden and six at MHTC. Incarcerated individuals help produce honey, bottle it at the MHTC facility, and label it. The honey sells at the same farmers markets.
“They’ll actually bottle the honey there as well, and we have a fancy label for our honey: “Bees Behind Bars”, is what our honey is called. And we’ll sell those at the farmers’ markets,” Porter said.
The program extends to jail staff as well. On weeks when the public markets aren’t running, incarcerated workers sell produce to Cook County Sheriff’s employees at MHTC every other week—another layer of community and integration resulting in a sense of belonging.
What the Work Does
What strikes Williams most is the effect the work has on the men he supervises. About 10 to 11 individuals in custody rotate through the garden crew. Most arrive skeptical; they leave changed.
“I see a lot of attitudes change,” he said. “Ninety percent of these guys tell me, ‘When I get out, I’m going to start me a garden.’ They like the fresh fruits, the vegetables. It’s therapeutic just to be out here.”
The garden offers more than therapy. It offers a path. The produce goes to the farmers markets, where incarcerated workers learn about business, sales, and handling money. Upon discharge, people can be connected with employment resources. But Williams is the clearest proof the program works.
Kathleen Carmody, Executive Director of Public Relations for the Cook County Sheriff’s Office, calls Williams the jail’s best success story.
“He did the work here and is able to come back and give back,” Carmody said. “He learned the skills, and now not only is he running the entire garden, he’s running staff here, he’s running individuals in custody.”
A Life Transformed
For Williams, the job transformed his life. He went from uncertainty to stability in months. He has structure, purpose, and a career. He helps his family. He helps the men he works with every day.
“It gave me a purpose,” he said. “It’s a blessing that gave me a career. It changed my life.”
At first, while working at his position as manager he was nervous being an ex-IC.
“In the first couple of months, it was always like, ‘What’s going to happen? Is somebody going to say, ‘Hey, you can’t be here,’ or, ‘You’re not supposed to be here?'” But after a while, I got comfortable with it. It’s just a sense of not belonging, but then I felt like I belonged because I fit in,” he said.
The garden keeps expanding. New hoop houses will allow year-round growing. Williams dreams bigger still—raising endangered Illinois fish species in the aquaponics system and reintroducing them to local waterways.
His family keeps scrapbooks of every story written about him, every appearance. They are proud of him and that pride drives him.
“I tell everybody in my family I’m going to work here forever,” Williams said, laughing. “They’re going to tell me, ‘Look here, old man, don’t come back.'”