Kudos to you, WBEZ audience. For nine months, we’ve been trying to get an interview with Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn to talk about his policies and plans around the state’s billion-dollar-per-year prison system. Thursday he committed to doing an interview, though it may be a few months from now. So keep those questions coming.
Illinois has a $1.4 billion contract with Wexford Health Sources, a private company that provides health care for inmates. But inmates say they’re not getting the care that taxpayers are paying for.
Every day white vans pull into the parking lot of the Amtrak station in Effingham, in southern Illinois. From a distance they look like regular 15-passenger vans, until you notice the metal screen separating the driver and passengers. Those passengers are some of the 33,000 men and women that leave Illinois prisons annually — with few possessions — but lots of baggage.
The Illinois Department of Corrections has told the union for prison workers that they plan to start housing men in the gymnasiums at six already overcrowded prisons.
Effingham is a town of 12,000, about three hours south of Chicago. When it comes to gun violence and proposals to ban guns, you hear a common refrain here: “It wasn’t the gun it was the guy behind it.”