Illinois taxpayers spend more than a billion dollars every year on prisons.
We’ve been looking at one state prison in Vienna, in far southern Illinois.
Yesterday we heard how --not so many years ago--prison inmates staffed the ambulance service and took care of residents who were having medical emergencies.
It’s far different than life there now.
So, today, we’re digging a little deeper into the history of this prison, a history that reminds us of the decades-long neglect suffered by the Illinois Department of Corrections.
WBEZ’s Robert Wildeboer reports.
