Illinois Spending $428 Million Per Year To Keep Elderly Inmates Behind Bars

Bill Heirens, infamous as Chicago's "Lipstick Killer," is the longest-serving inmate in the Illinois prison system. He's been behind bars since the age of 17, when he confessed to three gruesome murders that dominated the news headlines throughout the summer of '46.

Housed at Dixon Correctional Center, the 82-year-old Heirens can't get out of bed or bathe himself, and his cataract-plagued eyes have left him unable to read. He has severe diabetes and gets shots of insulin twice a day, along with a cocktail of other medications. Nurses constantly change bandages on his legs, where diabetic sores weep fluids.

Read the whole story: Chicago Reader

Comments

[Aldyth]

10:15 AM on 01/06/2011

Do not even begin to think that these convicts should be put into community nursing homes.

[ritgar]

12:54 PM on 01/06/2011

Absolutely! We already have a problem in Illinois with younger, disturbed offenders being placed in nursing homes & injuring older residents.

[thepoliticalcat]

09:19 PM on 01/05/2011

Divided on this issue. The pedophile Kenneth Parnell (who was the subject of the movie, "I Know My First Name Is Steven") was recently convicted of attempting to buy a young child. He was in his mid-70s at the time of the crime.

[George Hanshaw]

06:59 PM on 01/05/2011

Seems like now would be the time to have some death panels to decide who stays in jail and who just gets put down.....