For decades, lawmakers would trade votes to get a new bridge in their district for a tough vote on a tax increase to fund infrastructure. But legislators are considering a proposal to get rid of that practice.

Staff at the Danville Correctional Center in east-central Illinois removed about 200 books from a college in prison program's library earlier this year. A majority of the books removed from Education Justice Project's library are about race.

Floodwaters on the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers may be going down, but rain has continued to soak farmland around much of the state. More rain could be on the way later this month.

In one town in the Metro East, across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, police are forcing landlords to evict tenants who have called for help during an overdose because they have heroin or other controlled substances in their rental property.

Last year, the department requested and received $7,000 to spend on educational supplies. This year, the agency requested $350,000, according to Lindsey Hess, a spokesperson for IDOC.

If the proposed budget is approved by state lawmakers, IDOC Director John Baldwin said a portion of the funding would be used to purchase books for state prisons.

Illinois continues to lose residents, according to estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau released in April. Overall, around 45,000 fewer people lived in the state in 2018 than 2017, a loss of about 0.4%.

Since February, patients in Illinois have been able to swap their opioid prescriptions for marijuana. And many are doing just that.

Just because someone has four walls around them every night, that doesn’t mean they’re housed. That’s what Paul Hamann believes. He’s the president and CEO of the Night Ministry, a Chicago-based non-profit that provides shelter and healthcare services to the homeless.

Illinois Newsroom has been covering the struggle to find affordable housing around the state. The lack of funding to build housing for people with low-incomes is one challenge. But city governments can influence where and how housing is built through their zoning rules.

There are roughly 200 college in prison programs nationwide, including in Illinois, and there's debate over whether they make a difference.