Illinois had, at one point, the most crowded prisons in the nation. They're still technically over capacity, but it's no longer that extreme. In my opinion, if

Illinois had, at one point, the most crowded prisons in the nation. They're still technically over capacity, but it's no longer that extreme. In my opinion, if you want to throw more people in prison, you need to invest in the infrastructure to house them. Voters quickly lose their appetite for "Law and Order"/"Throw away the key" when the tax man comes by asking to build a new prison and hire more prison guards. I don't see many people advocating for more IDOC funding although I'm sure they exist. Should we be locking more people up? Maybe, but how are we going to pay for it? And is that really the correct answer when the United States incarceration rate is already several times higher than the OECD average? I would say the smarter course of action is to address root causes of these problems - building more prisons and trying to incarcerate our way out of the problem is just creating our own gulag archipelago.