The director of the Iowa Department of Corrections has traveled to Illinois to observe a prison there that’s only housing people convicted of drug offenses.
Corrections director Gary Maynard says the 13-hundred inmates in the prison in Sheridan, Illinois, are in substance abuse treatment 24 hours a day, and even the prison’s guards are engaged in helping the inmates kick their addictions.
Maynard says the Illinois “drug prison” is full of “hard-core…tough offenders” and is having success with their intensive treatment program. If legislators decide to build a new, maximum-security prison in Iowa, Maynard is mulling the idea of converting the Iowa State Penitentiary in Fort Madison to a “drug prison” where inmates would get intensive drug treatment, hopefully kicking an addiction before being paroled.