Pritzker Defends Denials of Medical Release Requests from Dying and Disabled Prisoners
•September 13, 2023•
By Carlos Ballesteros
Injustice Watch
This article is an update to the original story, which was produced by WBEZ, Chicago’s NPR news station, and Injustice Watch, a nonprofit news organization in Chicago focused on issues of equity and justice in the court system.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker defended the number of dying and disabled prisoners released under a landmark law that went into effect early last year at a news conference Thursday.
“The Coleman Act is, in fact, being carried out as it should be,” Pritzker told reporters in response to an Injustice Watch and WBEZ investigation, which found only 52 prisoners had been granted release under the law — far below the hundreds of terminally ill and incapacitated prisoners advocates say could have been released by now.