When Rod Blagojevich was running for governor in 2002, he promised that Sheridan Correctional Center would stay open.

If memory serves me correctly, Governor George Ryan had it on his closure list in his efforts to save the state money.

While it could have been turned into an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility for the Chicago metropolitan area, instead of trying for that alternative use, Blagojevich turned it into a drug treatment center for convicts.

A couple of years later I heard a rumor that parole agents were being discouraged from discovering violations by those paroled from Sheridan.

If parolees weren’t sent back to prison, the drug treatment program would be a success, right?

Now that we have a new governor, I wonder if anyone has figured out what was rumored is happening and, if it is, whether parole agents have been freed to do the job for which Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart worked so hard to get hired when he was a state representative.

The article you see reminded me of the rumor.