By Chuck Goudie
ABC News
CHICAGO — Kankakee escapee Kamron Taylor is not alone; right now there are 20 dangerous fugitives in Illinois who went on the lam in recent years and are still missing from prison work release programs or after jumping parole. A few prisoners who have gone off the grid manage to stay missing for years, long after SWAT officers have packed it in and gone home.
Over the past 10 years, the number of inmates being held on escape charges in Illinois has doubled. While most of those are walkaways from minimum security facilities, halfway houses, home confinement or treatment centers in Illinois and elsewhere, some are considered armed and dangerous. State correction department officials say since 2005 an additional 11 inmates actually broke out of secured facilities (prisons) and escaped. All 11 of them were apprehended, officials said.
As Kankakee authorities stage a nationwide dragnet to find Taylor, a murderer who vamoosed from the county jail, there is a less intense effort to recover fugitive walkaways or parole violators.
Full story: Illinois inmates charged with escape double over past decade