HeyJaredGrace Hauck
- Indexed articles, last 90 days
- 6
- Latest publication
- Sep 25, 2026
- Outlet visibility, for Wvik
- Top 5M sites
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- Sep 15, 2026
Latest articles
How we built a database of Illinois jail records — and how you can use it to do your own digging (opens the original)
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More than four years in the making. Over 65,000 pages of government documents. Nearly a thousand records requests and over a hundred interviews. This is what it took to create the largest and most comprehensive database of conditions inside Illinois county jails. Our interactive dashboard allows you to select your county and see the "extraordinary or unusual” events happening inside your local jail. Statewide, the data reveals hundreds of incidents of forced medication, fires, sex offenses, seri
Unsanitary, unsupervised, understaffed: Most Illinois jails aren’t meeting minimum state standards (opens the original)
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Sitting in his Fayette County Jail cell in Vandalia, Illinois, earlier this year, Chad Hammond rarely saw guards. He said hours would go by without correctional officers conducting wellness checks, which are required every 30 minutes under state rules. “So if someone became injured, you would be forced to yell or bang on the walls, sometimes for hours,” Hammond wrote to the Illinois Answers Project. He’s now in prison for felony driving on a revoked license. Nearly seven hours once went by betwe
Two years after Illinois Answers exposed restraint-chair abuse, jails are doing better (opens the original)
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At least ten Illinois county jails that weren’t reporting their use of restraint chairs to a state monitoring unit began doing so after an Illinois Answers Project investigation revealed jails were dramatically underreporting incidents. Three other jails that were restraining people for long periods have since reported declines in restraint-chair use. The multi-part investigation, which was published starting in 2024, led to better oversight by the state’s jails-monitoring unit. It has also been
Dozens of deaths in Illinois jails missing from state records (opens the original)
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On a Sunday morning in March 2025, hours after Dennis Francis Barrett left his parents’ home in West Alton, Missouri, he got into the fender-bender that led to his death. Police officers responding to the crash found that Barrett, 38, had a warrant for violating probation on a 2019 marijuana possession charge. He was taken to Granite City Jail before being transferred to Madison County Jail. Despite repeatedly telling staff at both jails that he’d been in a car accident and was in worsening pain
Winnebago County guards fire pepperballs more than any other Illinois jail — often on people with mental illnesses (opens the original)
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Rockford, Ill. — A 28-year-old woman on suicide watch in the mental-health unit of Winnebago County Jail refused to surrender her clothing and hid in the corner of her cell. In response, an officer fired a pepperball launcher into the cell: a high-pressure air gun that propels projectiles containing chemical irritants. Three pepperballs struck the woman’s foot, broke apart and filled the small space with a burning cloud as she tried to wash herself off in the sink, according to records obtained
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