Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias on Thursday announced his office is awarding $420,000 in grants to state prison libraries, marking the first time that reading centers for inmates have received significant public dollars in years.
That comes out to $15,000 for books, magazines, newspapers and supplies inside libraries at each of the state’s 28 prisons, according to Giannoulias, who called it his office’s most significant investment in the prison library system since the 1980s — and the first public funding of any kind dedicated to them since 2017.
