WBEZ releases season 4 of “Motive” podcast

WBEZ has launched Season 4 of its investigative “Motive” podcast.

• Hosted by reporter Shannon Heffernan, this season explores Illinois prisons.

The origin: “It began with a tip a few man who died at Western Illinois Correctional Middle. We have been instructed he was overwhelmed by guards and commenced to research,” Heffernan tells Axios.

• “However the deeper we received into the story, the extra we realized this was not nearly one case — there had been allegations of abuse for years.”

The purpose: Look past just a few dangerous apples “to speak about the entire orchard — like what components of the jail system created circumstances the place this might occur?”

• “That set our workforce off on a 12 months’s lengthy journey, that landed us in some sudden locations: small-town parades, native political races, and a trove of emails between jail guards.”

Largest shock: “One thing known as the jail sweepstakes, the place small cities in Illinois competed within the ’80s and ’90s to ‘win’ prisons, and the roles that include them.”

Heffernan’s hope: “That folks with lots of totally different views on incarceration and crime will hear to those tales,” and be taught that prisons do not have to be this fashion.

? In the meantime, Heffernan says she is presently listening to the “Consider Her” podcast.

• “I additionally actually beloved ‘Someone’ from the Invisible Institute.”