Comforting Information

We're sleeping better at night, that's for sure:

• An estimated 50,000 felons have been released from Illinois prisons or county probation without submitting DNA samples as required by law, leaving a gaping hole in the 7-year-old program designed to link known criminals to unsolved crimes.

  The Illinois Department of Corrections released nearly 10,000 felons without gathering their DNA since the law was enacted. And Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan's office estimates that county probation departments did not secure samples from 40,000 additional felons, mostly in Cook County, due to delays in implementing the law.

  The missing DNA samples are of major concern to law-enforcement officials, lawmakers and victims advocates, who say Illinois has been robbed of the opportunity to solve crimes, remove violent offenders from the street and exonerate the wrongfully convicted.

And who's going to pay for all these missed opportunities? We the taxpaying public, in terms of being victims and in paying out to the wrongfully imprisoned. Damn, it's great living in the Land of Lincoln. Abe must be spinning in his grave.