You may recall Alonso D. Travis, even if you never knew his name.He was the guy who hit you up for money on downtown sidewalks and store parking lots along Jefferson Street and on North Grand Avenue. ]]> Illinois’ system of warehousing juvenile delinquents doesn’t work, according to a state-appointed reform group calling for sweeping changes in how youth offenders are handled.The Illinois ]]> Calvin Christian III was jailed Thursday for the second time in a week after he failed to produce required financial paperwork in connection with a collection action by the City of Springfield. S]]> On the stand, Tremayne Willis sounded exactly like the former soldier that he is.Answers were short, lots of “Yes, sirs” and “No, sirs” as Willis, charged with first-degree mur]]> “I want to make it clear,” Lex Green says with wry inflection, “that Libertarians are not just another type of Republican. Democrats tell you they’re going to raise taxes and s]]> The Boys and Girls Club of Central Illinois is back and moving forward, says Douglas King, the organization’s new full-time executive director and the first since Jill Schurtz left the organizat]]> When Steffen Spinks was a young boy growing up in Manteca, Calif., his mother didn’t want him to spend his time playing basketball. She encouraged Spinks to get involved in other sports because ]]> A new playground in Springfield’s Gehrmann Park will serve as an anchor in a neighborhood that is revitalizing itself one step at a time.On Sept. 25, about 200 volunteers converged on Gehrmann P]]> More than 50 people assembled on the steps of the Capitol Friday, wearing tan, gray and blue T-shirts that carried their message: Break the Silence in Sri Lanka. The crowd —]]> Fed up with blight, activists in Enos Park are taking the law into their own hands.The Enos Park Neighborhood Improvement Association is suing the owners of a home at 1144 N. Sixth St., hoping for an ]]> Putting a halt to early prison release in Illinois has cost the state $153 million a year, says one prison reform advocate. Meanwhile, inmates complain of cockroaches in their cells and a lack of reha]]> In 2010, Illinois prisons held 223 C-Number inmates who had been there for more than 30 years. These inmates were a part of a sentencing scheme from a different era.C-Number inmates are prisoners who ]]> When Jasper Madonia started working in downtown Springfield in 1939, the downtown was a different place from today. He describes a bustling place so busy that he had to push his way through the crowds]]> Kevin Greene of Springfield still remembers getting his first bicycle as a child. “It took me a long time to figure out how to ride a bike, but once I learned, I never looked back,” Greene]]> Two doctors stood on opposing sides as the Illinois Senate was preparing to vote on legalizing medical marijuana.Dr. Dora Dixie, an addiction specialist from Chicago, argues that marijuana is highly a]]> When the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice was created in 2006, the state’s youth prisons held 1,500 juvenile offenders. Today, there are fewer than 900 kids behind bars in Illinois juveni]]> Jumping several feet into the air, a single silver carp can knock a boat driver unconscious before a passenger even has time to say “Duck!”For that reason, the Illinois Natural History Sur]]>