Illinois inmates charged with escape double over past decade

CHICAGO (WLS) -- Kankakee escapee Kamron Taylor is not alone; right now there are 20 dangerous fugitives in Illinois who went on the lam in recent years and are still missing from prison work release programs or after jumping parole. A few prisoners who have gone off the grid manage to stay missing for years, long after SWAT officers have packed it in and gone home.

Over the past 10 years, the number of inmates being held on escape charges in Illinois has doubled. While most of those are walkaways from minimum security facilities, halfway houses, home confinement or treatment centers in Illinois and elsewhere, some are considered armed and dangerous. State correction department officials say since 2005 an additional 11 inmates actually broke out of secured facilities (prisons) and escaped. All 11 of them were apprehended, officials said.

As Kankakee authorities stage a nationwide dragnet to find Taylor, a murderer who vamoosed from the county jail, there is a less intense effort to recover fugitive walkaways or parole violators.

In addition to Taylor, currently there are seven additional Illinois prisoners listed in state records as escapees considered "armed and dangerous." Those seven were assigned to state prisons according to state fugitive listings but "walked away from Adult Transition Centers and never returned" according to Nicole Wilson, communications director for the Illinois Department of Corrections. The missing corrections dept. fugitives are "technically considered an escape" said Ms. Wilson on Friday, even though she says they "did not escape from a state prison" but rather from work release facilities normally afforded to prisoners near the end of their terms.

There are additional escapees from local and county facilities, such as Taylor, who managed to walk early Wednesday morning from the Kankakee County Jail.

"Conducting an investigation, one that assumes he's still in this area - others that are looking anywhere else in the state and throughout the United States," said Kankakee County Sheriff Tim Bukowski.

The escapee had a head start in Kankakee and now has had 32 hours to get away.

By vehicle, even driving the speed limit, that could put him anywhere from Key West to Edmonton to Halifax and anywhere in between. Time and the distance are the escapee's best friend.

Another 13 men on parole in Illinois for violent crimes are also on the lam, and some escapees from the state have never been caught.

At Menard Penitentiary, 60 years ago this month, Check kiter Harlan Graham got away for good; he was never found. Today, he would be 112 years old.

During 2005, Illinois Corrections Dept. records show that there were 181 prisoners imprisoned on some escape-related charges. That jumped to 238 inmates in 2010 and 374 inmates in 2013." "Most of those were escape admissions from other local jurisdictions and could include electronic monitoring violations" says Wilson.

While pictures in Kankakee portray a serious effort to hunt down Taylor, what happens in a week or a year if he's not caught?

Authorities say they never stop looking for prison fugitives but the reality is that at some point, the full-court press ends.

Nationally, jail breaks are down thanks to technology and better building design. But there are still more than 1,000 escapes a year across the U.S.