Janelle O'Dea
Investigative Reporter | Illinois Answers ProjectJanelle O鈥橠ea is an investigative reporter with the Illinois Answers Project鈥檚 State Investigations Team.
Before joining the newsroom, she worked at the Center for Public Integrity and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She is a graduate of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and grew up in Mahomet, a town located about 20 minutes from the UIUC campus.
Outside of work, she enjoys gardening and exploring new cities.
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Five dozen communities in Southern Illinois account for a third of the reported sanitary sewer overflows in the state in the last decade. But with low revenues, population declines, and bureaucratic delays, solutions are hard to come by. Meanwhile, residents face property damage flooded yards and basements and governments that still haven鈥檛 fixed the problem. -
Madison County Jail strapped people to chairs for hours, days. Many were mentally ill, in withdrawalOf all Illinois jails, Madison County has the most incidents of restraint lasting longer than 10 hours鈥搕he upper limit set by the chair manufacturer. The jail said they鈥檙e not equipped to care for so many mentally ill detainees. -
鈥業t gave us information that we couldn鈥檛 have received any other way鈥�: Local officials worry about Election Day problems, especially for voters who have recently moved.
