Decades into the “tough on crime era,” Wisconsin still struggles to stem the tide of violent crime, and lawmakers remain divided on how to keep communities safe. In 2017, State Sen. Leah Vukmir (R-Brookfield) and State Rep. Joe Sanfelippo (R-New Berlin) introduced eight bills (known collectively as the “victim prevention package”) that aim to reduce crime rates by targeting habitual offenders.
Vukmir, who is running in the Republican primary to challenge Sen. Tammy Baldwin in the 2018 U.S. Senate race, wrote in a press release that the bills would “protect communities from repeat violent criminals.” Many of her ideas for achieving that goal follow a familiar template: mandatory minimums, stiffer sentences for specific crimes and other policies that would put more people behind bars for longer periods of time.
The Wisconsin State Senate approved one of the bills over the summer and five more this past November. Some ideas, like a bill expanding opportunities for record expungement, have received bipartisan support. Overall, however, opponents say the package reflects a longstanding and flawed outlook on criminal justice that needs to be radically rethought.
“I am skeptical that increasing criminal penalties will deter repeat offenders,” says Rep. Evan Goyke (D-Milwaukee), a former public defender who serves on the Assembly Corrections Committee. “By definition, a repeat offender has not been deterred by criminal penalties.” Goyke notes that the state has increased criminal sanctions about 50 times since he was elected in 2012, and crime has continued to rise.
Critics also worry that Vukmir’s and Sanfelippo’s bills would worsen some of the justice system’s existing problems, including overcrowding, racial discrimination and mistreatment of juveniles. As the legislation moves on to the State Assembly, opponents are pushing for large-scale alternative reforms.
Prison Overcrowding
One of the more controversial bills in the victim prevention package is Senate Bill 54, which would require the Department of Corrections (DOC) to recommend revoking parole or probation for anyone charged with a felony or “violent misdemeanor” while under its supervision. Again, this is charged, not convicted.
The DOC estimates the bill would result in an additional 1,800 people being sent to prison every year. Some legislators have praised the measure as a way to prevent habitual criminals from causing further harm, but others worry about the strain it would put on a prison system that is dangerously overcrowded as it is.
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Wisconsin’s incarcerated population has tripled in the last 30 years, and its prisons currently hold more than 23,000 inmates—thousands more than they were designed for. Gretchen Schuldt, executive director of the Wisconsin Justice Initiative, says overcrowding not only creates security risks for inmates and staff, it also leaves fewer resources to go around. “It affects everything,” Schuldt says. “There’s less money for maintenance, less money for repairs. And the DOC has made it abundantly clear that some of these facilities already need massive repairs.”
To manage the bed shortage, the DOC contracts with county jails to house inmates. Now approaching the limit of available contract beds, it may soon have to either contract with private, out-of-state prisons or build a new facility. A new prison, the DOC estimates, would cost $300 million to build. In 2017, the state spent $1.2 billion on corrections. If SB54 were to become law, the DOC estimates it would cost $57 million a year to manage the resulting influx. “If they keep pushing to lock people up, we’re going to do nothing but fund prisons,” says Schuldt.
Vukmir and Sanfelippo have argued that although increased sentences are costly, they spare taxpayers the “greater cost” of losing their loved ones or feeling unsafe in their communities. However, the bill would also apply to non-violent felonies, including all opiate-related crimes. For this reason, Goyke says, someone charged with a crime while participating in Milwaukee’s Drug Treatment Court would likely have to leave the program to return to prison, where treatment might not be available. Due to overcrowding, alcohol and other drug abuse (AODA) treatment programs and mental health services for inmates are in shorter supply, with thousands on waiting lists to receive them.
“This is an example of how re-incarcerating people is sometimes counter to public safety,” Goyke says. “These addiction programs are making us safer [by] putting families back together [and] putting people back in the workforce. Ideas like SB54 interrupt that framework.”
Juvenile Justice
Motivated by a spate of carjackings committed by teenagers, the victim prevention package includes two bills toughening sentences for juveniles. Under current law in Wisconsin, young people who commit certain serious offenses can be placed in a secured facility for up to three years. One of Vukmir’s and Sanfelippo’s bills would lift that three-year limit, while another would increase the number of crimes that qualify as serious juvenile offenses.
Youth incarceration in Wisconsin has declined dramatically over the past few years, and Lincoln Hills School for Boys is now about 70% vacant. For years, the youth prison has been the subject of multiple lawsuits and an ongoing FBI investigation following numerous allegations of abuse and neglect. “Lincoln Hills is an unsafe and inhumane place for young people,” says Sharlen Moore, executive director of Urban Underground and co-founder of Youth Justice Milwaukee (YJM), a coalition that advocates for juvenile justice reform.
In January 2018, Gov. Scott Walker announced a plan to close Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake School for Girls and build several new regional facilities for youth offenders across the state. Under this plan, the Lincoln Hills facility would be converted into an adult penitentiary. Walker has resisted calls to close the prison in the past, and some of his critics have suggested he’s only changing his stance now to dodge a scandal in an election year. But others welcome the reversal and are pushing to expedite the change, which Walker initially said would go in the 2019-’21 state budget. In his statement on closing Lincoln Hills, Walker promised a new focus on “mental health and trauma-informed care” which many say is lacking from the current system.
Young offenders often have mental health needs or grow up in unstable environments where they experience trauma at an early age. Effective rehabilitation, some argue, must take those factors into account. “The philosophy in Madison right now is that, when someone does something wrong, you lock them away. It doesn’t really matter what their life experience has been,” says Alderman Cavalier Johnson of Milwaukee’s Second District. “We set them up with not much opportunity, and when they slip, we throw the book at them.”
This mindset, Johnson says, fails to distinguish the inveterate criminal from the first-time offender who, with the right support, could be guided toward a better path. Such support is unlikely to come through incarceration—especially at a site as troubled as Lincoln Hills, where two out of three residents reoffend within three years of their release.
YJM supports placing young offenders in community-based programs closer to home, making it easier to involve families in the rehabilitation process. “Developmentally, a young person succeeds well when they have connections and deep ties to the family and communities that love them,” Moore says. “We need to create regional spaces where young people can be supported as opposed to sending them to a place that continues to harm them.”
In spite of the capital cost for building new facilities, Goyke says, a more supportive approach that lowers recidivism “has the potential to save massive amounts of money,” over time. A YJM survey found that majorities of both Democrats and Republicans in Milwaukee County supported reforming the youth justice system by shifting its emphasis from punishment to rehabilitation.
Front-End Reform
In promoting the victim prevention package, Vukmir and Sanfelippo have spoken of the value of rehabilitation but held onto the conviction that tougher penalties make for safer streets. “We keep doing the same old thing and getting the same results,” Moore says.
Those results include a glaring racial disparity in the criminal justice system, which Moore says would worsen under these new bills. A UW-Milwaukee study found that Wisconsin incarcerated black men at a rate of nearly 13%—the highest in the country—compared with 1.2% of white men. Since the 1990s, the gap has grown along with the prison population, fueled by strict sentencing laws that are disproportionately enforced for people of color.
Of course, this inequality goes well beyond the courtroom. Milwaukee is among the most segregated cities in America, and its majority African American neighborhoods have long been under-resourced and systematically disadvantaged. “We all know what happens in communities like Milwaukee, in large urban areas where there aren’t enough opportunities for people to grow,” Johnson says. “When you concentrate all the negative social indicators in a very compacted space, what happens as a result of that?”
Johnson cites Milwaukee zip code 53206—which continues to have a high crime rate despite being the most incarcerated zip code in America—as proof that lawmakers can’t punish their way out of the problem. Instead of spending millions on longer sentences that damage communities, Johnson recommends the state invest in those communities, funding quality early childhood education and trauma-informed care.
Milwaukee neighborhoods with high incarceration rates also face high unemployment, perpetuating a cycle of instability, poverty and crime. Providing more job opportunities, or affordable public transportation connecting Milwaukee residents to jobs in the surrounding area, could have a profound impact on this front. “We’re not looking at the picture holistically,” Moore says. “We need to make sure that able-bodied people in this city have an opportunity to work for a livable wage that can support their families.”
The link between community-based investments, especially in early childhood education, and crime reduction is well researched and increasingly understood. However, the Wisconsin legislature continues to favor tough-on-crime methods even as other states embrace progressive reforms. “Wisconsin just seems stuck in the ’90s; lock ’em up and throw away the key,” Schuldt says. As prisons burst at the seams and violent crime persists, opponents hope leaders will consider alternatives that put less pressure on the criminal justice system while making communities stronger and safer.
“Neighborhoods can experience drastic reductions in crime, but it really has nothing to do with long prison sentences,” Goyke says. “It has more to do with empowering people, wrapping the community around troubled individuals and engaging young people in a positive way.”
