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While criminal justice reform has been a national bipartisan issue, here in Wisconsin, legislative Republicans are quarreling with themselves as they push for a “tougher on crime” package of bills that take a step backwards and moves our state in the wrong direction.
To date, 45 states have implemented some degree of criminal justice reform. Many states have experienced crime reductions while they’ve reduced incarceration. This is achieved by moving resources from incarceration—the most expensive criminal justice intervention—to more effective options like treatment and supervision—much less expensive.
In Congress, both parties joined together to pass The First Step Act in 2018. The law makes dozens of positive changes to our criminal justice system, including opportunities to be released from incarceration early, a reduction of mandatory minimums and investments in prisoner re-entry. The legislation was passed with the support of a Republican-controlled House and Senate with former Speaker Paul Ryan, Sen. Ron Johnson and Reps. James Sensenbrenner, Glenn Grothman and Mike Gallagher voting yea—as well as congressional Democrats.
If Republicans in Congress and states across the country can join Democrats in enacting the proven and effective policies that we have long advocated for, Wisconsin legislative Republicans can, too. The question for the public moving forward is why don’t legislative Republicans get it? Why do they disagree with their peers in Congress? Who’s right and who’s wrong?
Wisconsin Republican Legislators Are at Odds With Wisconsin Republicans in Congress
Wisconsin Republican legislators are wrong. Here’s why:
More incarceration does not mean less crime. The authors of the bills cite rising crime rates as justification for increased incarceration, yet incarceration has increased at the same time the crime rate has. Since 2013, the Legislature has increased penalties or created a new crime more than 50 times, and our prison population has grown, too. We don’t need more of what’s not working.
These bills will accelerate prison overcrowding, prison spending and push our prison system past the brink of what the current system can hold. If passed, these bills will require us to build a new prison or contract with private prisons out of state. On top of cost, these bills will worsen the already inexcusable racial disparities of our justice system.
Tough questions must be asked about what outcomes we should expect from passing these laws. How much crime, if any crime, will go down? What is the evidence that is true? Why has increased incarceration not worked to reduce crime in Wisconsin over the last decade? These are critical questions that Republican legislators should answer prior to casting a vote for or against any of these bills.
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There Are Alternatives That Have Been Proven to Work
Contrasting the Republican plans are reforms advanced by Democrats. Built from the experiences of other states, the “Wisconsin Corrections Reform and Reinvestment Initiative” is a package of three bills that would begin to safely reduce the state’s prison population while investing the savings in programs proven to reduce crime.
Each bill follows the same framework: reform-report-reinvest. Each bill includes statutory reforms to safely reduce the prison population. Each bill includes increased reporting and data collection to ensure the reforms produce the intended results. Finally, each bill directs the reinvestment of savings into proven recidivism-reducing programming. The reforms address noncriminal revocations, Wisconsin’s earned-release system and changes to community supervision.
Conservative and liberal organizations have supported these bipartisan reforms. Here in Wisconsin, conservative-leaning groups like Americans for Prosperity, the Badger Institute and Right on Crime have joined with liberal-leaning groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and WISDOM in working to bring this legislative reality to Wisconsin. These groups in Wisconsin, like their counterparts around the country, have conducted or reviewed the strong and growing evidence that criminal justice reform can be done safely.
It’s time we move away from the failed policies of the past and embrace the bipartisan success of criminal justice reform. The first step comes in rejecting the Republican proposals pending in Madison. The second is to work together, to collaborate like our work in 2018 on juvenile prisons, follow the evidence and examples of so many other states and usher in a smart-on-crime era in Wisconsin.
Evan Goyke is the representative for Wisconsin’s 18th Assembly District.
