Wisconsin’s prison system is heading toward disaster. It is a brakeless 18-wheeler speeding down a hill. This is a crisis that goes beyond political partisanship. According to a public opinion poll conducted last year, 91% of Americans say that the criminal justice system has problems that need fixing. Not only that, 71% say it is important to reduce the prison population in America—including 87% of Democrats, 67% of Independents and 57% of Republicans. This includes 52% of Donald Trump voters. The majority of Americans recognize racial bias in the criminal justice system; only one in three agree that black people are treated fairly.
In Wisconsin, we have more than 23,000 people locked up in prisons that were only supposed to accommodate 17,000. The Department of Corrections is currently renting out beds in county jails and has filled nearly all of the available space there. This is due in part to new state legislation that creates more penalties for more offenses and makes it easier to revoke probations and recommit people to prison.
On top of that, a person’s time spent obeying the law while on probation isn’t vested. Under so-called “Truth in Sentencing” provisions, a person is sentenced to time in prison and time on community supervision. They might be sentenced to two years in prison and two years out. If they miss an appointment with their parole officer 18 months into their supervision, they would get sent back to prison for the full two years and end up serving more time than they were originally sentenced to. Our practices are not aligned with our values. The criminal justice system is not entitled to emotion and vengeance. We have an obligation to pragmatism and solutions.
Wisconsin’s Lack of Criminal Justice Reform
There are red states—like Oklahoma and Michigan—that are passing good legislation on criminal justice reform. Bills passed in Michigan last year included establishing a maximum of 30 days of incarceration for parolees who commit technical violations. They have standardized consequences people can expect for violations, and a judge can reduce a defendant’s parole term after the defendant has completed half of it. For prisoners ages 18 to 22, the Michigan Department of Corrections is developing rehabilitation plans and providing programming designed for youth rehabilitation. The new legislation also requires more data collection, reporting and coordination between various state departments. This helps standardize and centralize expectations, enforcement and outcomes.
For some reason, our Wisconsin State Legislature hasn’t yet gotten this memo on criminal justice reform. In the past six years, they’ve passed about 70 bills that increase or create new penalties for criminal behavior. There were more than 15 of these types of bills considered in this legislative session alone, many of which have been passed.
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The bill we are currently fighting will revoke 600 more people from probation per year, while Wisconsin already sends about 3,000 people back to prison each year for what the Department of Corrections calls “revocation without a new offense”—meaning they simply broke a rule of their supervision in the community and were not charged with a new crime. This can mean missing an appointment, having a faulty ankle monitor go off while a person is sleeping and many other small infractions. As sociology professor Pamela Oliver of UW-Madison reports, “It costs an average of $47,500 for each crimeless revocation reentry after the first spell in prison.” This is an incredible amount of money that we are wasting. Wisconsin spent $1.2 billion on corrections services in 2017—more tax dollars than the state spent for almost any other purpose. According to the Wisconsin Budget Project, our state spends more on corrections than the national average and more than all of our neighboring states spend—Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota and Iowa. This is because we incarcerate a larger share of our population than they do.
We must address bias and eliminate racial disparities in criminal justice decision-making, from arrest to sentence to parole. The oldest alternative to incarceration is whiteness. There is vast discretion that exists in the criminal justice system; just look at the way the Waukesha girls were treated in the Slenderman case versus the way young African American men are treated in the criminal justice system in Milwaukee. We’re not suggesting the girls should have been treated differently, but that our response to all humans who commit crimes should be racially equitable. We can develop effective means of holding people accountable within the criminal justice system and beyond that increase safety in both the short and long terms, while addressing the socioeconomic and structural factors that make violence likely in the first place.
AODA and Earned Release
We are also failing to treat our communities’ problems with drugs and alcohol effectively. Some counties have begun to implement drug courts, but many individuals aren’t receiving pre-trial diversion to Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse (AODA) or mental health treatment and are simply being sentenced instead, and once they get to prison, there is no guarantee they will be helped to address the issues or addictions that got them there in the first place.
The Earned Release Program is a treatment program for AODA with steep requirements. The sentencing judge has to determine the person should participate, and the person can’t have a violent offense. Nonetheless, there are 5,900 people on the waiting list in prison who are eligible to participate. We know that an individual’s behavior is more likely to change the sooner intervention happens. Keeping people in prison on waiting lists to get treatment until they are almost ready to return to the community is not a good strategy for long-term behavioral change.
Right now, there are about 2,800 prisoners eligible for parole in Wisconsin because they have been in prison from before the Truth in Sentencing laws were implemented in 2000. Many of them are in minimum-security facilities, but the dysfunctional parole board has barely been releasing anyone for the past six years. If 400 people who were legally eligible for parole and currently on work release in the community were released entirely, the state would save more than $12 million per year.
We also have aging members of our prison population to consider. Denying the release of elderly people who are no longer considered dangerous defies public safety, financial sense, and compassion for seniors and their families. Older people pose fewer disciplinary problems during their incarceration and reoffend at lower rates upon release. The significant medical needs of elderly individuals make them an extraordinarily costly group to house, and prisons and jails are simply not equipped to handle the complexities involved in caring for aging adults.
It’s a complicated subject, but the bottom line is that our state is incarcerating too many people for too long and for the wrong reasons. It’s expensive, it damages our communities and families, and it doesn’t make our neighborhoods any safer. We need to immediately adopt smarter reforms. Please contact your state senator before Tuesday, March 20, and encourage him or her to vote against Wisconsin Senate Bill 54 (SB54).
Molly Collins is the deputy director of the Wisconsin ACLU; Emilio De Torre is its director of community engagement.
