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By Alexandria Staubach
A group of system-impacted individuals is building a coalition seeking to disrupt stagnation around criminal justice reform by using connection. Personal connection with legislators will be at the forefront. The group plans to build a relationship with every member of the Legislature, regardless of party or politics. Shannon Ross, founder and executive director of The Community, leads the effort. WJI recently sat down with Ross to talk about the coalition, its goals, and how they plan to achieve them. “As a society we should seek more collaboration,” said Ross. “There are (legislators) who genuinely agree with us,” he told WJI, “and maybe our goals are unpopular with their constituents, but we are going to find a way to connect with them … a way to help their constituents understand.” Coalitions are common among organizations, but this group intentionally includes individuals regardless of what other affiliations or professions they have. Ross hopes everyone involved will have the ability to act independently from positions that other organizations may take. Messaging will be central to the group’s success, Ross said. “We need big numbers,” he said. “We need a lot of engaged people to make this work.” The coalition includes individuals from all over Wisconsin. So far, everyone participating has engaged in policy work and two are already registered lobbyists—numbers the group hopes to expand, Ross said. While the current group members are mostly directly system-impacted individuals, Ross wants to avoid only engaging those who are system impacted. “We need everyone,” he said. Structurally, the coalition is intentionally built in opposition to the experience people have within the system, meaning there is no top-down hierarchy. It is organized from the middle outward, comprised solely of committees. While the group will have a “coalition coordinator,” no one individual will be a central figure. Ross does not anticipate winning that role. He hopes he will be able to fade into the background of coalition’s work. Ross says he was inspired by gridlock in the Legislature. He has observed “a consistent failure to get anything across the finish line that was something serious,” he told WJI. He hopes the group will be able to cross party lines and end what he described as “two decades without any real policy change.” Over the summer, the group participated in a retreat, speaking with Milwaukee County Circuit Court Chief Judge Carl Ashley and former Department of Corrections secretary Kevin Carr, who left that job in 2024. While the group is still fleshing out all of its goals, Ross said he anticipates their short list will include capping supervision, and overturning truth in sentencing will be a long-term project. The coalition is still recruiting members. According to the Wisconsin Division of Community Correction year-end review, 18,909 people were on extended supervision at the end of December. Extended supervision can last decades, requiring adherence to 18 or more rules during all that time. People often find themselves back in custody for rule violations alone. In November 2024, 48% of people admitted to Wisconsin prisons were admitted solely due to revocation of supervision, regardless of whether an individual had new pending criminal charges; 16.6% of admissions were for revocations resulting from a new criminal sentence.
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 By Alexandria Staubach
On April 4, the Dane County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved doubling the daily wage rate paid to in-custody workers at the county jail. Incarcerated persons at the jail previously earned a wage of $3 per day for their work. Resolution 382 lifts the wage to $6 per day. The county said in the resolution that the prior rate was "insufficient” and that it would seek additional means to improve wages and combat poverty upon reentry for incarcerated persons, calling the wage raise an “interim step.” The Dane County resolution recognizes that most correctional facilities in the United States do not pay the $6 a day the county now will, and that Dane County seeks to “be an example for other communities on this issue.” Dane County has been spending about $24,000 per year on wages to incarcerated persons. The doubled annual cost is unlikely to impact the sheriff’s budget, according to a consensus of the county’s Personnel & Finance Committee. The resolution does not provide for more jobs at the jail. In November, several Democratic legislators introduced a package of 17 bills to improve conditions at correctional facilities throughout the state. The package included Assembly Bill 816/Senate Bill 862 to raise the minimum wage for incarcerated people in jails and prisons to a minimum of $2.33 per hour, which is the rate for tipped workers. The bills, introduced in December 2023, did not progress before the Legislature adjourned last month. The Dane County resolution was sponsored by Dana Pellebon, Kierstin Huelsemann, Michele Ritt, Sarah Smith, Heidi Wegleitner, and April Kigeya. By Gretchen Schuldt The number of paroles granted last year was down 82% from a peak just three years earlier, Department of Corrections figures show. The number plummeted from 201 in 2020 to just 37 in 2023.  Source: Wisconsin Department of Corrections What happened?
“We’re trying to figure that out, too,” said Mark Rice, Transformation Justice Campaign coordinator at WISDOM. The nonprofit has long been active in criminal justice reform efforts. DOC did not respond to a request for reasons behind the decline. Inmates eligible for parole are those who were convicted of crimes that occurred before the state's 1999 truth-in sentencing laws took effect. Those laws eliminated parole. The drop seems part of reduced efforts to lower prison populations, Rice said. Gov. Evers and DOC Secretary Kevin Carr took steps to cut populations during the Covid pandemic but now “it’s back to business as usual,” Rice said. The number of parole-eligible inmates declines each year as more die or serve out their sentences, but the drop in grants also appears linked to Evers' 2019 hiring and then de facto dismissal in mid-2022 of Parole Commissioner Chair John Tate II. The rise and fall in grant numbers neatly matches the dates of Tate’s employment. The Republicans ran ads attacking Tate's use of parole to release incarcerated individuals, Rice said. “Some of it was total lies” and there were “a lot of attempts to dehumanize people,” he said. Tate’s Parole Commission, which granted parole to some serious offenders, brought Evers under heavy political pressure as he sought reelection in 2022. First Evers intervened in May 2022 to successfully request Tate to rescind a decision to parole convicted murderer Douglas Balsewicz, who stabbed his wife to death in front of their children. Less than a month later, in June, Tate was gone after Evers asked him to resign. He was replaced by former State Sen. Jon Erpenbach, who assumed office in January 2023. Parole grant numbers followed the events: there were 43 grants in the first quarter of 2022, before the Balsewicz controversy blew up; then 31 in the second quarter, as the drama unfolded and Evers requested Tate's resignation. The number of grants dropped after Tate left to 19 in the third quarter and 18 in the fourth, according to DOC figures. Meanwhile, those who were paroled during Tate's tenure generally are doing well and making positive contributions in their communities, Rice said. "No human being is irredeemable," he said. Evers ran on pledges to reduce the prison population, but he and Carr have not done what is within their power, including commuting sentences and granting more compassionate releases to seriously ill inmates, he said. In Wisconsin prisons, Rice said, "The problem isn't understaffing. It's overpopulation." By Gretchen Schuldt Advocacy groups on Tuesday called on Gov. Tony Evers to expand the compassionate release program to allow the release of more aged and infirm incarcerated people from state prisons. "The prison health system cannot handle a massive outbreak of COVID-19. State officials must work to keep our communities safe without putting those serving prison sentences at unnecessary risk," the groups said in a letter to Evers. "You and the DOC (Department of Corrections) must act now to release some of those imprisoned. Lives really are at stake." The letter was signed by the Wisconsin Justice Initiative; the ACLU of Wisconsin; the Milwaukee Turners Confronting Mass Incarceration Committee; the National Lawyers Guild, Milwaukee Chapter; and WISDOM. The groups requested Evers to direct DOC to "aggressively" use the program to release qualified, low risk-people from "our overcrowded, understaffed prisons." "Wider use of compassionate release will reduce prison crowding and help prevent the spread of coronavirus," the groups wrote. "It will reduce stress on prison medical staff and take a long overdue step toward making the compassionate release program an effective and useful tool. The risks posed by coronavirus to too many incarcerated people are greater than the risks these people pose to the public. "   By Gretchen Schuldt The State Building Commission chaired by Gov. Scott Walker rejected Department of Corrections' recommendations that would help two prisons comply with Prison Rape Elimination Act guidelines, records show. And the Republican Legislature went along. DOC requested $9.4 million to replace Adams and Harris Halls at Taycheedah Correctional Institution. Both have numerous problems stemming in part from their age – they were opened in the early 1900s – and are at their population capacity or over. In addition, according to DOC's budget request, "Adams Hall also has a lack of cameras making it non-compliant with Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) guidelines." The State Building Commission recommended no money be spent to replace or renovate the building, but called for Walker's Department of Administration to "conduct a comprehensive long range master plan of DOC facilities."  The commission also recommended the state entirely reject a $20 million request for the first phase of a housing unit replacement project at Fox Lake Correction Institution.
Citing a litany of problems with the existing units, DOC said in its budget request, "The layout of the older buildings has been problematic and each building requires two sergeants, where the newer buildings in the DOC system with this security level contain more beds and can be staffed with a single sergeant. Building layouts are not fully compliant with federal Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) guidelines." That request, too, was rejected. Again, the commission recommended a long-range facilities study. The Legislature earmarked $600,000 for the study. Walker Administration officials, in at least a public relations nod to the prison rape problem, said they disbanded the DOC internal investigative team that uncovered abuses at the state's juvenile prisons so DOC could put more effort into preventing and investigating sexual assaults behind bars. Leaders of the internal team said their jobs were changed because they had done their jobs too well, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Updated Oct. 27 - Department of Corrections spokesman Tristan Cook contends the posted below is misleading because, he said, it misinterprets a statement in the department’s 2017-19 capital budget request. WJI stands by the post. The statement was a direct quote from the budget request: "Adams Hall also has a lack of cameras making it non-compliant with Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) guidelines." Cook said an audit based on a November 2015 site visit found the prison PREA-compliant. No mention of the audit was included in the Taycheedah budget request. The department’s budget request was not meant to bring the prison into compliance, "but rather to build on our current compliance by examining ways that we can exceed standards and create an even safer environment for staff and inmates," he wrote. DOC takes a conservative approach when doing self-assessments of PREA compliance, he said. The disputed quote “reflects DOC’s opinion of its compliance, not the results of the audit, which is the only opinion which affects our statutory compliance,” Cook said in another email. (Emphasis added) |
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