Evers' budget: the criminal justice breakdown

By Alexandria Staubach

Last week Governor Evers’ biennial budget made headlines for being both dead on arrival as far as Republicans are concerned, and for including a near 20% increase in spending for everything from education to PFAS contamination. Evers also called it “the most pro-kid budget in state history” during his Biennial Budget Message.

But there is more to Evers’ budget than the Year of the Kid.

Before the budget dropped, Evers laid out his comprehensive plan to overhaul the state’s prison network without building a new adult facility, contracting capacity instead of expanding it.

The troubled Green Bay Correctional Institution would be shuttered. Stanley Correctional Institution would be converted to a maximum-security facility. Waupun Correctional Institution would be transformed into a “vocational village,” where incarcerated individuals would learn job skills. Juvenile institutions Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake would be reorganized to create Lincoln Correctional Institution for adults, while a new juvenile detention center would be built in Dane County.

You can read more about that plan here.

But that’s not all Evers envisions for the criminal justice system. He proposes noteworthy expansions of community supervision and changes within the criminal justice system to stem a “skyrocketing” prison population.

In his budget, Evers highlighted that the state’s prison population is projected to reach over 24,000 individuals at the end of the 2025-2027 biennium. He recognized that “without meaningful reform” the state will continue to see “expensive population increases without a corresponding impact on outcome.”

While the budget deals with several measures that have previously failed (like the legalization of marijuana), it includes some new reforms.

The budget calls for the creation of an ombudsperson office within the Department of Corrections, a move those in the criminal justice space have long hoped for but had also hoped might take a slightly different form.

The office would accept and investigate complaints regarding facilities, abuse, unfair acts, and violations of rights of persons in the care of the department.

"Ombudsman" is a Swedish word meaning “representative of the people.” The role was intended to protect the rights of individuals against the abuse of royal power in 1800s Sweden," said Rebecca Aubart, executive director of Ladies of SCI, a nonpartisan collective of women with loved ones at Stanley Correctional Institution. 

"This office would not be a true Ombudsman office," Aubart told Wisconsin Justice Initiative. She and Ladies of SCI are advocating for an office that is separate from and independent of the DOC. 

The DOC already has the Institution Complaint Examiner (ICE),  which currently manages oversight and is a part of DOC, Aubart said.  "This would be ICE 2.0." 

"We are very encouraged that the governor has put together a plan to start making desperately needed changes in our state prisons, but it is not just up to him," Aubart said in reference to the roadblocks Evers' budget will face in the Legislature.  

Evers allocates more than $2 million for the project with 11 new employee positions.

That $2 million allocation is just a drop in the department’s overall bucket, which according to The Wisconsin Policy Forum exceeds the national average and is more than in most neighboring states. While DOC spending is down over past years, the state has already allocated more than $1.7 billion for 2025. Evers’ proposal suggests a 14.9% increase in overall DOC spending in 2026.

In addition to proposing closure of prisons and creation of the ombudsperson office, Evers wants to allocate more funds for the internal affairs office to “promptly complete cases and more quickly provide resolution to staff under investigation.”

His budget recommends expansion of earned release programs and residential community alternatives to revocation (by 100 beds). Programs would include the DOC’s mother-young child program, which ACLU of Wisconsin litigation recently showed has been underused.

Finally, Evers wants to transform the state’s Treatment, Alternative, and Diversion (TAD) program, which historically operated as a grant program, to persuade counties to offer alternatives to incarceration. Evers recommends moving the TAD program to the Director of State Courts’ Office. Instead of a grant program, funding for county participation would come from $70 million in annual funding for circuit court operations. Evers said these changes would ensure the program is offered statewide. Three full-time positions would be transferred from the Wisconsin Department of Justice to the Director of State Courts Office to help administer TAD programs at the counties.

Evers’ DOC budget proposals for the DOC alone cover 126 pages. Hundreds more pages deal with courts, law enforcement, and other aspects of the criminal justice system. Here are just some of the additional budget recommendations Evers proposes:

• $20 million to establish crisis urgent care and observation centers and related services and reduce the time that law enforcement and other first responders dedicate to emergency detention cases by offering a dedicated first-responder drop-off location
• $7.6 million to support regional crisis stabilization facilities in the state, which assist adults who are in crisis or need short-term crisis stabilization by providing traumatic, community-based care in the least restrictive setting
• $2 million for grants to county and municipal governments to establish collaborative programs between behavioral health providers and local law enforcement to increase the involvement of behavioral health professionals in emergency response calls involving individuals in crisis and divert emergency response calls to behavioral health professionals when appropriate
• $1.8 million to establish a 25-bed residential treatment facility to provide psychiatric care and treatment to those under age 21 with complex behavioral health conditions; expand Medicaid benefits to include a psychiatric residential treatment facility benefit
• Two additional circuit court branches in Brown County
• Convert about $400,000 and five employment positions at the Wisconsin Department of Justice from federal Victims of Crime Act funding to general purpose revenue to address an expected reduction of federal funding and maximize the amount available for awards to local agencies providing services to crime victims
• Expand the conditions under which an individual may have a criminal record expunged
• Almost $9 million over two years to expand community-based options for alternatives to revocation
• Expand the sources a county must use to generate jury lists, to ensure juries better reflect the community
• $10 million over two years to reimburse counties for increased costs associated with raising the age that a circuit court or municipal court exercises adult court jurisdiction on individuals from 17 to 18 years of age
• Require district attorneys to offer a diversion and restitution alternative for certain misdemeanor offenses
• $900,000 over two years for body cameras for correctional officers.