Mandatory minimum flies under the radar in Wisconsin Assembly

The legislation mosaic inside the Wisconsin Capitol dome. Photograph by Margo Kirchner.

By Alexandria Staubach
 
Despite decades of research highlighting the detrimental effects and inefficiencies of mandatory minimum sentences, the Wisconsin Legislature is considering a bill that would impose a mandatory minimum for human trafficking.
 
The Assembly Committee on Criminal Justice and Public Safety last week held a hearing on the bill, AB 265. Legislators mostly bypassed the mandatory minimum aspect of the proposed law.
 
“The number of convictions versus the number of incidents is minuscule to that extent I support this bill,” said bill co-sponsor Rep. Jerry O’Connor (R-Fond du Lac).
 
Law enforcement and legislators shared stories on the human tragedy associated with trafficking. “Lives are destroyed in a massive, massive manner,” said Rep. Robert Wittke (R-Caledonia).
 
Wittke said the impetus for the bill came from law enforcement. “I can’t state enough how working with law enforcement, when they come to you with something they have seen on the street, I believe that we should listen and do the job that we were elected to do and bring legislation forward,” he said at the hearing.
 
No party spoke in opposition.
 
Under current Wisconsin law, human trafficking is punishable by a maximum term of incarceration of 25 years, and trafficking a child is punishable by a maximum term of incarceration of 40 years.
 
The bill would increase the maximum penalties and raise the felony levels of the offenses, and it would also create a mandatory minimum term of confinement in prison of 10 years for adult trafficking and 15 years for child trafficking.
 
The mandatory minimum part of the bill raises concerns for criminal justice advocates.
 
“Nobody disagrees that human trafficking is among the most serious of crimes,” says WJI President and criminal defense attorney Craig Johnson. “Nonetheless, there’s no evidence to support that mandatory minimums decrease the instances of the offense or otherwise deter traffickers,” he said.
 
Johnson believes that "any new law that interferes with the discretion of a judge to fashion a sentence that fits the individual circumstances of a particular case is a bad idea.”
 
“In Wisconsin, legislators are elected to write laws, not sentence people. That's a judge's job, and it's what they're elected to do. If a judge's sentences do not reflect the will of the electorate, the remedy is in the voting booth," he said.
 
According to a report by The Sentencing Project, “criminal legal experts for ideologically diverse backgrounds maintain that mandatory minimums are an overly harsh, disproportionate punishment.”
 
The Sentencing Project found that mandatory minimums shift sentencing discretion away from judges and onto prosecutors, as the latter control the decisions to charge and whether to offer a plea agreement.  “(T)he threat of mandatory minimums also encourages defendants to plead to a different crime to avoid a stiff mandatory sentence,” the report found.
 
Mandatory minimums are not common in Wisconsin. They apply to a few offenses, including second and subsequent felon-in-possession, intoxicated driving, child sex offenses, and second or subsequent sexual assault and violent crimes.
 
Racine County Sheriff's Office Investigator Luke Johnson is working with legislators on the bill. He spent two years between 2023 and 2025 on a task force specifically targeting human trafficking and internet crimes against children. When asked whether he or the legislators had consulted with prosecutors or judges about the mandatory minimum aspect of the bill, he indicated that he had not.
 
In his written comments in support of the bill, O’Connor said that his support of mandatory minimums is intended to “ensure that the perpetrators of human trafficking are punished for their crimes but also prevented from doing further harm to their victims and our communities.”
 
Despite the lengthy sentences already permitted, “across our county, Americans are seeing the disastrous and tragic consequences of prosecutors and judges who are proudly soft on crime,” he said.
 
O’Connor said his concerns stem from five out-of-state sentences from 2022 to 2025 where defendants convicted of trafficking received between six and eight years in prison. Those sentences were imposed in New York, Los Angeles, and Colorado.
 
The only Wisconsin sentence O’Connor referenced was a case in which a defendant convicted of child sex trafficking received a lengthy 34 years in prison.
 
The Senate's companion bill, SB 266, has not yet been scheduled for a public hearing in that chamber.