More than 60 people attend Department of Corrections hearing on proposed supervision and revocation rule

By Alexandria Staubach
 
More than 60 people appeared at a virtual Department of Corrections hearing Tuesday morning to comment on the Department of Corrections’ failure to implement a decade-old law that could change revocations statewide.
 
Attendees raised personal, ethical, and legal arguments about the DOC’s proposed new administrative rule to implement 2013 Wisconsin Act 196. DOC proposed the new rule two weeks ago.
 
As WJI reported last week, Act 196 requires the DOC to develop a list of sanctions that may be imposed for the most common violations, offering “clear and immediate consequences for violations.” The law also mandates that any rule developed by DOC take into account the impact of revocation on an offender’s employment and family.
 
Advocates say that the DOC until now has largely ignored Act 196, which passed with bipartisan support.

Participants at today’s hearing said the proposed rule remains insufficient to bring DOC into compliance with the law.
 
The Wisconsin Legislative Council has said that the current rule “does not set forth a list of sanctions for the most common violations, nor does it explain what specific evidenced-based responses may be applied to a violation (e.g., when revocation is the required response). Instead, it implies that the list of sanctions and responses will be contained in a document somewhere outside the administrative rules.”
 
Many at today’s hearing shared personal stories about how lengthy and unpredictable terms of supervision have impacted them.
 
“It feels arbitrary and excessive,” said JenAnn Bauer, who has served eight years of supervision, which she said was more than 75% of any possible prison sentence. She said that despite making significant payments toward restitution, fees for extended supervision and her financial obligations to the court system keep growing. “I feel trapped in a cage made of numbers, not bars,” she said.
 
Sean Wilson, Senior Director of Organizing and Partnerships at Dream.org, also expressed concerned about the impact of fees accrued during supervision. He said the proposed rule would actually codify profits into supervision, giving private vendors control over fees. 

A section of the proposed rule says “a vendor is authorized to charge a fee to probationers, parolees, and persons on extended supervision to cover the cost of supervision and administration of the contract.”
 
Wilson called the DOC’s proposed rule a “missed opportunity” because the rule continues to be “focused on managing people rather than their success.”
 
He said he recognized that DOC faces significant issues in staffing, but elsewhere in the nation departments use technology like kiosks to reduce the burden of check-ins on supervisees who are least likely to reoffend.
 
Marianne Olson, an advocate with Ex-Incarcerated People Organizing who has been on supervision for eight years and has another 18 to go, said “people are being sent back (to prison) not to protect public safety but to punish past behavior,” in violation of federal law. Supervision “should be an opportunity for restoration, not retaliation” she said, calling extended supervision “retaliation disguised as support.”
 
Shannon Ross of The Community expressed concern that the DOC seemingly did not engage any formerly incarcerated people in developing the rule. “A lot of us would be great in those rooms at the end of these things,” he said.
 
WISDOM's Tom Gilbert, who has met with DOC about this issue since 2019, said the decisions that the DOC and its “agents make every day regarding people under your supervision, widely affect families, employers, health care providers, social services providers, schools—in other words, whole communities and this whole state.”

The public comment period on the proposed rule will remain open through August 8. Instructions for submitting comments can be found here.