There’s going to be talk at the State Capitol today about how Wisconsin can slow the growth of its prison population.
A committee has been getting advice from outside Wisconsin, including from a national, nonpartisan group called the Council of State Governments Justice Center.
It projects, that unless Wisconsin modifies its system, its prison population will shoot up 25 percent within the next decade.
WUWM’s Susan Bence has more.
Since January, an ad hoc committee in Wisconsin has been tackling a task as daunting as its name: Justice Reinvestment Initiative Oversight.
It’s been exploring ways the state might decrease corrections spending and at the same time, increase public safety. In other words, find ways to keep offenders out of prison and make sure they don’t commit new crimes.
One committee member is Milwaukee District Attorney John Chisholm. He says some offenders face significant barriers.
“You’ve got 70 percent of your correctional population unemployed, you’re dealing with a huge problem. I don’t think we can just put band-aids on it and hope it’s going to work. I think it really requires hard choices to be made,” Chisholm says.
Chisholm says the state must find ways to help offenders become productive citizens; otherwise they’re likely to reenter the criminal justice system over and over again. And the state is reaching the breaking point in terms of financing that system.
Joel Kleefisch is one of a half dozen state legislators who serve on the committee along with prosecutors, judges and other stakeholders in the criminal justice system.
Kleefisch says he’s heard interesting ideas, but has fundamental concerns.
“What’s frustrating is throughout the whole process we never once heard from a victim or a victim’s advocacy group or what prosecutors feel, or police or those who are going to enforce the rules in the prison. We never heard from them as a part of the testimony. I’m frustrated that it’s focused on criminals rather than focusing on what we need to do to make sure victims get justice,” Kleefisch says.
Kleefisch is referring to Governor Doyle’s proposed early release of inmates who meet certain requirements.
People who’ve committed violent crimes would not qualify.
It is possible to help ex-offenders turn their lives around, according to another committee member, Kit McNally. She heads the Benedict Center. It works with newly-released inmates.
McNally says they need well-funded, community programs.
“ You’re connecting them to all the positive things and the support and the monitoring that’s going to help them change their behavior. If you keep them in prison longer, there will be no dollars, no dollars for these programs in the community. So ultimately when people come home, there will be no help for them. I would argue we would be actually endangering our communities and be putting more people at risk of becoming victims if we did not take the kind of action being recommended right now. We would be also be out of step with what most states are doing,” McNally says.
McNally’s referring to states such as Texas. It faced the prospect of needing 17,000 additional prison beds by 2012 if it didn’t change its corrections system.
Texas Representative Jerry Madden says it took a bipartisan effort, but in 2007, his state budgeted $250 million to beef up community programs and modify its probation system.
In the two years since, Madden says the prison population has stabilized, and right now it looks as though Texas won’t need those extra beds.
“I’ve always had a personal belief that people can change, but in the criminal justice system, boy I had to learn that in that first year or two. But as I started listening to the people and the programs that they had, the suggestions they had and particularly I looked at the results. Get actual numbers and many of them do work and once they work, you just have to take that leap of faith,” Madden says.
Madden’s quick to add, that Texas has not become soft on crime, it’s just building on programs that work.
Later this morning, members of Wisconsin’s oversight committee will continue to weigh in on programs they think might reduce the load on the prison system here.
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