You’ve probably heard or seen various political ads that bring up parole in this election season. The ads focus on a candidate’s record of the number of people released on parole, or a candidate’s perspective on the role of parole in our state’s prison.
A listener wrote to WUWM to ask, “is the parole board really releasing criminals — as is advertised on TV?”
Ashley Luthern has covered the topic extensively for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and she helps break down the different terms, our prison system and explains what's behind those political ads.
Truth in sentencing
Wisconsin’s truth in sentencing law has been in effect since 2000. The law was introduced by then-state representative Scott Walker and was approved in 1998 with bipartisan support. This law provides a very specific understanding of how many years someone will spend in prison if convicted of a felony and how long they will be monitored under extended supervision.
"The whole idea is that a person will serve the entirety of their sentence — initial confinement as well as on extended supervision. That is, a system in which there is no parole. So when people are being released out into the community on extended supervision, that is happening after they observed their term of initial confinement, and that is what was set by a judge at the time of their sentencing," Luthern explains.
Parole
Before truth in sentencing, Wisconsin operated under a parole system, which is a judge sentencing a person to prison and after a certain time period, that person would become eligible for parole.
"With parole there are guidelines for when individuals would become eligible for parole. So by law, a person in Wisconsin became eligible for parole after serving 25% of their sentence. Did they get out at that time? Often not. People were judged on parole based off of how they acted in prison, what kind of programs they enrolled themselves in and it was seen as a system to encourage essentially good behavior within correctional settings to make it safer for both staff and inmates," Luthern explains.
Probation
"Probation typically comes before you are ever in an in-custody situation, before you are ever sent to a prison. Often what we'll see in Wisconsin's legal system is someone being sentenced to a period of time, maybe it's like a year in prison, but the judge thinks, 'you know, you're doing well, you have some good social support, so I'm going to stay that sentence and I'm going to put you on probation instead.' So then someone's out on community supervision," says Luthern.
Pardon
"A pardon only comes after someone has served all of their sentence, all of their time in custody, all of their time on community supervision. A pardon does not expunge someone, does not remove it from our online court system. What it does do is it's supposed to eliminate the legal impact of a felony conviction. And so we know that felony convictions can make it hard for people when they're trying to get jobs, when they're trying to get housing," Luthern says.
She goes on to explain, "A lot of attention has been paid to pardons because that is a way to help people with felony convictions try to access some of the things that I think we all instinctively know would make someone less likely to reoffend. So it does not expunge the record, it does not take any time off of their sentence, it is completely different from parole."
The Politics
"Parole decisions are made by a four member board, the Wisconsin Parole Commission. They're also frequently called the Parole Board, and this is a board that is led by a commissioner. The commissioner is appointed by the governor and they are subject to state Senate confirmation. The other three members of the commission are hired from the civil service system. So, it's not like the governor is the one making the final call on these parole decisions," Luthern says.
She goes on to explain, "You can argue that the governor plays an important role because they do appoint the commissioner but the actual decisions, the people who are supposed to be interviewing the individuals up for parole, taking into consideration what crime victim families want, and reviewing Department of Corrections Records about how this person has done while they have been incarcerated, those people doing that work are the Parole Commission, not the governor."
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