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• Social media videos started popping up earlier this year with users complaining about the cost of living in Green Bay, other cities in Wisconsin and other battleground states. 
• The people posting the videos make claims that run the gamut – some factual, some misleading and some totally false. 
• Wisconsin Watch and Sunlight Research Desk looked into the trend, but couldn’t determine who – if anyone – was paying the creators to make the videos. 
• If the videos were paid for, creators not disclosing that paid relationship could be in violation of federal prohibitions on deceptive advertising, one political advertising expert said. 
• Republicans and Democrats are increasingly paying for user-generated content, raising questions about the future of election campaigning in the digital age.

In May, TikTok user @lifewithjacob1 uploaded a 20-second video blasting Green Bay’s rent prices. 

“Why is rent in Wisconsin so expensive right now?” he said. “I’m on a website looking for a new spot. I can’t find anything under $4,000 in Green Bay, Wisconsin.” 

He went on to post more than 100 more, bemoaning skyrocketing prices for gas, housing and even dinner at Culver’s. Almost every video on the account, which was created in May, focused on how expensive life is in Green Bay. 

The problem? Many of the videos seem to be pure fiction. 

It’s not just that the average rent in Green Bay is a quarter of what he claims, according to July figures from Zillow. It’s also that his name isn’t Jacob, and it’s unclear if he’s ever lived in Wisconsin. 

Through a reverse image search, Wisconsin Watch and Sunlight Research Desk identified the man in the videos as Connor Printz, a self-described “user-generated content creator” who gets paid by brands to make social media posts that don’t look like ads. It’s a burgeoning industry, and one that many Americans may never have heard of — though they’ve likely seen these kinds of posts. 

This model is spreading nationwide as dark money groups try to sway voters stealthily by hiring social media creators to push their agendas. Wisconsin Watch and Sunlight Research Desk identified more than a dozen users publishing near-identical messaging about the cost of living in battleground states — claims that oscillate between factual, misleading and downright false. 

The videos targeting Wisconsin don’t mention specific political parties or candidates, but they’re strikingly similar to videos where creators in other states supported or knocked certain candidates — part of what MS NOW called a “secret paid influencer campaign.” 

It’s unclear who, if anyone, is funding the videos about Green Bay and Wisconsin, or what the goal is. Printz declined to answer questions, and the videos and biography on his account have since been deleted, a phenomenon common with short-term social media campaigns.  

The videos themselves do not indicate whether they were paid for. If they were, one political advertising expert said, creators not disclosing that paid relationship could violate federal prohibitions on deceptive advertising. The trend raises questions about the future of political campaigning and the reforms needed to protect elections in the modern age.

Meanwhile, though many of the statistics the creators shared are false — Green Bay is often hailed as a particularly affordable city — the posts speak to a question increasingly on Americans’ minds, one that could prove pivotal in upcoming elections: Why is everything so expensive?

Making money on misinformation?

To try to understand who is behind the Green Bay videos, Wisconsin Watch and Sunlight Research Desk researched creators using public records databases, scoured campaign finance records, conducted reverse image searches, interviewed elected officials representing the city and compiled more than 5,000 videos.

Among the findings: The person shaking his head disapprovingly over the high cost of living in northeast Wisconsin is a former college basketball player turned social media creator whose LinkedIn profile says he’s based in Los Angeles. 

While @lifewithjacob1’s TikTok bio said he was “Green Bay born and raised,” his Claremont McKenna College basketball webpage says he’s from Waterbury, Connecticut, and attended high school in Connecticut and Massachusetts. 

Printz claimed to live in Green Bay and sometimes referred to moving from California to Wisconsin in TikTok videos posted under the @lifewithjacob1 account. Wisconsin Watch and Sunlight Research Desk found no evidence he has ever lived in Wisconsin.

Today, according to his LinkedIn, Printz works as a user-generated content creator through SideShift, a platform where organizations hire content creators. His account states he manages between six and 10 social media accounts at a time, “completing campaigns for brands.” SideShift did not respond to Wisconsin Watch’s questions. 

According to the American Marketing Association, user-generated content is “sponsored content that looks and feels like genuine customer posts.” While the person on screen has likely received payment or free products, the videos are meant to feel like they’re ranting or raving about something of their own accord. It’s typically a cheaper way to advertise than making sponsorship deals with high-profile influencers or celebrities. 

When those posts endorse or recommend brands, products or services, federal law and platform policies require they be labeled as ads or sponsored content. TikTok did not respond when Wisconsin Watch asked if its policies require such disclosures for videos like Printz’s.

Political organizations are increasingly buying this form of content, eager to leverage its authentic — and often undetectable —  feel. 

Both political parties are hiring influencers to build online enthusiasm for their candidates. Democrats have poured tens of millions of dollars into these secret influencer campaigns since their 2024 election defeat, according to a New York Times report. The influencer firm Creator Grid, which has received funds from the Republican National Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee, boasts connecting “Republican candidates with the internet’s most powerful conservative influencers,” the Times reported.  This election cycle, MS NOW reported that influencers received payment to post favorable content about politicians in California and Michigan and attack a candidate in Illinois.

Wisconsin Watch and Sunlight Research Desk found similar videos about the cost of living in cities across the country: La Crosse. Milwaukee. Madison. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Charlotte, North Carolina. Atlanta, Georgia. Many of the users creating these videos have similar usernames, including @rantswithsaum, @rantswithcarlyy or @rants.with.k. Wisconsin Watch contacted several of the users behind the accounts but none responded.

It’s unclear who paid for the videos Wisconsin Watch identified. The Sunlight Research team searched spending records for registered political action committees and political candidates in key swing states but found no evidence of payments to the influencers or influencer platforms tied to these videos. And while Wisconsinites will elect a new governor in November, spokespeople for candidates David Crowley and Tom Tiffany both said they had not paid for or even seen the videos in question. 

What is clear is that this type of political content is in demand: Wisconsin Watch found a listing on SideShift from “Project Bullhorn” offering creators $1,500 monthly to “speak on the rising crisis of affordability in the United States ahead of the 2026 midterms.” Project Bullhorn is one of several influencer efforts the New York Times reports Democratic donors are funding. A leader of the initiative declined to answer questions from Wisconsin Watch on the record. 

‘More expensive than NYC’

From May through July, Printz posted roughly two videos a day about Green Bay’s cost of living.

In May, he claimed gas prices in Green Bay soared to almost $7 a gallon. While the Iran war has driven fuel prices up, prices at local pumps peaked this spring around $4.50 a gallon. 

“Is Green Bay, Wisconsin, actually more expensive than New York City?” Printz asked in a June video, recounting the experience of a friend who purportedly moved from the Big Apple to Packerland, anticipating a lower cost of living. 

“Guess what? It was just as expensive. Rent prices were crazy. Gas was crazy. Culver’s is so expensive, more than almost every restaurant in New York City,” Printz said.

In another video, he said tuition at Wisconsin colleges now cost $70,000 annually. 

“Just makes you question if it’s worth it now,” reads text on the video of Printz repeatedly shaking his head. According to CollegeBoard data, Wisconsin’s public universities charged in-state students $10,600 on average in 2025.

@wisconsinwatch

💵$4k rent? $7 gas? More expensive than NYC? A deluge of TikTok and Instagram videos are making outlandish claims about Wisconsin’s cost of living. In some cases, the people behind them – self-described “user-generated content creators” — are using fake names or don’t even appear to live in Wisconsin. The videos seem to be part of a growing trend of paying influencers to post on political topics, often without any disclosures. Here’s why it matters. Read more at the link in our bio.

♬ original sound – Wisconsin Watch

In addition to the overblown numbers, locals might spot other faux pas. In one video, Printz asks for feedback from his “fellow Wisconsiners,” a term that would make any self-respecting Wisconsinite cringe. 

Green Bay resident Allyson Brunette started seeing the videos pop up in her TikTok feed around May. The inaccuracies were obvious, she said, especially the part about $4,000 rent. 

What was less obvious was where all these videos came from. She clicked on the creators’ profiles and discovered that not only did they often follow each other, but some of the users following them were making parallel videos elsewhere. 

“It seemed that there was almost this network of these avatars with similar usernames and almost identical content in different cities and states across the U.S.,” said Brunette, who wrote to Wisconsin Watch in May about her suspicions. 

“I was like, am I nuts? I think this is a coordinated effort,” Brunette said in a July interview. “What immediately struck my mind, as someone who’s 38 and lived through the Facebook misinformation of the last few elections, was: Is this gearing up to shift political (opinions) before the gubernatorial election?”

Brunette isn’t the only TikTok user raising the alarm about these types of claims. On many of Printz’s videos, commenters called out misinformation and offered the facts. 

“Obvious rage bait,” wrote one user in response to the claim that Green Bay is more expensive than New York City.

“Literally nothing you said is true,” wrote another.

Is it legal?

Experts say this novel influence model seems to test the limits of laws governing campaign finance and advertising. 

Christopher Terry is an associate professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of Minnesota who studies political advertising. He told Wisconsin Watch these types of videos could potentially violate state and federal law, even if they don’t mention candidates, parties, elections or products.  

Paid posts are a form of commercial speech, which is not subject to the same First Amendment protections as standard political speech, Terry said. If creators don’t disclose that they were paid to create posts, that could violate the Federal Trade Commission prohibition on deceptive practices, Terry said, though he noted the agency has not enforced that policy against social media influencers to date.

“It has warned a bunch of them. It has threatened a ton of them, but it has not actually brought an enforcement action against any of them,” Terry said.

Any posts that mislead voters about candidates or referendums could also potentially violate a Wisconsin statute barring “false representation … intended to affect voting in an election,” Terry said. 

“Any chucklehead in any northern Wisconsin bar will give you an opinion on a political thing … That’s fine,” Terry said. “If he’s paid to think that and paid to sit in the bar and talk to people about it, that’s something else, right?” 

Meanwhile, democracy advocates have called on the Federal Election Commission to clarify laws to explicitly require that influencers post disclaimers indicating who paid for their political content.

Prices, misinformation on the rise

While many of these videos are riddled with false information, they channel popular frustrations over real spikes in prices.

“Gas is not $7 a gallon in Green Bay, and average rent is not $4,000. But they’re both more expensive than they used to be … It’s simply true that people are anxious and concerned about the cost of living,” said state Sen. Jamie Wall, D-Green Bay. “And I hear that from people across the political spectrum.”

Across the country, consumers have been sour on the economy for years, said Joanne Hsu, who oversees the University of Michigan’s Surveys of Consumers. The monthly consumer sentiment survey, first conducted in 1946, asks Americans how they feel about the economy and where it’s headed. 

The answer in recent months: still not good. When survey workers asked Americans in June about their personal finances, 56% brought up high prices without being prompted. 

In Green Bay, where the average home value is about $290,000, the cost of living remains relatively low. But local residents are feeling the strain of rising prices too, state Rep. Amaad Rivera-Wagner, D-Green Bay, said.

Still, he fears the misinformation could stifle Green Bay’s future. 

“That’s one of the most frustrating things about social media is that we are now fighting an army of misinformation, sometimes by innocent bystanders, but sometimes by bad actors,” Rivera-Wagner said.

“This is where that confusion can actually cost or have real impact,” he said. “There might be people in and around our community or businesses thinking about moving or working in our community, and they’re seeing a larger narrative that is not only inaccurate, but doesn’t actually talk about how much work we’ve done to make Green Bay still one of the most affordable places to live in the state or the country.”

Meanwhile, rising costs could shape the outcome of midterm elections across the country this fall. American adults ranked inflation and the high cost of living as the most important issue in every Marquette University Law School Poll national survey this year. President Donald Trump has drawn criticism for largely dismissing concerns about high prices.

“It doesn’t feel good to be told the economy is doing great when you feel like you’re stretching to make ends meet,” Hsu said. 

Anna Massoglia, Michael Nolan, Jason Dearen and MuckRock’s Sunlight Research Desk provided research and data analysis for this story.

$4K rent? $7 gas? Inside the internet campaign insisting Green Bay is ‘more expensive than NYC’ is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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• Gov. Tony Evers reopened the commutations process in April – the first time in 25 years Wisconsin prisoners had the opportunity to request shorter sentences. 
• The Commutation Advisory Board will meet from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Friday. The virtual meeting is open to the public with no registration required. 
• It will stream at www.youtube.com/@GovCommutations and/or wiseye.org/live.
• Natalie Murphy, one of 12 people who will speak at the hearing, told Wisconsin Watch she spent two weeks reading through her application before submitting it.
• The ACLU of Wisconsin also released new polling this week that shows a majority of Wisconsinities favor some form of clemency for some individuals.

A dozen incarcerated Wisconsinites will publicly make their case for clemency on Friday.

Those individuals represent a fraction of the people who’ve applied for commutations since Gov. Tony Evers reopened the process in April, marking the first opportunity in 25 years for Wisconsin prisoners to request their sentences be shortened.

The Commutation Advisory Board, appointed by the governor, will recommend which applicants’ sentences Evers should commute. Initial announcements said the board would hold its first meeting in June, but it’s now scheduled for Friday, Aug. 21, from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. The meeting, which is virtual, is open to the public with no registration required. It will stream at www.youtube.com/@GovCommutations and/or wiseye.org/live, according to the governor’s office.

Among those addressing the committee Friday is Natalie Murphy, who was sentenced in 2016 to 20 years in prison and six and a half years of extended supervision for first-degree reckless homicide and second-degree recklessly endangering safety. Incarcerated at Taycheedah Correctional Institution, she’s spent the last seven years working full time as a certified peer specialist, sharing her own experience and offering a listening ear to fellow prisoners for $1 an hour. 

“Being able to take the things that I have made mistakes in, or the pain that I have … and show people that there’s hope to get through that, is crucial to who I am at this point in my life,” Murphy said.

When she heard the governor’s commutations announcement, she filled out the 17-page application. For two weeks, she read through it every day.

“I’d start in the morning, like, ‘OK, does this reflect who I am as a person?’ And then I would tweak it,” Murphy said. When she was ready, she got it notarized and mailed it. 

At the end of July, she got a letter saying she’d been selected for a hearing.

“I was shaking quite a bit,” Murphy said. “I just wasn’t expecting it.”

Murphy acknowledges that one purpose of the legal system is to punish people for their crimes by removing them from the rest of society. But she thinks the commutation process shows people that rehabilitation matters too.

“If we do not emphasize rehabilitation and second chances and putting faith back into people, it can create a really dangerous and toxic environment,” Murphy said.

Poll shows Wisconsinites favor clemency

The majority of Wisconsinites favor some form of clemency for at least some individuals, according to a new poll commissioned by the ACLU of Wisconsin. The poll, conducted in March by public opinion research firm GBAO, surveyed 800 registered voters in Wisconsin. 

Of those voters, 51% support ending or shortening the sentences of prisoners “who meet certain selected criteria” if courts determine they can “successfully and safely re-enter their communities.” Thirty-seven percent opposed the idea.

The poll found voters were more likely to support early release for incarcerated individuals who are on hospice or need extensive care in their old age, as well as for female prisoners who killed or attacked an alleged abuser, and for prisoners who have served 20 years or more for a crime they committed as a minor.

Respondents also support pardons for a variety of Wisconsinites who’ve served their sentences. Pardons, which Gov. Evers has issued throughout his tenure, officially forgive an offense and restore the person’s civil rights. In Wisconsin, pardons are currently available only to individuals who completed their full sentences, including any extended supervision, at least five years ago. Though these pardons don’t shorten sentences, they can make it easier to get a job, housing or a professional license.

Eighty percent of ACLU survey respondents said they support pardons for individuals convicted of nonviolent crimes, and 50% said they support pardons for those convicted of violent crimes.

Wisconsin’s next governor will determine whether Wisconsinites will continue to receive commutations after Evers leaves office in January. 

In April, Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany’s gubernatorial campaign told Wisconsin Watch he would rescind Evers’ executive orders on commutations because they allow people convicted of murder to apply. 

Under Evers’ executive order only those previously convicted of sexual assault, physical abuse or sexual exploitation of a child, trafficking of a child, incest or soliciting a child for prostitution are ineligible for commutations. 

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, who won the Democratic gubernatorial primary, told Wisconsin Watch in April he would work with the Legislature to “institutionalize” Evers’ commutations process but that he “would not allow commutations of murderers.”

For now, many Wisconsin prisoners are holding out hope that their applications will be granted before any potential changes to the process. 

On Friday, Murphy will read from the personal statement she was told to prepare, explaining why she’s in prison, what rehabilitation she’s done, what she’d do if she got out and why she thinks she deserves a commutation. 

Beyond that, she’s not sure what to expect. She doesn’t know when or how she’ll learn what the board and the governor decide. If she doesn’t receive a commutation, she’ll remain incarcerated until her scheduled release date in 2036. 

Meanwhile, Wisconsin’s prison population is nearing a record high. As of Friday, Aug. 14, the system held 23,789 prisoners, just 37 shy of the record set in 2019. That’s nearly 6,000 people more than the system was designed for, according to the Department of Corrections.

Wisconsin Watch reporter Brittany Carloni contributed to this report.

Wisconsin to hold commutations hearing Friday is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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• Free, simple tools can help people measure the change in inflation and see whether their pay is keeping up. 
• Experts Wisconsin Watch spoke to said that if your wage hasn’t changed and inflation rises, your real earnings decrease. 
• Workers can use inflation calculators to seek a raise if their real wages have dropped.

Inflation hit a three-year high in May, leaving a growing number of Americans struggling to afford necessities. The rate has since slowed a bit, but most prices aren’t likely to come down. Analysts say “affordability” could be one of the deciding issues in this fall’s midterm elections. 

But while we all notice the spike at the gas pump and the cash register, many people may not realize they can use simple, free tools to quantify the change and figure out whether their pay is keeping up.  

Wisconsin Watch talked to two experts about how and why to use inflation calculators. Here’s what they told us.

What is inflation and how do we measure it?

Inflation is a measure of how much prices have risen in a given period. Some increase in prices is to be expected — the Federal Reserve aims for 2% inflation when it sets interest rates. When prices rise quickly, consumers and businesses may struggle to buy what they need. 

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics releases monthly inflation reports showing how prices have changed over the month and the year. The most widely used of those measures is the consumer price index, which shows the change in “prices paid by urban consumers for a market basket of consumer goods and services.” In other words, it’s the weighted average of the change in prices of many of the things American consumers buy. According to the bureau, this rate reflects the spending patterns of more than 90% of the U.S. population. 

The bureau also publishes a variety of more specific inflation rates, including for different geographic areas and for different types of expenditures, including food and beverages, housing and medical care. It also calculates a second version of its national inflation figure, called the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, which is based on the spending patterns of households where at least half of the income comes from wage or clerical work. 

Meanwhile, the Fed keeps an eye on a related but different inflation measure, the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index, as it’s setting interest rates.

How high is inflation today?

The latest consumer price index numbers, released on July 14, indicate prices rose 3.5% over the last 12 months. The numbers also show prices fell 0.4% in June, when adjusted for seasonal changes. The drop over the month came from falling gas prices, though the average cost of a gallon of gas in the U.S. remains about $1.10 higher than it was before the war in Iran began, according to a price tracker from NBC News.

Inflation today is far lower than in 2022, when it hit 8%, the highest in more than 30 years. But 3.5% is still well above the 2% target, said Menzie Chinn, professor of public affairs and economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

“Inflation is not as big of a concern in terms of its absolute value as it was maybe four years ago, but it’s higher than we would want, and going forward we certainly don’t want inflation to be running at this pace,” Chinn said. 

Meanwhile, wage growth has slowed, falling behind price growth. Nationally, wages and salaries rose 3.4% between March 2025 and March 2026, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  

“Concern about prices rising is not just prices rising, but it’s against the backdrop of how fast wages are rising. How many people are keeping up, and what components of the population are keeping up?” Chinn said.

The inflation rate may eventually come down, meaning the rate at which prices are rising slows. And some individual prices, including gas prices, could come down too. But prices overall seldom fall. 

“The price level is probably never coming down, unless we have a severe downturn of some sort,” Chinn said.

What are inflation calculators and how do I use one?

Inflation calculators let you enter a dollar value and see how the buying power of that dollar value has changed over time. One easy way to understand this is to think about what a dollar could have bought 50 years ago. Today, that dollar is essentially worth less because you’d need more than a dollar to buy the same goods. An inflation calculator can show you exactly how big the change is: You’d need $5.88 today to buy what a dollar would buy in 1976,  according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ CPI Inflation Calculator.

For a more practical example, enter your wage or salary at the time of your last raise, indicate the month and year of that raise, then select the latest month for which data is available. That tells you how much that wage or salary is worth in today’s dollars. 

You can also do the calculation backward to see the contrast in a different way. For example, if you earn $50,000 and you last received a raise two years ago, your pay today only goes as far as $47,038.95 at the time of your last raise. In other words, your “real salary” has fallen by 5.9%.

“If your wage is stuck and inflation is going up, your real earnings are going down,” said University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee economics professor John Heywood, who directs the school’s graduate program in human resources and labor relations. 

You can also use these tools to check whether a given price has been rising faster or slower than inflation.  Say your rent was $900 a month in June 2024, and it rose exactly in line with the index for all prices. It would now be $956.65. If it’s risen more than that, it’s outpaced inflation.

Here are links to a few useful inflation calculators:

• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ CPI Inflation Calculator: bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm
• Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis’ inflation calculator: minneapolisfed.org/about-us/monetary-policy/inflation-calculator 

How can I use the information I get from an inflation calculator?

Inflation calculations can be a helpful tool for workers seeking a raise. Heywood suggests workers seeking raises gather information on both how their real earnings have declined over time and how their earnings compare with those of people in comparable positions in the industry and geographic area, and present that data to their human resources department.

“My impression is that at large corporations and at corporations that sort of follow best practices, they don’t want their workers to be paid less than their rivals or have their earnings go down, because they’re always in a competition for keeping and retaining talent,” Heywood said.

“If you can show, for example, that your wage hasn’t kept up with inflation or with your comparables, then a sensible HR department says, ‘Here’s somebody we might lose,’ and might very well be willing to increase somebody’s hourly or salary rate,” he said. 

If you’re represented by a labor union, your union representatives are likely doing these kinds of calculations regularly.

“It’s part of making sure that their members don’t have their earnings eroded by inflation,” Heywood said. 

To hold workers’ buying power steady, Heywood said, many union contracts include automatic cost of living adjustments. Six months into the contract period, for example, workers’ wages will rise by the same percentage that prices rose during those six months. 

Clauses like those were far more common before the soaring inflation of the 1970s and 1980s, Chinn said, noting that raising wages automatically in response to inflation can sometimes make inflation worse. As economists battled to get prices under control in the 1980s, they became more skeptical of these automatic wage increases.

“It’s good for the workers, it protects their buying power, but that means the cost of making stuff rises … which then feeds into next year’s demands,” Chinn said. Thus even a temporary shock to the economy can last much longer. 

But not raising pay comes at a cost too. “If they don’t get that automatic adjustment, it’s more likely they won’t get to maintain the real wage,” Chinn said.

Automatic cost of living adjustments are still common in some industries. “The auto industry uses it, (along with) aerospace, defense, postal workers, letter carriers, and a lot of local public unions,” Heywood said. “It hasn’t gone away.”

What’s the inflation forecast?

Many economists are predicting 2.5% to 3% inflation over the next year, Chinn said. He thinks those predictions are probably about right. 

“That’s assuming that we’re not having a big resumption of the war with Iran that completely blocks off indefinitely the Strait of Hormuz,” Chinn said. “That assumes no big collapse in the stock market and no big jumps in a trade war going forward.”

Natalie Yahr reports on pathways to success statewide for Wisconsin Watch, working in partnership with Open Campus. Email her at nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org.

With prices up, here’s how and why to use an inflation calculator is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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When a Madison police officer fatally shot Corey Ruiz on July 22, his death sparked outrage — and questions. 

Among them: Why was Ruiz killed, and what kind of training or rules could have prevented his death?

Ion Meyn, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School, has studied exactly that. For a 2021 paper, he and his team interviewed police officers across the country and watched dozens of training videos to understand how police think about use of force and what guidelines they learn — even as departments argue that such situations can never be governed by hard and fast rules. 

In this case, police say Ruiz pulled a knife when officers were trying to detain him. Meyn predicts authorities will conclude that the officer who shot Ruiz acted in line with his training, and thus that they won’t issue criminal charges or disciplinary action. 

“I’ve seen so many of these shootings, so I see the justifications that are going to be provided,” Meyn said.

That, Meyn argues, is why communities should create enforceable rules for police. He spoke with Wisconsin Watch about how police training can make interactions with civilians more dangerous and why officers aren’t the only experts who should shape policing policy.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

According to your research, what rules are police officers following when they’re making decisions about when to use deadly force?

This is a really contested space. If we say “What rules does the Madison Police Department follow?” the first assumption would be that officers only follow the training they hear from Madison Police Department trainers. I don’t believe that. We have officers who are keyed into officer networks. We have supplementary sources of information for training. We have the training that occurs in squad cars after the official training.

There’s a much larger ecosystem of input officers are receiving. 

If you look at some of the biggest national providers of training, the videos that are available to officers are very aggressive. From my perspective, many trainers use language that is dehumanizing, that is part of this culture of “us” and “them” that the officer’s duty is to identify criminal elements and to protect good people from these bad people. 

I haven’t been privy to the training rooms in the Madison Police Department, so I don’t know exactly what’s being trained, but the (common) general principles include things like “Always retain a tactical advantage,” “Reaction is slower than action,” and “The only person that can deescalate is the civilian.” 

Now, there is a Madison Police Department protocol that says when you approach a situation, you should try to build in time in order to allow dialogue between the officer and the suspect. But then it says only do that within what you’ve been reasonably taught about tactics and these other principles, and so those other principles are in so many ways, in conflict with this protocol, and so it’s almost like the exception that swallows the rule.

You can see that playing out in many incidents in the way that the officer interprets the likelihood that they’re going to be subject to some kind of major bodily injury or death. They’re going to imagine the worst-case scenario because they don’t want to give the bad guy the first shot, right? 

One of the takeaways from your article is that people without police training often seem to act less violently than police do around some of the same potentially threatening people.

That is the conclusion I draw. Take Tamir Rice (the 12-year-old Cleveland boy who was shot and killed by a police officer who mistook his toy gun for a real gun). If you watch the video of Tamir Rice with his fake gun that looked like a gun, he’s kind of waving it around. People walk by him before the police get there, and they wave him away, or they say, “What are you doing?” They’re assessing risk and they’re not seeing an imminent threat, or if they’re seeing a threat, they’re deescalating it and seeing what they can do. 

This also happens in situations where someone has a knife and (other civilians) are trying to talk to the person with the knife, but they’re scared. They’re keeping their distance, and it’s been going on like this for a while. Then they call the cops, and the guy’s dead in 10 seconds. Why is that?

The reason is their training. The training makes this person with a knife (appear) much more dangerous than they are to a person who might be trying to assess the situation without that training. Another thing that you see in training is a constant flow of videos that show officers getting hurt, and that’s just not empirically a representation of what happens in these situations. 

Criminologist Franklin Zimring argues that police departments should write rules that tell officers when to refrain from shooting or stop shooting. What kind of rules do you think police should be following?

To me, (the question is), what kind of conversation are we going to have about the rules we want, and who’s an expert on what force should be used? Who is the Madison City Council going to invite into police reform, and how significant a voice are they going to give to, say, sociologists and social workers? The best way forward is inviting those voices in and giving them a significant role.

I am not the person to come up with the best set of rules, but I am the person that’s going to say, “It’s clear that you’re not bringing in other voices. It’s clear that you’re not bringing in empirical data to appropriately assess risk.”

Another point you make in your article is that community members should trust their own reactions to these kinds of events, and that local governments can actually set their own standards for how they want police to operate. 

They can. Police departments will say, “We’re in compliance with the law and national standards and the Constitution and all those things, and therefore your attempt to change things is unreasonable.” That is absolutely wrong. 

What the Supreme Court actually said is, “It’s not our job to regulate training or use of force. Our job is to say if a police department uses a tactic that is so egregious, that it’s unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment.” That’s regulating an outer boundary of minimally acceptable conduct. The court said, “We leave it to communities to determine how they want to be policed.”

So communities have a lot of power to regulate it. They’re going to be up against a police union. They’re going to be up against powerful political players. They’re going to be up against an organized campaign that will tell people who are trying to change it that they have no right to speak in this space. 

So that’s the political aspect of it, but it’s certainly not a legal one. There’s no legal constraint to changing the way that we train police.

You predict there won’t be any criminal or administrative sanctions regarding Corey Ruiz’s death. Given that, what do you hope might come out of this incident?

My hope every time with these things is that it increases the number of people talking about it in a way that is open and curious. They want to learn how police are trained. They want to learn what rules officers are subject to. By the way, it’s very dangerous for civilians if they don’t know what police training is. 

(I also hope) people start feeling like they have a voice. I’ve just seen people get stepped on left and right, told that they just don’t have the right to speak, that they don’t know anything about policing, that they don’t know what it’s like to face a bad guy. That’s the constant refrain you hear. 

And I really hope that this community in Madison works with dispatch and comes up with a program that really is serious about directing a good portion of calls away from police into folks with a different set of expertise that’s much more based on getting social support for people.

Q&A: What the Corey Ruiz shooting reveals about police training — and who shapes policing rules is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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• UW Health leaders created a new company called WorkForward to help health care systems and state agencies nationwide create their own apprenticeship programs. 
• UW Health officials started offering apprenticeships to their employees in 2018. 
• The program has helped the company fill entry-level roles and retain existing staff while filling gaps for in-demand positions. 
• But experts say apprenticeships aren’t a silver bullet: They require clinical staff to supervise apprentices; employers have to pay staff for hours they’re in school; and each state has its own regulations for apprenticeships.

Violet LaClair was ready to leave her job. 

As a certified nursing assistant at UW Health in Madison, she used the skills she developed while caring for her dying grandmother for nine years. Her co-workers had supported her through her gender transition. She’d even won an award for providing “extraordinary” care. 

She loved her workplace, but after four years, she wanted a change.

“I felt like I’d done it all,” LaClair said. “I felt like at some point I needed to challenge myself more.” 

She thought about going back to school, but that didn’t seem doable. She was already in her 40s and didn’t have time or money to spend.

Then she learned she could get trained to be a medical assistant for free, while working, through an apprenticeship program UW Health started in 2018. She pays no school costs, and she gets paid for the time she spends in class. 

Three days a week, she works at the company’s Union Corners clinic, where she gets patients situated, takes blood pressure, flushes ears and more. 

“I can pretty much do anything the doctor asked me to,” LaClair said. Two days a week, she takes classes on pharmacology, laboratory procedures, and law and ethics.

“I think the program is great,” LaClair said. “It’s given me a whole new chapter in my life, and something to be excited about.” 

Opportunities like these are novel, but increasingly common. The idea is simple: Maybe the country’s next nurses, surgical technologists and medical assistants are already working in hospitals and clinics. The people who’ve spent years booking appointments or drawing blood might jump at the chance to train for new careers — if their employers will help them do it. 

UW Health now offers apprenticeship options for 17 professions, including surgical techs, pharmacy technicians, respiratory therapists and registered nurses. Apprentices pay nothing for their course work, and they get paid to be in class.

To date, more than 1,000 apprentices have graduated. 

Bridgett Willey, who oversaw the launch of those apprenticeships, said they’ve helped fill a critical gap. Wisconsin colleges alone just aren’t graduating enough students to meet the needs of the three major health systems in southern Wisconsin, Willey said. 

The popular programs, which attract far more applicants than they can accommodate, have helped the company fill entry-level roles and hold onto existing staff. Before it began offering apprenticeships, as many as 3 in 10 positions for medical assistants, nursing assistants and pharmacy technicians were unfilled, Willey said. Today, it’s around 1 in 10. 

“We’ve increased our supply by growing our own and training our own folks,” Willey said. 

UW Health isn’t the only health system trying this model. Apprenticeships, once a rarity in health care, have become increasingly common at hospitals and clinics nationwide.

But offering this kind of on-the-job training isn’t always easy. Now, UW Health plans to use what it’s learned to help other states overcome the financial and bureaucratic barriers that can stand in the way. In May, the health system announced it created a separate company called WorkForward to help health systems and state agencies elsewhere set up apprenticeships. Willey, who directs that new project, thinks it’s the first such initiative by a U.S. health care company.

The health care apprenticeship surge

Historically, apprenticeships have been a key on-ramp to technical trades like plumbing and carpentry, allowing trainees to earn as they learn.

Now, apprenticeships are flourishing in U.S. hospitals and clinics, too. In just five years, the number of registered apprentices in the health care field has grown by more than 40%, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, as employers have expanded existing programs and others have started new ones. 

The boom comes as demand for health care workers has shot up across the country, triggered by the growing needs of an aging population and a wave of longtime health care workers retiring. By 2038, the country will be short about 109,000 registered nurses, 61,000 physical therapists, 33,000 pharmacy technicians and 13,000 respiratory therapists, according to projections by the National Center for Health Workforce Analysis.

Meanwhile, vocational and on-the-job training is becoming increasingly popular across the board, said Susan Skillman, senior principal research scientist at the University of Washington Center for Health Workforce Studies. 

“Apprenticeships in general are growing,” Skillman said. “We’re kind of in that place in the nation where the pendulum is moving away from four-year college degrees.”

Staff seize opportunity to advance

Some health apprenticeships last months while others last years. At UW Health, apprentices training to become medical assistants finish in 10 months while future registered nurses train for four years.

No matter the length or industry, all apprenticeships involve a combination of on-the-job training and classroom instruction. In the case of Wisconsin’s registered apprentices, who are approved through the state’s Department of Workforce Development, employers must pay apprentices for the time they spend in class. In some cases, the employer pays for the apprentices’ school costs, too. 

At UW Health, the employer covers tuition. The health system’s staff also coordinate the apprentices’ work and school schedules to avoid conflicts. 

Those were big selling points for Brianna Matheson, 35, who had worked as a medical assistant for 12 years when she learned last spring that UW Health was starting a three-year surgical tech apprenticeship. She’d spent time in the operating room before, and she liked helping with clinical procedures.

“I was just ready for something more,” Matheson said. “I was in clinics for so long, doing the same thing for so long. I wanted to learn again, be a student again, and be a novice.”

When the application opened, she was the first to apply. 

“I had kind of given up on the idea of going back to school because I, like so many others, need full-time income, and I didn’t really want to give up all of my free time to work full time and go to school in the evenings and weekends,” said Matheson, who now processes and delivers supplies to the operating room at Madison’s University Hospital. 

Not only does she not pay tuition, but the Department of Workforce Development offers a stipend for scrubs, reimburses mileage to and from school, and even covers some daycare costs for apprentices with kids, Matheson said. 

The position also let Matheson keep her prior $25 hourly wage, reflecting the raises she’d earned during more than a decade on the job. When Matheson graduates in May 2028, she’ll earn surgical tech wages, which range from around $30 to $44 an hour, according to current UW Health job listings.

“I would not have been going back to school at this point in life to pursue this without the support of specifically the apprenticeship program that UW Health is offering,” Matheson said. “I wouldn’t have done it on my own.”

Apprenticeships attract new job applicants

Offering apprenticeships could help health systems draw entry-level job applicants like 25-year-old DeForest native Alex Lippman. 

Lippman trained as a certified nursing assistant in high school, then worked at a skilled nursing facility in Madison. He started college at Arizona State University with plans to become a doctor, but moved back to Wisconsin when his grandmother fell ill in his sophomore year. He wanted to continue his education but figured he’d missed his chance.

Then, in 2023, UW Health announced it was starting the state’s first apprenticeship for registered nurses. That apprenticeship, like all of UW Health’s multiyear apprenticeships that lead to degrees, are open only to employees who’ve worked for the system for at least six months. 

“I had a plan of trying to get into this program because going back to school on my own was no longer feasible,” Lippman said. He got a job as a certified nursing assistant and began the apprenticeship the next year. 

Today he takes classes at Madison College and works three night shifts a week caring for patients with brain and spine injuries in University Hospital’s neuro intensive care unit. He’s on track to graduate in 2028.

UW Health’s shorter training programs, meanwhile, are open to new applicants as well as current employees. Already, some have finished one and moved onto another, looking to advance their careers, Willey said.

“What we’re seeing is that people come in through one of our entry-level (apprenticeship) programs like medical assistant or nursing assistant, get their feet under them working in that capacity, and then now they’re applying for our degreed registered apprenticeship programs,” Willey said.

This isn’t the first time the company has built its own pipeline of health care workers. In 2013, Willey started a program called Health Occupations and Professions Exploration, or HOPE, where high school students spend a Saturday learning to do CPR, place a breathing tube in a mannequin, and more. The goal, Willey said, is to show students the range of careers available in health care. The program has trained about 6,500 students.

How much can the model grow?

Apprenticeships offer a unique way to address workforce shortages and help employees move up on the job, said Andy MacCracken, who coordinates health workforce planning for North Carolina at the NC Center on the Workforce for Health. That, he said, is one reason the number of apprentices and apprenticeships in the health care field has soared in recent years. 

Still, he said, it’s not clear exactly how much of the health worker shortage can be solved through apprenticeships. 

“We need to have a realistic view about what we’re actually aiming for when deploying apprenticeships as a solution,” MacCracken said. “I think apprenticeships are a really helpful tool in the toolbox. They’re not the only one.”

One challenge: It’s expensive to pay the clinical staff needed to supervise apprentices, so it can be hard for health system leaders to make the business case to their boards. Even health systems that embrace apprenticeships may not be able to accept as many apprentices as they’d like. 

UW Health pays for its apprenticeship program with a mix of its own funds, private donations and public funds, though Willey said the latter is usually only available for starting up a new program.  

Still, there are always far more applicants than openings. When the registered nursing apprenticeship launched in 2023, 200 employees applied for 16 slots. Last year, 70 people applied for 40 medical assistant apprenticeships.

Another challenge: Each state has its own laws about what counts as an apprenticeship and what standards an employer must meet when offering one. Likewise, the regulations for each profession may vary from state to state too. And then there are the accrediting agencies that approve educational programs, which are still getting used to the idea that students might get paid for their clinical training hours.

Willey said WorkForward will publish research on apprenticeship approaches that work, lobby for resources to support such programs and help other states identify potential funding sources. The company is a nonprofit, she said, which will apply for private and public grants. It will not receive direct funding from UW Health. 

Currently, she said, WorkForward is working in Massachusetts with Tufts Medicine and Mass General Brigham — the state’s largest health care employer — and 12 of the state’s community and technical colleges.

“It would be great if we could take the solutions that we’ve built and spread (them at) scale across the U.S. … Health care continues to be a driver of new jobs for the U.S. economy,” Willey said, “and we have an aging population who needs more care, and so we need to be addressing these things now.”

MacCracken said he hasn’t heard of another health care employer taking on this role, but he thinks it makes sense, as employers may be more willing to listen to other employers. 

In North Carolina, he said, he’s already seen how a few model programs can pave the way for others. 

“I think because of the successes of some of the early adopters who have put these programs in action, we’re seeing great results, and so that’s helping inspire more action and scalability and replication.” MacCracken said. 

Natalie Yahr reports on pathways to success statewide for Wisconsin Watch, working in partnership with Open Campus. Email her at nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org.

Can Wisconsin’s health apprenticeships become a national model? UW Health thinks so is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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• More than 108,000 Wisconsinites are in default on student loans, according to federal data analyzed by the Associated Press and shared with Wisconsin Watch. 
• The number of borrowers in default surged nationwide since 2024, when pandemic relief measures ended. 
• Advocates expect it to worsen, with borrowers facing higher monthly payments and longer repayment terms after the Trump administration ended existing relief options.
• Wisconsin student loan borrowers who attend for-profit colleges are twice as likely to be 90 days behind on payments compared to peers at public and nonprofit private colleges, AP data shows.

The number of Wisconsinites many months behind on student loan bills has risen by nearly 50% since last fall. 

That’s according to federal data analyzed by the Associated Press, which found that more than 108,000 people in Wisconsin haven’t made payments on their loans in more than 360 days.

Across the country, the number of students in student loan default has surged by millions since a four-year pandemic reprieve ended in 2024, and advocates say it’s poised to worsen as President Donald Trump’s administration has ended existing relief options. 

Borrowers are placed in default after missing payments for nine months. The status triggers a raft of devastating consequences. The entire balance becomes due at once, and the loan is sent to collections, crashing the borrower’s credit score. That can make it harder to borrow, rent or even find work.  

Around 34,000 Wisconsinites entered student loan default since September 2025, the AP found. Of the roughly 709,100 people in Wisconsin who hold student loans, one in seven is currently in default.

Here’s how we got here: As a pandemic relief measure, the federal government allowed borrowers to suspend student loan payments until 2023, and President Joe Biden’s administration then provided a one-year grace period. That ended in fall 2024, allowing loans to enter into default after nine months of missed payments. 

A surge in defaults followed, and today around 9.5 million borrowers nationwide — over 1 in 5 — are in default, including those whose loans were well past due before the pandemic, according to the AP analysis. The previous record for borrowers in default had been 8 million in December 2019.

Meanwhile, many borrowers are facing much higher monthly payments since the Trump administration ended the SAVE repayment plan, which offered more flexibility and lower payments than any other. In its absence, borrowers will see longer repayment terms and “unpredictable payment spikes,” wrote Michele Zampini, associate vice president of federal policy and advocacy at the Institute for College Access and Success, in a February blog post. 

“I am seeing despair and outrage and despondency and just a very wide mix of pretty extreme emotions, the likes of which I have not seen before,” Alan Collinge, the founder of grassroots advocacy group Student Loan Justice, told the AP. 

The federal government can garnish wages and Social Security payments from borrowers in default, but the Trump administration in January walked back plans to begin collections on their loans. A Moody’s Analytics report this spring said garnishments are likely to begin within the next year, warning of “an additional headwind in an increasingly fragile economy.” 

Governments and colleges may also impose additional penalties on borrowers in default, including restricting access to further financial aid, withholding transcripts and suspending professional licenses and driver’s licenses. 

“These measures are not only punitive, they’re also self-defeating: by undermining someone’s ability to cover basic expenses, return to school to finish a degree, keep their job, or even drive a car, the default system makes it harder for someone who is already struggling to secure their financial footing,” Zampini wrote in 2025. 

For-profit colleges, lower repayment rates

Students who attend Wisconsin’s for-profit colleges are far less likely to satisfy their loan payments than their peers at the state’s public and nonprofit private colleges, the AP data shows. 

AP reporters analyzed data from the Office of Federal Student Aid on students whose loan payments first came due between January 2020 and May 2025, typically because they either graduated or left school. The analysis does not include students at schools with fewer than 100 borrowers. 

The data shows students who have attended for-profit schools in Wisconsin are twice as likely as their peers to be at least 90 days behind on payments. At Wisconsin’s public and private colleges, one in seven of these borrowers had fallen behind on payments by May of this year. At for-profit schools, the rate was more than one in four. 

Nonpayment rates were highest for students who attended for-profit cosmetology schools.

Nearly half of the 300 borrowers in the sample who attended Tricoci University of Beauty Culture’s Janesville campus were at least 90 days late. 

The Paul Mitchell beauty schools in Madison — which has since closed — and Milwaukee have 40% nonpayment rates. The nonpayment rate for the Salon Professional Academy in Kenosha is 36%, and the rate at State College of Beauty Culture is 35%.

Elinor Mittlestat, owner of State College of Beauty Culture, found the nonpayment rate surprising. She noted that many people graduate from the school without any loans. 

“It has been a strained economy, and I do understand that newly graduated students sometimes struggle to make student loan payments,” she said. 

One reason for the low repayment rate could be that cosmetology graduates tend to have relatively low incomes. On average, graduates of the Paul Mitchell school in Milwaukee, the Salon Professional Academy in Kenosha and State College of Beauty Culture make $7,000 to $12,500 less than the median Wisconsin high school graduate, according to an analysis of earnings data from Open Campus and The HEA Group.

Meanwhile, student borrowers who don’t finish school have to make loan payments too, even though they don’t have a credential to help them get a better job. Those who don’t graduate are more than twice as likely to end up in default, according to research by the Pew Charitable Trusts.

“The most important thing that you can do to be able to repay any loans you take out is to finish your program,” Carole Trone, executive director of the Wisconsin Coalition on Student Debt, told Wisconsin Watch in January. People leave school for all sorts of reasons, including family commitments and job changes. “A lot of that can be really unavoidable … but those are the borrowers that often have the most difficulty in repaying their loans.”

Around 25,000 students who recently attended Wisconsin public colleges are at least 90 days behind on their payments too, though they represent a far smaller share (13%) of those borrowers.

Students who attended Gateway Technical College have the highest nonpayment rate of the state’s public schools, with three in 10 recent students not making payments. 

Gateway communications manager Lee Colony said the college needs to use a “personal touch” to see what’s driving people to not pay their loans.

“We will reach out to those students and see if there is any help we can provide to them for repayment options,” Colony said. “Some of that outreach will also include ways to educate them on finances and how to properly borrow money to pay for college.”

By comparison, the University of Wisconsin campuses in Oshkosh, Stevens Point, Superior and Whitewater all have nonpayment rates of 10%, while UW-Madison’s rate is just 3%. At all of those schools, most students receive some form of financial aid besides loans.

Nationwide, AP’s analysis found 133 schools where more than half of recent students are at least 90 days behind on payments. Nearly all of them are for-profit schools, and more than half of them are barber or beauty schools.

This story was reported in collaboration with The Associated Press through its Localize It initiative, which provides datasets, reporting and story ideas for local newsrooms.

Miranda Dunlap reports on pathways to success in northeast Wisconsin, working in partnership with Open Campus. Find her on Instagram and Twitter, or send her an email at mdunlap@wisconsinwatch.org.

Natalie Yahr reports on pathways to success statewide for Wisconsin Watch, working in partnership with Open Campus. Email her at nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org. 

Student loan defaults surge in Wisconsin, US after federal reprieve ends is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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In early May, as I sat waiting for a connecting flight at O’Hare, I decided to finally do something that had been on my list for far too long: schedule a checkup.

It had been years since I’d seen a primary care doctor. I had a baby the year before, and with all the pregnancy appointments, I felt like I was getting enough checkups. But when I called my clinic, I learned that I’d been away long enough to be considered a new patient, and they didn’t have space for me. 

No problem, I thought. I looked up other primary care providers on my insurance company’s website and chose one more or less at random. I called to schedule an appointment.

The person who answered the phone warned me that the doctor was booking “quite far out.” I wasn’t shocked: I’ve heard that a shortage of primary care doctors is leading to long wait times. I waited to hear just how long it would be.

I don’t recall if the next available appointment was in August or October. I do recall that it was in 2027, more than a year away.

“Let’s try someone else,” I said. I scheduled an appointment with another doctor for August 2026, about three months out. 

What about you? How long have you had to wait to see a doctor recently, and how does that wait compare with years past? 

As a pathways to success reporter, I report on how workers get trained for the jobs Wisconsin needs most. I’m interested in the steps Wisconsin is taking to help more people become primary care providers, and whether those efforts are working. Drop me a note at nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org or call or text me at ‪608-620-5610‬.

How long have you waited for a doctor’s appointment? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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• Congress authorized the new Workforce Pell grant program in 2025 and allocated About $1.5 billion in funding for it.
• The program will allow students to use the federal financial aid dollars for short-term career training. 
• But the funding comes with restrictions on what programs are eligible, and the federal government left it up to states to figure out which offerings meet the new guidelines. 
• Wisconsin officials say it could take years to fully implement the program.

A new kind of federal financial aid is set to become available this week, but it’s not yet clear when Wisconsin students can start using it. 

Authorized by Congress in 2025’s controversial budget bill, the new Workforce Pell grant program was widely hailed as a bipartisan victory, opening the door for students to use the largest federal undergraduate grant program for short-term career training.

The roughly $1.5 billion investment could cover the costs for low-income individuals to get training in fields like truck driving and plumbing, which proponents say will help people break into new careers or move up at work. 

But the funds also come with restrictions intended to ensure that students don’t spend their time — or the government’s money — earning credentials that don’t pay off. 

The federal government has left it up to states to decide which programs make the cut. In Wisconsin, officials say that process could take years, with aid initially available only to students in a handful of carefully scrutinized programs.

“Wisconsin is approaching the initial rollout thoughtfully, treating it as a pilot phase focused on a limited number of high-quality, high-demand workforce programs,” said Katy Pettersen, spokesperson for the Wisconsin Technical College System.

Wisconsin Watch asked state officials how the rollout will work. Here’s what we learned.

What is Workforce Pell? 

Workforce Pell is a new program that allows low-income Americans to use Pell grants — the federal government’s largest financial aid program for undergraduates — to pay for workforce training courses as short as eight weeks.

The grants will be available to people who don’t have a graduate degree. Those who already have bachelor’s degrees are eligible to apply, even though they aren’t eligible for traditional Pell grants. The Department of Education estimates the new grants will support about 190,000 students each year. 

The grants will be less than the maximum award for the traditional Pell grant program, according to the national education and workforce nonprofit Jobs for the Future. The exact amounts will be based on the amount of instructional time required.

What programs will be eligible?

That hasn’t been decided yet. Wisconsin colleges will need to submit programs to state officials for consideration. The Department of Workforce Development hopes to open that application in July. 

Before then, Wisconsin officials must set the criteria that will determine which programs will be eligible. That includes deciding what it means for a career to be “in-demand” or “high-wage.” One federal guideline: To be eligible, programs must show 70% of their students complete training in a timely manner.

Programs must also be the right length. Workforce Pell dollars can only be used for training that runs for eight and 14 weeks and 150 to 599 clock hours. Some programs that would otherwise be eligible will likely be excluded for this reason.

Several programs, including ones that train truck drivers, dental auxiliary workers and emergency medical technicians, are “strong early candidates, given their alignment with workforce demand and expected performance outcomes,” Pettersen said. 

Gov. Tony Evers and the Governor’s Council on Workforce Investment will determine which programs meet the criteria. They’ll submit their selections to the U.S. Department of Education.  

Another factor limiting which programs can qualify is a federal requirement that programs must have met the eligibility criteria for at least 12 months. That means that if a college creates or modifies a program to comply with the rules, it won’t qualify for the first year. 

“More options will come available over the next 12 to 24 months,” said DWD spokesperson Haley McCoy. “Wisconsin is moving deliberately to collaborate with stakeholders to optimize the opportunities the program offers.” 

When will people be able to use Workforce Pell grants in Wisconsin?

State officials have offered no official start date for when people will be able to utilize this financial aid. 

When the law passed last year, it said funds would be available “for the award year beginning on July 1, 2026, and each subsequent award year.” Jobs for the Future called that timeline “aggressive,” saying the Department of Education might need more time to implement the program.

Indeed, the department didn’t release the rules governing Workforce Pell until nearly a year later. That, McCoy said, has delayed the process.

“The final rule, which established eligibility and process requirements, was not published by the Department of Education until May 18, 2026, with Workforce Pell set to go into effect less than two months later,” McCoy said, adding that the department “continues to work diligently towards the July 2026 launch date.” 

Behind the scenes, college administrators are deciding which of their programs could qualify, said Scott Anderson, associate vice president of academic affairs and workforce development at Northeast Wisconsin Technical College. 

Then, they’ll also have to spread the word to students. 

“At this point, our financial aid office hasn’t received many questions from students specifically about Workforce Pell,” Anderson said. “We expect awareness and interest will increase as more information becomes available and the program officially launches.”

In the meantime, Wisconsinites interested in these grants can complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, which is required for all types of Pell grants. The application is available at www.fafsa.gov.

What’s happening in other states?

Other states are in a similar boat, sprinting to decide which training programs fit the bill. 

As of June 26, just 12 states have published an approval process, according to a tracker from the independent research platform Opportunity Data.

In California, state officials say the aid won’t be available for students for weeks or even several months. Lawmakers there are also weighing legislation that would place heavier restrictions on the kinds of programs that qualify, CalMatters reported. 

Some Texas college officials have warned that the vetting process may mean students won’t access the funds until 2027. 

How can people get help paying for workforce training in the meantime?

People who enroll in short-term certification programs in Wisconsin have options for financial assistance, even if their program isn’t yet eligible for Workforce Pell. 

The state offers other forms of tuition assistance, grants and scholarships. For example, students who enrolled in EMT training can now get reimbursed for some of their tuition costs. 

To learn about other options, visit the Higher Educational Aids Board website.

Miranda Dunlap reports on pathways to success in northeast Wisconsin, working in partnership with Open Campus. Find her on Instagram and Twitter, or send her an email at mdunlap@wisconsinwatch.org.

Natalie Yahr reports on pathways to success statewide for Wisconsin Watch, working in partnership with Open Campus. Email her at nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org.

Federal financial aid for career training is here. When will Wisconsinites benefit? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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$37,000. 

More than the price of a new Toyota RAV-4 or Subaru Outback, two of the more popular cars I see on the streets of Madison. 

Far more than the average rent for a three-bedroom apartment in this fast-growing, rent-spiking city. 

More than my family’s mortgage and health insurance costs combined. 

Well over half of my $65,000 salary. 

$37,000, if you haven’t already guessed, is about how much it’ll cost to send my two kids, aged 1 and 3, to daycare this year. 

If you or someone you know has young kids, this probably isn’t news to you. 

The Department of Children and Families surveys child care providers across the state each year to assess the going rate for child care in every county and tribal nation. The latest figures, released last week, show the median price for full-time infant care in a child care center — by far the most common place for regulated child care in Wisconsin today — rose 8% since 2025 to $17,400 a year. 

That’s nearly a quarter of the median family’s income — and that’s just for one kid. 

Families like mine, with two kids still too young for school, often find themselves paying more for child care than for housing. 

That’s one reason families are having kids later and having fewer kids, said Jeff Pertl, secretary-designee of the state’s Department of Children and Families, in a call with reporters. 

“This is at the heart of this conversation about how people feel like they just can’t afford, not just child care, but all the things in their lives — this sense that Americans are falling further behind,” Pertl said. “This is the first (modern) generation to be worse off than their parents … because things are just so expensive.”

Soon, families could face even higher costs as the state payments that have propped up child care providers for years end this week. 

Economists today regularly call child care a broken market because parents are already paying more than they can afford, and child care businesses still can’t afford to pay staff family-sustaining wages. According to DCF, the average wage for a lead child care teacher in Wisconsin is $13.55, less than half the $28.34 average for all Wisconsin workers.

I’ve been reporting on the child care dilemma for years. Now, I want to hear from you. How much of your family’s income goes to child care? How are you managing to pay? Has the cost forced your family to make any difficult decisions? Have you looked into whether you qualify for a subsidy? Email me at nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org or call or text me at ‪(608) 620-5610‬.

How much are you paying for child care? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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• Employers must get your permission before they use a third-party company to run a background check. 
• Employers can use your credit history to make employment decisions, but experts say it’s important to know your rights. 
• If there’s false or inaccurate information on your credit report, notify the consumer reporting agency that generated the report. 
• Experts say you can protect yourself by checking your credit report annually and placing a freeze on your credit report to reduce the risk of identity theft.

When you apply for a job, you probably know that your potential employer will check your criminal record. But what about your credit history?

Employers in most states, including Wisconsin, are allowed to run background checks that show your debts, available credit and payment history. Wisconsin Watch asked experts what job seekers and employees should know about this process and their rights. 

We spoke to:

• Nick Raef, employment attorney at law firm Hawks Quindel. 
• Jeff Palkowski, state director of the Wisconsin State Council of the Society for Human Resources Management.
• Adriana Peguero, assistant city attorney for the city of Madison.

What kind of credit information can employers see?

Not all types of background reports show financial information. Those that do typically show your credit accounts, payment history, available credit, bankruptcies, liens and self-reported work history, NerdWallet reports.

The reports do not show your credit score, the three-digit number that lenders, landlords and insurers use to assess how creditworthy you are. They also don’t show your income, birth date, marital status or medical debts. 

Unlike when you apply for a credit card or a loan, this is a “soft inquiry,” meaning it won’t affect your credit score and it won’t be visible to other employers or lenders. 

Can an employer run a background check without my permission?

No. If employers want to use a third-party company to run a background check, they need written permission. That’s because of the Fair Credit Reporting Act, a 1970 federal law created to protect consumers from false information being included in their credit reports. The law requires that an employer provide “clear and conspicuous” notice in a stand-alone document. 

“That means that if they throw the language into the boilerplate of an application, or scribble it in the margins of the position description, or fail to get your consent before pulling the report, then they are in violation of the law,” Raef, the employment attorney, said in an email. The employer can run the background check only if the employee or job applicant signs the document.

If employers want to run a background check later, like if they’re considering you for a promotion, they have to get permission again.

“It’s not the case that if you’re hired by a company that five years later they can go back and use the same acceptance of disclosure from when you were hired,” Raef said.

Notably, the protections of the Fair Credit Reporting Act apply only when employers use another company to run the background check, not when employers use the Wisconsin Circuit Court Access Program (CCAP) or other tools to check a person’s history themselves.

Can an employer use my credit history to make employment decisions?

Yes, though additional restrictions apply in the city of Madison.

If employers see something in the report that makes them choose to take an “adverse action” about your employment (for example, fire, demote or simply not hire), they must give you a “pre-adverse action notice,” along with a copy of your background report, details about the Fair Credit Reporting Act and an explanation of your rights, including the right to dispute the accuracy of the report and get another free report within 60 days. 

“The notice must inform an individual that their decision was influenced by the report, but does not have to clarify what exactly within the report has led to the employer’s adverse decision,” Raef said. That, he said, can “leave individuals with little clarity as to the employer’s reasoning.” 

The employer must allow time for the employee or applicant to respond before sending a final notice indicating the action the employer took. 

Still, Raef said, employers might say they had other reasons for choosing a different candidate. 

“Employers have the leeway to base their decision on a multitude of factors,” Raef said. “Oftentimes it can be really hard to sort of draw out what exactly happened here, and that’s where an employment attorney can be really helpful.” 

In Madison, employers face stricter limits on how they can use credit history. That’s because credit history is one of the 30 characteristics denoted in the city’s equal opportunity ordinance, alongside homelessness, citizenship status, source of income and physical appearance. 

“We have a very large, expansive number of protected classes,” said Peguero, the assistant city attorney. 

Employers in Madison can make employment decisions based on credit history only if one of the following is true: 

• They can demonstrate that the person’s credit history is “substantially related” to the job.
• The job requires that the person be bonded and the person’s credit history makes them ineligible. Some jobs, especially ones that involve handling money, valuables or proprietary information, require that employees be covered by a fidelity bond that will reimburse the employer if the employee steals or commits fraud. (Note: The federal government operates a little-known alternative bonding program for people who might otherwise struggle to find work, including those with poor credit. You can learn more about that program here.)

The ordinance applies within the city, so it covers Madison employers. It’s less clear whether it would apply to the growing number of Madison residents who work remotely for employers based elsewhere, Peguero said.

“That analysis would have to be done by the hearing examiner, but it is possible it could extend to an employer that is outside of the city of Madison,” Peguero said.

Why do employers check credit? 

Employers may use credit history to assess how trustworthy or responsible a person is, Raef said. An employer may assume that an employee or applicant who has lots of debt, for example, may be more likely to commit fraud, embezzle funds or accept a bribe, especially if the person is in charge of company funds. 

But Raef questions whether credit reports are useful in most employment decisions. “There’s not clear evidence that credit history is an indicator of an employee’s capacity to perform well in their job,” Raef said, pointing to a 2012 study that found no correlation.

“Someone might have poor credit on paper because of a domestic abuse situation in their home, or because they were born into really unfortunate circumstances that don’t reflect on their ability to be a great employee,” Raef said.

He worries that credit checks will create a “toxic loop” where the people who most need jobs can’t get them, which only makes their financial situation worse.  

“I can see the employer’s side where there are limited and specific circumstances where these checks make sense, but as a broad application, I think that it leads to a lot of unfair employment practices and probably exacerbates existing biases that are systemic within our society,” Raef said. 

A 2023 report by the Urban Institute, a national think tank focused on economic and social policy, echoes those concerns. 

“Research suggests that workers with low wages are among those harmed by preemployment credit checks, in part because workers with low incomes are the most likely to have imperfect credit records,” the authors write, though they note there’s limited data on low-wage workers specifically.

How common is it for employers to run credit checks?

About half of U.S. employers conduct credit checks when hiring for at least some of their positions, according to a 2021 survey by the Professional Background Screening Association.   

Jeff Palkowski leads the Wisconsin State Council of the Society for Human Resources Management. He has worked in human resources in Wisconsin for more than 20 years, mostly in the public sector in Madison. The closest he’s come to an employment credit check was when a friend applied to work at the FBI. 

“Anecdotally, I have heard of instances where a credit check may be part of the pre-employment process, but only in rare cases … Personally, I have never filled a role that had a pre-employment credit check as part of the recruitment process,” he said. 

Do all states allow employers to do credit checks?

No. As of 2023, 11 states had restricted the practice, according to the Urban Institute. Wisconsin has no state law restricting these checks.

What can I do if I think my credit report is wrong or if I think an employer used my credit history illegally?

If you believe there is a mistake on your credit report, you can dispute it by contacting the consumer reporting agency whose report showed the mistake. The agency must investigate. 

“If they can’t verify the accuracy of the information, then they have to remove it,” Raef said.

If you believe an employer used your credit history inappropriately, Raef recommends contacting an employment lawyer. 

“If they fail to notify you of a negative decision based on a report, or if they refuse to identify the source of the information that they obtained about you, or if they fail to get your permission at all, then you might be entitled to recover damages,” Raef said. 

If you or the employer is located in Madison, you can also file a complaint with the city of Madison’s Department of Civil Rights, which investigates alleged violations of the city’s equal opportunity ordinance. You must file the complaint within 300 days of the incident. 

Complaints are far less common than allegations of other kinds of employment discrimination, Peguero said. Of the 805 employment complaints submitted to the office between 2020 and 2025, just eight mentioned credit history.

How can I protect myself?

There are proactive steps you can take now to reduce the chance that a credit check will cause you unnecessary trouble.

 “You shouldn’t wait until you have signed something allowing your employer to look into this,” Raef said. 

He recommends the following actions:

• Request your own credit report to check for errors. You can do this for free once a year at www.annualcreditreport.com. If you find a mistake, report it. 

• Place a freeze on your credit report to reduce the risk of identity theft, which can damage your credit. A credit freeze blocks anyone from opening a new credit account in your name. You can place a freeze for free online, but you’ll need to do it separately for each of the three nationwide credit reporting agencies: Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. You’ll need to lift the freeze any time you want to apply for credit. “It’s kind of a pain … but it’s worthwhile to do with the amount of pain that it could cause if not done,” Raef said.

Natalie Yahr reports on pathways to success statewide for Wisconsin Watch, working in partnership with Open Campus. Email her at nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org. 

Can Wisconsin employers check your credit? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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• Wisconsin’s women’s prisons are 78% over capacity compared to its men’s facilities, which are 30% over capacity. 
• The issue isn’t new, but despite decades of overcrowding, the system is approaching a record number of prisoners. 
• Wisconsin Watch created a tracker that shows how the population of each prison has changed over time and how far it is above that facility’s design capacity.

As Wisconsin’s prison population nears a record high, the state’s already-full prisons are getting even more crowded — especially for women. The state’s three women’s prisons collectively house 18 women for every 10 they were designed for, making them the most crowded of all state facilities.

One reason: While growth in the women’s prison population has far outpaced growth in the men’s system, Wisconsin prison officials shrank the facilities that housed them — to make more space for men.

Now, to make room for women, prison officials have set up beds in gyms and offices.

“They just cram us in wherever they can, it’s sad,” wrote Sarah Buckingham, who is currently incarcerated at Robert E. Ellsworth Correctional Center, a minimum-security facility in Racine County that now houses more than twice as many people as it was designed for.

Across the system, the rising number of prisoners and a shortage of staff have strained resources. Prisoners often wait months or years for limited spots in treatment, education and work programs, the very programs designed to prepare them for release. That, advocates say, could mean people wait longer to get out, or even end up returning to prison — making facilities even more crowded.

A new data tool from Wisconsin Watch allows anyone to track the population of the system and of each facility for free. The dashboard, which shows weekly population and capacity counts going back to 2006, updates automatically when prison officials post the latest figures. 

The data makes it clear: Overcrowding is not new. Wisconsin’s prisons have held thousands more people than intended for at least the last 20 years. The population dipped during the COVID-19 pandemic but is now heading toward an all-time high. More than 23,600 people are in state custody, according to the latest figures available from the Wisconsin Department of Corrections. That’s about 200 shy of the record 23,826 set in 2019.

The dashboard can’t show how the trends could soon change. In April, Gov. Tony Evers announced the state would soon commute prison sentences for the first time in 25 years, though it’s not yet clear how many people may be eligible or how long the process will take.

Women’s prisons are the most crowded

Female prisoners bear the brunt of the state’s overcrowding predicament. While the state’s male facilities are about 30% over capacity in total, its female facilities are 78% over capacity. That’s according to the department’s latest data, which shows population and capacity as of May 22. 

Taycheedah Correctional Institution, the state’s only maximum-security women’s prison, is designed to house 653. On May 22, it housed 1,039. 

Prison officials have raised alarms about conditions at Taycheedah for at least a decade. 

“The increased population at TCI has detrimental effects on the prison,” they wrote in a 2016 budget request, when the population was 873. Crowded conditions could cause security problems, they wrote, as each correctional officer must supervise more prisoners. They also noted the steep competition for access to programs for treatment or training. 

“There is also decreased programming availability to inmates, and programming has been shown to help reduce recidivism,” the authors wrote.

Since then, the facility has added nearly 170 women. 

“(Taycheedah) has already undergone conversions to turn spaces into living areas that were not originally meant to be used as living areas due to a problem with overcrowding,” said Daniel Cromwell, an administrator for the state’s corrections department, in an April court filing.

Wisconsin Watch heard from six currently incarcerated women who watched the women’s prison population balloon. They described sharing already overcrowded bathrooms with more women and competing for treatment and employment resources. 

Department of Corrections spokesperson Beth Hardtke confirmed that beds have previously been set up in the gym at Taycheedah but said no one is living in the gym now. Taycheedah staff are currently converting a “former property room” into a dormitory to house 20 women, Hardtke said.

The issue isn’t isolated to Taycheedah. The Milwaukee Women’s Center is at 255% capacity. Robert E. Ellsworth Correctional is now at 219% of its capacity.

Fifteen years ago, the state’s women’s prisons had nearly enough space, not just because there were fewer prisoners, but because there was a fourth women’s minimum-security prison. John C. Burke Correctional Center in Waupun, designed for 186 prisoners, housed women from 2000 to 2011, when it was converted into a men’s minimum-security prison. 

The move dropped the capacity of the women’s system — just as the number of female prisoners spiked. In the 15 years since, the women’s prison population has grown nearly 29%, more than four times as fast as the men’s population.  

Now, state officials are making plans to turn Burke back into a women’s prison, part of a $500 million prison reorganization Gov. Tony Evers proposed last year.

Overcrowding limits education, training 

Overcrowding doesn’t just mean getting an extra roommate or waiting longer for a shower. It also means prisons need extra staff — staff they often struggle to find. In 2023, prison officials locked down Waupun — canceling programs and confining prisoners to their cells for the better part of several months — because they didn’t have enough officers to conduct normal operations, Wisconsin Watch reporting revealed.

While the staffing shortage has eased since, the system is still short about 620 full-time correctional officers and sergeants, the latest DOC figures show. 

Those shortages can mean prison programs get cut or canceled, said Shannon Ross, founder and executive director of the Milwaukee-based nonprofit The Community, which helps incarcerated people pursue education and develop as leaders.

“If you have too many people to watch per staff member, now, ‘Oh, we can’t have classes tonight because we need to have more people over here watching more people that are incarcerated,’” Ross said. 

Ross, who earned a bachelor’s degree while serving a 17-year sentence in Wisconsin prisons, said when prisons are packed and money is tight, prison officials scale back vocational training and higher education to focus on the basics: food, housing, security, court-ordered programming and services prisons are legally required to provide.

“Anything beyond that is going to become superfluous,” he said. That’s a problem, he said, because more than 90% of Wisconsin’s prisoners will one day be released. “Who do we want them to be?”

How we got here

Wisconsin isn’t the only state struggling to find room for all its prisoners. Across the country, prison populations spiked in the 1980s and 1990s as states adopted harsher punishments and “truth-in-sentencing” legislation. The latter requires most prisoners to spend their full sentence behind bars, without the possibility of parole. 

Suddenly the flow of people out of prison slowed, while as many as ever flowed in. Lots also flowed back, returning to prison for allegedly violating the terms of their release.

In Wisconsin, the prison population peaked in August 2019 at 23,826, then dropped sharply beginning in March 2020 as courts shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In just over a year, the number of people in prison fell by nearly 20% to 19,381, the lowest figure in the last two decades. 

As the state’s courts reopened, they began working through a backlog of cases — and sending more people to prison. In a 2023 report, the Legislative Fiscal Bureau said that if the prison population continued growing as fast as it was, it would set a record of 24,800 by July 2025. 

The authors predicted that wouldn’t happen, and they were right. 

“While recent growth patterns have been sizable, it is likely that the updated growth rate is too high to continue for the duration of the 2023-25 biennium, and that the recent rapid growth is likely temporary,” the authors wrote, noting that “at some point, the courts will catch up and prison populations will level out and grow at a slower rate.”

Still, the numbers have kept rising, and the growth has gotten faster, not slower. In the last year, that growth has been fueled entirely by a surge in women prisoners: While the male population fell slightly between May 2025 and May 2026, the female population rose by more than 4%.

What’s the solution?

Policymakers and prisoner advocates disagree about the answer to Wisconsin’s crowded prisons. 

In the major revamp he proposed last year, Gov. Evers called for, among other things:

• Closing the nearly 130-year-old Green Bay Correctional Institution.
• Transforming Waupun Correctional Institution into a “vocational village.” 
• Converting the troubled Lincoln Hills School from a juvenile prison to an adult prison.
• Converting Burke into a women’s prison.
• Expanding a program that allows some people incarcerated for nonviolent crimes to qualify for early release by completing treatment for substance use. 

Together the changes would reduce the state’s prison capacity by 700. The plan drew criticism from Republican lawmakers, who pointed to the state’s crowded prisons as a sign that the state needs more space in its prisons, not less.

State Sen. Van Wanggaard, R-Racine, said the answer is “right-sizing” the number of prisoners by “adding additional beds, reducing overcrowding and making facilities safer for not only our inmates, but for our staff,” Wisconsin Public Radio reported. 

In October, the State of Wisconsin Building Commission released $15 million to plan for Evers’ proposed changes. 

Ross of The Community calls that proposal a “marginal improvement.”

“It’s not getting us the level of change that everybody would need to see and want to see … You’ve got to get past marginal improvements at some point to really have something different,” Ross said. “Otherwise, it’s just a different version of the exact same problem every year we’re facing.”

One way to do that, he said, is to repeal truth-in-sentencing laws to reduce the number of people behind bars.

“Stop having a system in which people cannot get back out if they’re ready,” Ross said.

That, like other major prison changes, would require legislative action. But lawmakers in the Republican majority have stymied reform for years, Evers’ spokesperson Britt Cudaback said. 

“Gov. Evers has repeatedly worked to comprehensively reform our state’s justice system and corrections statutes to save taxpayers and reduce overcrowding, invest in evidence-based alternatives to incarceration, and improve public safety in our communities while reducing the likelihood that someone may reoffend once they have completed their sentence,” Cudaback said in an email. 

But Evers can’t make those changes unilaterally, Cudaback said, and lawmakers in the Republican majority have “refused nearly every effort to address these challenges over the last nearly eight years.”

In April, with nine months left in office, Evers announced he would use one of the few tools available for single-handedly easing overcrowding: commutations. It’s the first time in 25 years that incarcerated people in Wisconsin can request to have their sentence shortened. 

Advocates across the state are still trying to determine how many of Wisconsin’s nearly 24,000 prisoners may be eligible, and they’re working to help as many eligible people as possible apply. 

The first meeting of the Commutation Advisory Board will take place in June, and the first commutations will be issued some time after that. With Gov. Evers leaving office in January, it will be up to the next governor to decide whether the process continues.

Wisconsin Watch reporter Addie Costello contributed to this report.

Wisconsin’s prison population is heading toward a record high. Track the trend here. is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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• Fidelity bonds protect businesses if an employee steals or commits fraud. 

• The state issues the bonds, and research shows they’re one of the most effective ways to persuade employers to hire people with criminal records.  

• But Wisconsin issues few fidelity bonds. 

• Experts are divided on the issue, with some saying the free insurance can’t hurt and might help. 

• Others say it doesn’t address all the concerns employers have or educate them about the benefits of giving people with criminal records a second chance.

For every 10 people released from Wisconsin’s prisons, just seven find jobs within two years — even as the state’s ongoing worker shortage leaves many employers scrambling to find the help they need. 

The struggle isn’t unique to Wisconsin. Formerly incarcerated people nationwide are far more likely to be unemployed than the general population. One reason: Though people with criminal records often outperform their colleagues, many employers worry they’ll be unreliable or even dangerous. 

That’s why, 60 years ago, the U.S. government began insuring employers against that risk, for free. 

The Federal Bonding Program, established in 1966, offers “fidelity bonds” to reimburse businesses for losses if the covered employee steals or commits fraud. 

Recent research suggests these bonds are one of the most effective ways the government can persuade employers to give jobs to people with criminal records. Those jobs have ripple effects.  Families become more financially stable, communities become safer — as people with jobs are less likely to commit new crimes — and taxpayers save money as fewer people return to prison.  

So why aren’t Wisconsin employers requesting these bonds? While some states issued hundreds last year, Wisconsin issued just three — even though an estimated 1.4 million Wisconsinites have a criminal record. 

Demand in the state is so low that when the federal government in 2019 offered Wisconsin $100,000 to spend on bonds, workforce officials used just $15,000.

To figure out what’s going on, Wisconsin Watch spoke to economists, insurance experts, criminologists and workforce development officials, who ranged from enthusiastic to cynical about bonding. 

Some said the coverage limits may be too low to address employers’ worries, or that bonds don’t help when employers are worried about safety or a bad work ethic. Some said employers overestimate the risk of hiring people with criminal records and that education — not insurance — is the solution. But most said offering this free insurance can’t hurt and might help. 

In a worker-strapped state, is this insurance program a little-known lifeline or an irrelevant relic? 

Bonding basics

Imagine you’re a hiring manager who wants to offer a job to an applicant with a criminal record. If you’re in the same boat as many businesses, your commercial insurance may not cover any theft or other act of dishonesty if the employee in question has a criminal record. 

To fill that insurance gap, you contact your state’s bonding coordinator to apply for a six-month, no-deductible fidelity bond that will reimburse you for up to $5,000 in losses. In special circumstances, you can apply for additional coverage of up to $25,000. The state handles the paperwork and the $100 cost. 

The program boasts a claim rate of just 1%, meaning businesses in the program seldom report losses. At the end of the six months, you may now be satisfied that your new employee is trustworthy — or you can buy additional coverage. 

In Wisconsin, these bonds are the only incentive available to encourage what’s often called “second chance” or “fair chance” hiring.

“It is a unique tool to help a job applicant get and keep a job,” the state’s Department of Workforce Development says on its bonding webpage. “It is like a ‘guarantee’ to the employer that the person hired will be an honest worker.” 

The same bonds are also available to other job applicants whose background could make it hard to get or keep a job. That includes people in treatment or recovery for alcohol or drug addictions and people with little or no work history. 

In practice, the program is almost exclusively used for people with criminal records, according to program administrator Kevin Kulling. 

Wisconsin focuses much of its outreach effort on prisons, making sure people know how to take advantage of the program when they get out. The stakes are high: Of those released in 2023, nearly 1 in 3 were rearrested within a year and 1 in 8 ended up back behind bars. 

Recent research backs bonds 

Governments have tried a variety of ways to persuade employers to hire people with criminal records. 

Nationally, there’s the $2-billion-a-year federal Work Opportunity Tax Credit, which rewards employers for hiring people with felony convictions. But new research finds the tax credit doesn’t increase pay or hiring for the workers it’s designed to help. It expired in December but could be reinstated.

Meanwhile, a growing number of states have tried to boost job seekers by barring employers from asking about criminal records on job applications. In about a dozen states, public and private employers are subject to such “ban-the-box” measures. 

Evidence is mixed. Several studies find these laws reduce hiring for Black and Hispanic men, suggesting that when employers can’t check an applicant’s criminal record, they instead make assumptions based on demographics.

Enter the bond, a policy that predates the others by decades. In 1975, the U.S. Department of Labor commissioned a study of the then-new program. Participating workers reported major salary increases after joining the program, and a majority held on to their bonded job longer than one year. 

New evidence supports the program. In a 2023 article, researchers from the National Bureau of Economic Research teamed up with an online hiring platform to survey businesses. The platform asked users about their willingness to hire people with criminal records and how that might change if the platform offered wage subsidies or insurance coverage. 

Researchers found employer willingness to hire someone with a criminal record rose 12% when offered up to $5,000 in crime and safety insurance. It would take an 80% wage subsidy to get the same result. 

Mitchell Hoffman, an economics professor at the University of California-Santa Barbara, co-authored that study. He said policymakers have often tried to solve these hiring challenges by trying to change the workers, like with training or therapy. This research suggests it’s possible to change employers’ behavior, too.

That matters, he said, because employers hold the cards. “If firms don’t want to employ people with a record, then it’s hard to move them to employment and to good jobs,” Hoffman said.

The findings are welcome news to Jen Doleac, executive vice president of criminal justice at the philanthropy Arnold Ventures and author of the book “The Science of Second Chances: A Revolution in Criminal Justice.” Doleac, who researches crime and discrimination, was surprised when she first learned about the Federal Bonding Program.

“It’s such a smart idea. Employers say they’re worried about the risk of hiring someone with a record. How do we deal with risk? We provide insurance,” Doleac said. A critic of the Work Opportunity Tax Credit, she said the new research shows why bonds are a better bet. 

“Insurance just moved the needle more, and much more dollar for dollar,” Doleac said.   

Experts divided

Even in states issuing hundreds of bonds a year, that’s just a fraction of those released from prison annually, and a smaller share of all people with criminal convictions. 

“The total number of firms nationally that were involved, it seemed like a very small number,” Hoffman said. “There's interesting variation across states, but overall, just not that much usage.”

Just 27 Wisconsin employers participated in the program in the last five years, according to federal records obtained by Wisconsin Watch. Those businesses range from national retailers like Dollar Tree to smaller agricultural businesses like Rine Ridge Farms. 

Why haven’t bonds proven more popular? Wisconsin Watch asked more than a dozen Wisconsin businesses and industry groups about their experience with the Federal Bonding Program. Just one responded, and none agreed to answer questions. 

Hoffman thinks maybe employers just aren’t that worried, or that the risk they’re worried about isn’t covered by the bonds. They may worry the applicant will be unreliable or even dangerous, despite evidence to the contrary. In a 2021 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management, more than 80% of business leaders said second-chance hires perform the same as or better than other employees. 

“If someone does something bad to a customer,” Hoffman said, that customer might sue, or customers might take their business elsewhere. Bonds don’t cover that risk. “That is very difficult to quantify. What is the cost of that sort of event?”

Another possibility, Doleac said, is that employers don’t know about the bonds. Some states may be doing more to get the word out than others, but marketing costs money that state workforce departments may not have.

The more likely explanation, she said, is that the process is too cumbersome for employers who are used to buying insurance that covers all their employees. Although job applicants and employers do not have to complete any paperwork to get a bond, employers still need to keep track of the policies that were issued to a specific employee. 

“It’s just too inconvenient and too much paperwork to keep track of,” Doleac said. She and her colleagues are exploring whether standard policies could include riders covering these workers, without a separate process or schedule. 

Meanwhile, some advocates for formerly incarcerated people worry that the bonds can backfire, making employers worry even more. 

Craig Coleman, a case manager for Forward Service Corporation, helps formerly incarcerated Wisconsinites get trained and find work. He doubts bonds will help them. 

“You’re saying to your employer, ‘If I steal from you, then you'll be reimbursed,’” Coleman said. “I’m not an HR person, but if I had someone come in with an insurance policy saying, ‘If I steal from you,’ that’s the end of the conversation. I'm not hiring you.”

Genevieve Martin of Talent Nova agrees. Before starting a website designed to help formerly incarcerated people prepare for the workforce, she worked at Dave’s Killer Bread, which built its brand on hiring people with criminal records. 

There, she trained more than 50 other companies on “fair-chance hiring,” teaching them that hiring people with criminal records isn’t risky. Talking about extra insurance policies undermines that message, she said.

“Rather than hiring the person because they’re the best person for the job, but they happen to have a record. Now we’re trying to say, ‘Here’s an insurance policy. Please do it,’” Martin said. 

The fact that Wisconsin employers seldom use fidelity bonds might even be a good sign. The state has unusually strong organizations that prepare applicants for work and match them with employers, said Josh Morby, who represents such groups as spokesperson for the Wisconsin Workforce Hub. If those organizations are doing their jobs well, employers will trust their participants — no insurance policy necessary. 

“Wisconsin employers are looking for candidates who are screened, prepared and supported so hiring justice-impacted talent becomes a reliable workforce solution, not a risk,” Morby said in an email.

Wisconsin bond use lags 

The bonding program’s popularity varies among states, according to data Wisconsin Watch obtained from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration. In 2025, New Jersey issued 277 bonds, and Washington, D.C., issued 192. 

Meanwhile, 12 states didn’t issue any in 2025. 

Wisconsin Watch requested interviews with workforce officials in New Jersey, Tennessee, Washington, D.C., and West Virginia to learn why employers there are using more bonds. None responded. A U.S. Department of Labor spokesperson also declined an interview. 

One possible explanation for the higher numbers is that those states have higher unemployment rates. But Wisconsin’s unemployment rate was at a historic low in 2018, when the state issued 27 bonds, more than 12 times as many as it did in 2025. 

In 2019, Wisconsin workforce officials requested the maximum $100,000 federal grant to buy more bonds. They said they planned to buy 1,000 bonds over four years, plus more with other funds. They estimated more than 5,500 Wisconsinites with criminal records were eligible. The bonds, they said, would help break “the cycle of recidivism.”

But the COVID-19 pandemic — which shuttered businesses and locked down prisons — derailed the state’s plans. 

“With the unemployment rate at an increased rate in Wisconsin, many recruitment efforts for employers to use Fidelity Bonds (have) slowed,” officials wrote in each quarterly grant report from April 2020 to February 2021.

When the grant period ended in 2023, Wisconsin had issued just 59 bonds. Officials wrote that, despite their outreach efforts, their bond numbers were “extremely low.”

The bond’s popularity has since further waned. In each of the last two years, Wisconsin issued no more than three bonds. Department spokesperson Haley McCoy attributed that to the state’s tight labor market. 

“Given the strong demand to fill vacant positions, employers have not needed the added incentive of fidelity bonds to hire justice-involved employees during this historically strong economic period,” McCoy wrote in an email to Wisconsin Watch.

Asked whether the Department of Workforce Development plans to make any changes to Wisconsin’s bonding program, McCoy said the bonds are “just one tool in the toolbox that can help a job seeker secure a job.” 

“We’ll continue to work with our partners to provide opportunities and prepare job seekers and workers for their next opportunity in Wisconsin,” McCoy wrote.

From a job market ‘hidden force’ to a lever against bias

Meanwhile, Arnold Ventures researchers are trying to figure out how to get more businesses across the country to use federal fidelity bonds or something similar. 

Criminal justice director Carson Whitelemons has been studying ways to improve the federal program. But she said just trying to understand how bonding works and how it fits with existing business policies can be “incredibly difficult.”

“Even for business owners who are trying to ask their insurers what is covered and what is not covered, it's not always clear, and often that realm of uncertainty, I think, is what makes employers cautious,” Whitelemons said.

But it’s not just about bonding. The work is part of a new effort she’s organizing with experts from a variety of fields, trying to understand the biases that can keep people from getting all kinds of coverage and how to fix them.  

“(Insurance) is such a powerful lever in terms of what people feel safe or empowered to do, what they feel protected from. This has come up again and again in terms of different issues in the United States, in home ownership and redlining — insurance is often this hidden force, especially in areas where there is stigma or discrimination.”

Hoffman, the HR economist, said if more employers use bonds, that could help dispel misconceptions about people with records. 

“Employers … think they’re less productive than they actually are,” Hoffman said. That’s not the problem bonds are designed to solve, but if bonding gets more employers to hire these applicants, the experience may change how they view similar applicants in the future, he said. 

Meanwhile, officials from Wisconsin’s Department of Corrections will continue teaching prisoners about these seldom-used bonds and encouraging them to pitch the opportunity to their potential future bosses — for better or worse.  

Hongyu Liu is a data investigative reporter for Wisconsin Watch. Email him at hliu@wisconsinwatch.org. 

Natalie Yahr reports on pathways to success statewide for Wisconsin Watch, working in partnership with Open Campus. Email her at nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org.

‘Second chance’ bonds show promise. Few Wisconsin businesses use them is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.