A new report outlines trends in jail bookings and argues that the data shows that a punitive response to social and economic needs isn't working. | Getty Images

A recently released Prison Policy Initiative report, using data from the Jail Data Initiative, reveals that in 2023 there were 7.6 million admissions to jail, but that 1 in 4 admissions were for people previously booked in the last year, with Indigenous people/Native Americans the most likely to be booked again.

“Based on the Jail Data Initiative data, we estimate that over 5.6 million unique individuals are booked into jail annually and about 1.2 million are jailed multiple times in a given year,” the report found.  “Further analysis reveals patterns of bookings — and repeat bookings in particular — across the country: The jail experience disproportionately impacts Black and Indigenous people, and law enforcement continues to use jailing as a response to poverty and low-level ‘public order’ offenses.”

The report, prepared by Emily Widra and Wendy Sawyer, is titled “Who is jailed, how often and why: Our Jail Data Initiative collaboration offers a fresh look at the misuse of local jails.”

The Jail Data Initiative gathered information from 1,000 jails in the U.S. daily that included online jail rosters. The 1,000 jails represent approximately a third of 2,850 jails in America.

Of the 1,000 jails, 648 offered jail rosters available for a two-year window (July 1, 2021-June 30, 2023) and an additional year (out to June 30, 2024) to document those who had been booked again.

Previously, back in 2019, the Prison Policy Initiative released a report titled “Arrest, Release, Repeat: How police and jails are misused to respond to social problems.” That 2019 report reflects a survey from the National Survey of Drug Use and Health while the 2024 report reflects data collected directly from jails.

The 2024 report notes that more than 1 in 5, or 22%, in the study were booked more than once within 12 months.

Black people, who represent 14% of the population, were booked on unique charges at 32% of the total cases. 

Indigenous people, who represent 1% of the U.S. population, but are 3% of the incarcerated population, were rebooked back in jail within one year at 33%, contrasted with 23% for whites booked a second time within one year, 20% for Blacks, 19% for other people of color, and 18% for Asian American or Pacific Islanders.

The 2024 report notes that while the rates of booking and rebooking for women are similar to men in their demographic there is a growing trend of more women being incarcerated in jail.

“From 2021 to 2022, the number of women in jail increased 9% while the number of men in jail increased only 3%. The jailing of women has a devastating ‘ripple effect’ on families: At least 80% of women booked into jail are mothers, including over 55,000 women who are pregnant when they are admitted. Beyond having to leave their children in someone else’s care, these women are impacted by the brutal side effects of going to jail: aggravation of mental health problems, a greater risk of suicide, and a much higher likelihood of ending up homeless or deprived of essential support and benefits. So while women may account for a relatively small share of people booked into jails, those jail admissions have serious and long lasting consequences for the women, their families, and their communities.”

The report notes that 1 in 10 booked were older adults and roughly 7% of those older adults were rebooked within a year.

The report also notes, from 1999 to 2021, there was a growing trend of those 55 years old and older being arrested.

“Considering most older adults are arrested for low-level, non-violent offenses like trespassing, driving offenses, and disorderly conduct, it is likely that the older adults admitted to jail are in need of other systems of support outside of the criminal legal system, like substance use treatment, accessible medical care, and behavioral health services,” the report states.

In the Jail Data Initiative, there were 140 jails that shared the housing status of inmates, whether residents were homeless/unhoused or not: 4% reported they were unhoused and 42% of those unhoused were booked again within a year compared to 20% of those who had housing.

“This finding adds to the existing evidence of law enforcement’s ineffective but disproportionate and deliberate targeting of people experiencing homelessness,” the report states.

The 2024 report also compared recent charges reflected to  data collected in a 2002 Bureau of Justice Statistics  survey of inmates in local jails, based on self-reporting by inmates, and concluded there had been a noticeable decrease in drug charges since 2002 (from 25% to 14%), a smaller decrease for property charges, very little variation for violent offense charges, but a 6% increase in public order charges, such as disorderly conduct, loitering or public intoxication.

The report notes its findings support a widely accepted conclusion: “People who are arrested and booked more than once per year often have other vulnerabilities, including homelessness, in addition to the serious medical and mental health needs …”

This report has been updated to clarify how the jail admission and readmission data was reported and calculated.

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Officer Jarid Rankila tells Erica Peters she is being detained | Screenshot via Superior Police Department body cam footage

Douglas County District Attorney Mark Fruehauf said he had “serious concerns” about the credibility of a Superior, Wisconsin police officer who has served as a witness in criminal cases. The concerns stem from discrepancies between the officer’s  incident report and body camera footage documenting an April 13, 2024 arrest. As a result, the DA  dismissed 40 cases, including 26 involving felony drug charges, where the officer served as a witness.

The concerns were raised after Officer Jarid Rankila, 26, a three-year veteran of the force, reported that a woman he arrested had injured him, kicking the door of a police car so that it closed on his hand. Body camera footage reveals Rankila saying “You almost smashed my hand in the f…ing door.” The  footage also shows him using the hand he said had been “smashed” without any apparent difficulty.

On Aug. 26, Fruehauf wrote Superior Police Chief Paul Winterscheidt about his “concerns that I have regarding the credibility of Officer Jarid Rankila, relative to the above-listed incident and the claim made therein by Officer Rankila about a hand injury he sustained during the incident.”

Chief Winterscheidt told the Examiner that Rankila had resigned from his job and that his last day on the force was Sept. 30.  

Reports

In the incident report Rankila prepared, he noted that he was called at 9:10 p.m., April 13 to the Superior Curling Club, 4700 Tower Avenue, (local media refers to this area as the Superior Fairgrounds) where a woman was “flipping over tables, yelling at people and causing a disturbance.”

The woman, Erica Peters, 40, of Appleton, was there to watch her son compete in  a cage fight.

Rankila recorded that he and two other officers arrived on the scene and that Peters appeared intoxicated and was becoming aggressive with one of the other officers. Rankila  attempted to handcuff Peters but, he reported, she resisted until, with the assistance of the other two officers, he was able to handcuff her and attempt to secure her in squad car 32.

“I walked to squad car 32 to open the rear driver’s side door for Officer’s Olson and Finger. When I did this Erica turned toward the rear driver’s side door of the squad car and kicked it shut. My right hand was in between the door and the b-piller of the squad car at the time Erica kicked it out.

“When Erica kicked the door shut on my right hand, I felt a rush of pain in my right hand…”

In his report, Rankila stated that  he stopped at the Essentia Health Emergency Room in Superior to “speak with a ER doctor about the incident and weather (sic) I should have my had (sic) examined. At that time, which was approximately 30-40 minutes after my hand was slammed in the door, I was no longer feeling pain in my right hand. My hand was tighter than normal and I noticed it was slightly swollen.

“The ER doctor listened to my recollection of the incident. He advised that I be mindful of any pain or range of motion issues with my affected hand in the coming days and weeks. The doctor stated it would not be necessary to check me into the ER for an official check-up as he would end up telling me the exact same thing and then release me.”

Peters was booked on three charges: disorderly conduct, resisting or obstructing an officer and battery to a law enforcement officer. Only the battery charge is a felony. Peters was ultimately charged only for disorderly conduct and resisting or obstructing an officer. She pled no contest to the disorderly conduct charge and the other charge was dismissed.

Fruehauf notes that on April 16 Rankila filed “a supplemental narrative report of the incident” in which Rankila reports: “I would rate my level of pain to be 8/10 (eight out of 10) when the door closed on my hand. I noticed swelling and stiffness in my hand and fingers for approximately 30 minutes following the incident.”

And Fruehauf also notes that on April 18, Rankila completed an “Employee Injury/Illness Report Form” in which he reported that  the injury included “abrasion, bruise and pain,” and stated  “I opened the door to the squad car and she kicked it closed on my hand,” and he described “severe pain in my right hand, swelling and light bruising.”

Fruehauf said a review of the reports Rankila filed without reference to any other evidence “would lead a reasonable reader (and did, in fact, lead me personally) to conclude that Officer Rankila had a car door forcibly closed or slammed shut on his hand and he suffered an injury that was evidenced by pain, swelling, bruising, and abrasions (which is what one would expect to see following a person’s hand being slammed in a car door).”

Body camera

“Officer Rankila’s body camera was recording during this incident. It is not consistent with his police reports,” said Fruehauf.

The Douglas County DA described what he saw in the footage of the reported door slamming on Rankila’s hand. “Officer Rankila’s hand is on the side of the open door, with his fingers on the outside, and the base of his palm resting on the inside of the door. He is essentially gripping the door as it is open.

“Peters, without warning aggressively and forcefully kicks the door while Officer Rankila is holding on to it. In a frame-by-frame review of the body camera footage, it appears as though Officer Rankila is able to quickly remove his hand just before the door closes on it. It certainly does not close on his fingers. At worst, if it closed on any part of his, it would have been the base of his palm.”

Close inspection of the body camera footage the Wisconsin Examiner received from the police department does not clearly show Rankila’s hand on the squad door.

 

Rankila (Winterscheidt letter)

 

Fruehauf provided the Examiner with a series of still images taken from the video that, he said, show Rankila’s hand on the door prior, during and after the door is kicked. However, the still images are not very clear.

In the report, Fruehauf noted that Rankila shouts, “Hey! Knock if off. You almost smashed my hand in the f–ing door!”

Fruehauf also pointed to video showing Rankila reenacting his hand being slammed in the door and saying, “I was holding the door open and she kicked it shut so hard that my hand went ‘boom!’”

“At this point, his entire hand is inside the vehicle such that the reenactment depicts the door appearing to close on his wrist,” said Fruehauf, adding, “This is not consistent with the actual incident as depicted on his body camera.”

Fruehauf noted other footage shows Rankila using his right hand without any apparent difficulty and also that there had not been a photo taken of Rankila’s hand to document the injury.

In his incident report, Rankila did not provide the name of the doctor who reportedly looked at his hand, but an Ashland County investigator had spoken with an ER doctor on duty that night, “who said he had a vague recollection of talking with a police officer in person or on the phone.”

GPS data on Rankila’s squad car, Fruehauf said, located it at Essentia Hospital on the night of the incident  for 2 minutes and 21 seconds.

Analysis

“Based on my review of the above information, I do not find credible the report of Officer Rankila wherein he says on April 13, 2024 his hand was slammed or smashed in a car door, resulting in injuries to include bruising, abrasions and swelling,” wrote Fruehauf.

Fruehauf raised concerns about several areas of Rankila’s report including the visit to the hospital where Fruehauf questioned how Rankila would have had enough time in less than 3 minutes to walk into the emergency room and consult a doctor, as well as the fact that he did not get the name of the physician.

“Assuming Officer Rankila did not suffer the hand injury he describes, it is also disconcerting that any falsehood would not be limited to his initial report, but was in fact repeated twice more in the two subsequent reports he wrote days later documenting said injury,” wrote Fruehauf.

Fruehauf said that prior to the reported kick, Peters had not done anything that would warrant a felony charge and that night she would have been allowed to post bail and not spend the night in jail. Because Rankila charged her with a felony, Peters wasn’t allowed to leave pending a hearing before a judge.

“Officer Rankila had every right to be upset,” wrote Fruehauf. “He had every right to bring her to jail and book her on the misdemeanor offenses she had committed. But he did not have the right to include false information in a police report that ultimately supported Peters being booked in on a felony and having to sit in custody longer than she likely would have had she been booked solely for misdemeanor behavior.”

Fruehauf also raised concerns about using Rankila to prosecute other cases.

“I have significant concerns about my office’s ability ever again to use Officer Rankila as a witness. Absent additional information that sheds light or somehow serves to explain that this is some kind of innocent mistake, I cannot in good conscience permit a case to rest on the credibility of an officer with this kind of apparent dishonesty,” he wrote.

Fruehauf said the Superior Police Department has an internal investigation underway and he requested the department provide him any “information that tends to either inculpate, or exonerate, Officer Rankila.”

He added that he has begun “dismissing cases with prejudice that rely primarily on Officer Rankila’s credibility and would require him to testify at a motion hearing or jury trial under oath.”

Charges against Rankila?

Fruehauf was asked why he hadn’t filed a charge against Rankila for intentionally falsifying a police report.

“A person is presumed innocent unless and until he is proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law,” he said. “Based upon my discussion of the case with Ashland County and my review of the evidence, at this time I do not believe I could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a crime was committed by Mr. Rankila.  Were charges to proceed against Mr. Rankila, I would be required to prove ‘intentional falsification’ beyond a reasonable doubt at his trial, and I believe a reasonable jury, which would be instructed that it must give Mr. Rankila the benefit of every reasonable doubt, could conclude that this was not a case of intentional falsification, but rather unintentionally very poorly worded reports.”  

“At the same time,” Fruehauf said, “whether poorly written or something worse, this incident caused me serious concerns about my office’s ability to rely on Mr. Rankila’s credibility in future cases where he would be needed as a witness.  As a result, we have made the decision to dismiss pending cases where he would be a necessary witness in the future, which has resulted in dismissal of 40 such cases, primarily involving drug and traffic related offenses.”

“This was a difficult decision that results in several charged defendants who will not have their day in court,” Fruehauf added.  “But the job of the prosecutor is to do justice, and given the credibility concerns I have, I believe dismissal of those cases is necessary and in the interests of justice.”

Dismissed cases

The Wisconsin Examiner requested a list of the dismissed cases, which Fruehauf provided.

Of the 40 cases, 26 involved a felony related to a drug charge, including “methamphetamine with intent to deliver” and “cocaine with intent to deliver.”

Other felony charges dismissed included possession of firearm by a felon, bail jumping and fleeing an officer

Misdemeanors dismissed included financial card fraud and neglect of a child.

There is also one criminal traffic violation for operating while intoxicated (OWI) and three charges for operating without a license.

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The Oshkii Giizhik Singers perform at a Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives fundraiser. | Photo by Frank Zufall

Family members of missing and murdered Indigenous people, along with their friends and supporters, gathered at Denfeld High School in Duluth, Minnesota Saturday for a fundraiser titled , “No More MMIW/R Concert and Art Exhibition – Honoring Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives.”

The purpose of the event was to raise money to help families of those who have been murdered or gone missing.

Event organizer Rene Goodrich, Native Lives Matter Coalition leader and a member of both the Minnesota and Wisconsin MMIW/R task forces, said the dollars raised would go to a MMIW/R mutual aid fund called Wiidosendiwag, Ojibwe for “Walking Together.”

Goodrich said the support would help families continue searches for relatives and fund advocacy and awareness in local communities.

Families represented at the event included relatives of Chantel Moose, 27, a Fond du Lac tribal member in Minnesota, who died from a knife wound on April 12 in Duluth (two persons have been taken into custody for the offense). They were joined by relatives of Peter M. Martin, 32, also a Fond du Lac tribal member who has been missing since March 8, 2024, last seen in the Mahnomen neighborhood of the reservation.

Attendees at the event observed an art exhibition of red dresses inspired by the MMIW/R movement.

Groups opposing the Enbridge Line 5 Pipeline near the Bad River Reservation in northern Wisconsin and representatives of agencies helping victims of sexual assault set up tables at the event.

The fundraiser featured a concert by the Oshkii Giizhik Singers, a traditional group of Indigenous women, Native American flute playing by Michael LaughingFox Charette (a Red Cliff tribal member) and two members of the Christian rock band, Remedy Drive, from Nashville, Tennessee, followed by Mitch McVicker, another Christian contemporary singer, with a final performance by Keith Secola, folk and blues rocker, who is a seven-time Native American Music Award winner.

David Zach, lead singer for Remedy Drive, has been involved with a group that has organized to fight sex trafficking in Asia and Central America.

Peter Martin

At one of the tables were family members and a friend of Peter Martin. They are all Fond du Lac tribal members: Martin’s older sister Linda Martin-Proulx, niece Izzy Proulx and friend of the family, Kayla Jackson.

The ongoing search efforts by the Martin family will be helped by funds raised Saturday.

“He has been missing since March 8, and we did a search on the Fond du Lac reservation,” said Jackson. “We’ve searched over 1,000 acres on the reservation.”

“He lived on Rustic Lane. It’s not like him to just leave without telling anybody,” said Izzy Proulx. “He’s really a homebody, so we think it’s really out of his character to just go off and not tell anybody. There’s been no activity on any of his social media or his bank accounts, like nothing.”

Initially there were intense searches for Martin, coordinated with law enforcement and tribal organizations, but then a heavy snow fell and hampered the effort.

“There were a lot of people coming out to help us before the snow,” said Izzy. “It (searches after the snow) got harder and harder but we still kept searching.”
Local law enforcement has been working with the family, collecting evidence and tips.
Izzy said tribal people often don’t trust law enforcement, but are more willing to give tips to the family.

The three women believe that there is foul play involved in Martin’s disappearance.
“As you see on the flier, he’s 32 and he’s a father,” said Izzy. “His daughter is maybe one or two years old when he went missing, so he’s a first-time father and he wouldn’t just leave his daughter behind and he is from a big family.”

The searches have uncovered articles of clothing believed to be Martin’s. The family is conducting ongoing searches in areas that haven’t been looked at. They are using technology from law enforcement to organize efforts so the searchers in the forest can systematically comb for evidence.

“We’ve had some dogs brought in from South Dakota to work with us, too,” said Izzy.
There was also a contribution of remote communication radios in the field, and the Fond du Lac Police Department has been working with the family to ensure the searches are safe.

“They gave us life jackets to wear as we were searching over bogs,” she said.
However, as time drags on, the search effort is more and more just family members holding out hope they find Martin or evidence to explain what happened to him.

Grassroots effort

Before the concert, Goodrich thanked those who came out to support the fundraiser, and she talked about its importance.

“There’s a larger work that’s happening with Indigenous advocates, grassroots boots on the ground with the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives crisis,” she said. “Yes, we do have a crisis. The numbers are astounding.”

She added, “This is not a new crisis. This is not a new epidemic. This is very historical to Turtle Island (Earth) to Indigenous peoples and has been happening since the very onset of colonization onto Turtle Island.”

She noted that in Minnesota there are 13 MMIW/R open cases, representing at least 13 families who have been affected and their larger communities.

According to a 2017 U.S. Department of Justice report, she said, Native American women face murder rates in some U.S. counties and reservations that are 10 times the national average, and homicide is the third leading cause of death for Native American girls between the ages of 10-24 and the fifth leading cause of death for those ages 25-34. More than 84% of Native American women had faced violence in their lifetimes with over 56% experiencing sexual assault.

“Over 40% of our women that have identified as victims of sex trafficking have identified as American Indian, Alaskan Native and also our First Nations (Canadian Indigenous) people,” she said. “So our women are greatly disproportionately targeted by violence.”

Goodrich also cited a 2016 National Institute of Justice study which showed 1.4 million American Indian and Alaska Native men have also experienced violence in their lifetimes.

The MMIW/R movement, Goodrich said, began 40 years ago in Canada and in 2012-13 spread to North Dakota and Minnesota.

In the Twin Ports area of Duluth, Minnesota and neighboring Superior, Wisconsin, non-violence groups, legislators and nonprofit community partners and police departments, especially the Duluth Police, created a local reward fund, called Gaagig-Mikwendaagoziwag, Ojibwe for “They will be remembered forever.” The reward fund has been accepted as a statewide program in Minnesota, offering up to $10,000 for tips on MMIW/R cases.

Goodrich called the effort in Minnesota “historic,”and said the same grassroots effort would be instrumental in creating the fund for families.

“How do we best meet that need?” she asked. “We do that on a grassroots level by meeting just like we’re meeting tonight, by creating innovative and different pathways to meet these needs, and we don’t ask for permission. We push forward and wait for the state to pick it up.”

Future fundraising

A second fundraiser is set for the Twin Ports Trafficking and MMIW Awareness Month on Jan. 11, 2025 in Superior.
More information will be available at https://www.facebook.com/share/19QyCYKLov/

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Democratic candidate Rebecca Cooke votes in Wisconsin's 3rd CD race | Photo by Frank Zufall

Democratic 3rd Congressional District candidate Rebecca Cooke held a short press conference at Spirit Lutheran Church in Eau Claire Tuesday morning after she cast her ballot.

The parking lot of the church was packed and Cooke was enthusiastic about turnout. “I think we’re going to see going to see some record turnout numbers here,” she said.

Several of young voters at the church said they had voted for Cooke. She was asked if the enthusiasm among younger voters was shared by older voters around the 3rd Congressional District.

“We’ve done a lot of work really … getting around all 19 counties throughout the congressional district, knocking on doors, communities the size of 300 people,” Cooke said. “So we’ve been doing the work outside of urban areas to really motivate people, show them that we’re willing to show up. There’s no community too small or too red that we’re not working to to get out the voting.”

Asked about critical issues in her 3rd CD race against incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, Cooke said: “I think the things that we focused on all the way along is increasing access to health care and making it more affordable, stopping wasteful spending, taking on the corporations that priced out consumers at the gas pump and at the grocery store and restoring reproductive freedoms — that’s something that I’m hearing about from people across the 3rd Congressional District.”

“The polling place was popping,” Cooke added. “I think people are energized to get out, to exercise their right to vote, but it’s still early, and so we’re going to be doing a lot of work throughout the day, really working to mobilize voters. We’re calling into the electorate, encouraging people to get out there if they don’t have a ride to the polls, helping them figure that out, and working to just, you know, pull out any barriers that might be keeping people from getting out to vote today.”

After voting in Eau Claire, Cooke said she was driving over to Menomonie to encourage students to vote at UW-Stout.

“There’s six UW campuses and universities in this district, and we have teams throughout the 3rd CD working to energize students in particular to get out to vote,” she said, “so I’ll be at UW Stout, then I’m going to hop on the phones and talk to people that we identified as undecided voters and encourage them to get out to vote for me, because it’s really going to come down to a small part of the electorate that’s going to be able to flip this seat.”

She was asked what is the key to appealing to undecided voters.

“When I’m talking to people, I encourage them and remind them that I’m a working-class candidate, that I grew up working class, that we need more regular voices like me in Congress, people that aren’t so far left or so far right, but really working to get things done for working families throughout the 3rd CD,” she said.  “And I think when I talk to people about that, they’re excited to have a moderate voice to represent them in Congress.”

Several of those who voted at the church said they didn’t like the negativity of the campaign, especially remarks by Van Orden, who has taken to calling his opponent Rebecca “Crook.”

“Look, I’ve run a campaign that’s really authentic to myself, and I think Derrick Van Orden has sought to undermine that,” Cooke said, “But I think at the end of the day, people in the 3rd Congressional District know who I am, that I’m somebody that’s going to work to secure our border and make sure that our law enforcement has the resources that they need to keep our community safe. And when I’ve been out talking on doors, and some of our communication that we’ve also been putting up, I think that’s been really clear about where I stand on those issues.”

Concerning Van Orden’s charge that she supports “defunding the police,” Cooke responded, “I support funding police fully.”

Regarding why the two candidates never had a debate, and Van Orden’s criticism that she was avoiding him, Cooke responded: “There were opportunities for debates, but neither race could agree on a date that worked for everyone or a format that worked for everyone.”

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Illustration by Diana Ejaita

A survey of a small segment of incarcerated residents in Wisconsin over the year 2024  showed 35% identified as independents, and if they could vote in the upcoming Nov. 5 presidential election 45% would vote for Republican former President Donald Trump while 33% would vote for Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.

The data is a result of The Marshall Project’s 2024 Political Survey. The survey, a partnership between The Marshall Project and Columbia University, reached approximately 54,000 incarcerated people in roughly 400 prisons and jails across 45 states and the District of Columbia.

However, even with 54,000 responding, the survey organizers say the sample size is not sufficient to be representative of the over 2 million who are incarcerated in the U.S.

The survey was conducted twice in 2024 with residents responding to questions on a tablet:

• Between June 4-July 17 when President Joe Biden (Democrat) was still in the race.
• Between August 8-22 after Harris became the Democratic candidate.

Nationwide, as in Wisconsin, the largest share of respondents — 35% — stated their party affiliation was independent. Most incarcerated Wisconsinites favored Trump in the presidential race: 45% for Trump vs. 20% for Biden among a sample of  105 respondents,  and 45% for Trump vs. 33% for Harris among a sample of  219 respondents.

Nationwide, with 11,695 taking both surveys, most chose Trump. Trump garnered more than 46% vs. Biden with 20%. But when Harris entered the race, Trump support dropped to 44% and Harris garnered 35%. (But in a survey of 25,092 who just responded to the Trump/Harris contest, 46% supported Trump to 33% for Harris.)

During a zoom call with The Marshall Project and The Journalist’s Resource on Tuesday, Oct 29, Nicole Lewis, engagement editor of The Marshall Project, noted that Biden in the national survey was not the favorite of Black respondents and she credits that to Biden’s support of the 1994 Crime Bill that drove an increase of incarceration, especially for Black men.

But 49% of Black respondents in the national survey said they supported Harris compared with only  30% for Trump. In contrast,  60% of white respondents supported Trump vs. 21% for Harris.

In the related article by The Marshall Project (“Trump remains very popular here”: We surveyed 54,000 people behind bars about the election, by Lewis, Shannon Hefferman and Anna Flagg) reviewing its nationwide survey, the authors noted that Trump has support from a majority of incarcerated Americans, especially white men, even though his policies “are at odds with most criminal justice reformers,” and that he supports the death penalty for convicted drug dealers and “has been critical of efforts to curb police violence and has repeatedly made racist comments about crime.”

The article attributes Trump support to how racial segregation in prison and jails often results in white men tending to watch right-leaning Fox News and Newsmax, while Black inmates tend to watch more liberal-leaning CNN and MSNBC.

The article also noted that some inmates believe because of Trump’s troubles with the law, including 34 felony convictions, he is now more sympathetic to those who have been incarcerated.

Wisconsin prison and jail survey

In the Badger State, 291 incarcerated residents responded to The Marshall Project surveys, and of those, 87% were in county jails and not the state prison system.

With over 20,000 people in Wisconsin state prisons and another 12,000 in county jails, the 291 respondents offer a non-representative sample of the total incarcerated population in the state – the data collected does not statistically identify any meaningful trends.

Even though it is not statistically representative, the surveys offer a rare peek at  political preferences for incarcerated people.

Because most of the Wisconsin respondents for the survey were in jail, it’s possible they were in confinement, charged and waiting for a court date, but not convicted, so even if they had been charged with a felony but not convicted on Nov. 5, they would still be eligible to vote, while convicted felons are not eligible to vote.

And if they are in confinement serving a misdemeanor sentence, they are still eligible to vote in Wisconsin because a misdemeanor conviction doesn’t make one ineligible.

There may be some in jail due to a revocation violation of the conditions for felony supervision ­– probation, parole or extended supervision. Supervision is served after the incarcerated portion of a sentence, and those on felony supervision are not eligible to vote, and if they violate any conditions of their supervision they could land back in jail pending a revocation hearing and eventual return to prison.

In Wisconsin it’s estimated over 45,000 people have served the incarcerated portion of their felony sentence and are out in open society but are still ineligible to vote because they are under supervision – parole, probation or extended supervision (often referred to as “being on paper”).

Of 101 who responded to whether they were eligible to vote in Wisconsin, 58 said they were not, 27/ said they were eligible and 15 were not sure.

Lewis noted for incarcerated or formerly incarcerated persons there is often uncertainty over whether they are eligible to vote and many fear attempting to vote  and being charged with a violation and re-incarcerated.

In Wisconsin, the Department of Corrections (DOC) is supposed to keep the Wisconsin Elections Commission updated on the status of felons and whether they are eligible to vote, and then the Election Commission in turn is supposed to inform municipal clerks.

Of 99 who responded to the question of how likely they were to vote in the November election, 48 said they “definitely will not vote” and 24 chose “probably will not vote,” with 14 choosing “probably will vote” and 12 saying they “definitely will vote.”

Clark Merrfield, senior editor of The Journalist Resource, noted in the Zoom call that even in the states of Maine and Vermont where a felony conviction never leads to a loss to voting, in 2018 only one third of incarcerated people registered to vote and only 8% with felonies voted in Vermont and just 6% with a felony voted in Maine.

Lewis said any run-in with the law often leads to disenfranchisement.

“There is some research already that shows that any contact, no matter how small, even a traffic stop, can actually depress people’s civic participation and interest in their civic life,” she said, “so imagine if you’re taken from a population and incarcerated for a period of years. Like what impact is that going to have?”

Concerning their political party affiliation, of the 291 people incarcerated in Wisconsin who responded, 35% chose “Independent” followed by 22% “Democrat,” 21% “Other” and 18% “Republican.”

In the national survey on party affiliation, more chose Republican than those in Wisconsin: 22% nationally versus 18% in Wisconsin.  

In both the national and state surveys, Independents garnered 35%.

Lewis said that independent leaning might represent a distrust of both major parties.

Regarding Harris’s record on crime, of the 208 responding, 58% had “no opinion,” 25% said she was “tough on crime” 12% said she was “just right on crime” and 5% said Harris was “not tough enough on crime.”

To the question how should Trump be punished for the crimes for which he has been convicted, of the 90 responding, 42% said he should be “incarcerated” and 36% said he should be “fined” and 21% said Trump should be “fined and put on probation.”

And to the questions whether the U.S. was ready to elect a woman president, of the 209 responding, 53% chose “yes” and 24% chose “no” while  22% selected “not sure.”

For more details from the survey, search Wisconsin at: https://observablehq.com/@themarshallproject/survey3-state-summaries.

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A new report tallies deaths in Wisconsin from gun violence, including murders and suicides, and makes recommendations for prevention. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

Guns claimed the lives of 830 Wisconsin residents in 2022 according to Gun Death in Wisconsin, a new joint report by the Wisconsin Anti-Violence Effort (WAVE) Educational Fund, the state’s leading gun violence prevention organization, and the Violence Policy Center (VPC), a national research and advocacy organization working to stop gun death and injury.

The study was released as part of the Emergency Gun Violence Summit being held Thursday at the Baird Center in Milwaukee. It analyzes data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on lethal gun violence in the state and compares Wisconsin firearm death data to other Great Lakes states.

The study offers year-over-year trend analyses by sex, age, race, and ethnicity for firearm suicide and firearm homicide. 

It also examines gun suicide and homicide deaths in urban and rural areas and presents firearm criminal trace data from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). 

The report also presents personal stories of Wisconsin residents affected by lethal gun violence.

“This report highlights the toll of gun violence on Wisconsin communities and the disparities that must be addressed,” said Nick Matuszewski, director of policy and program at WAVE Educational Fund. “WAVE is committed to advocating for necessary changes to protect every Wisconsinite. Research shows that policies like universal background checks and extreme risk laws effectively reduce gun violence. By prioritizing these measures, we can create safer environments and protect our communities from the impacts of gun-related incidents.”

“Effective public policy relies on comprehensive, reliable data not only to recognize public health threats but also identify effective solutions,” said Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center. “This annual study is one more tool for advocates, organizations, and policymakers working to reduce gun violence in Wisconsin.”

Wisconsin gun death findings:

• Guns claimed the lives of 830 Wisconsin residents in 2022, including 529 firearm suicides and 277 firearm homicides. In 2022, guns were used in 57.3% (529 of 924) of suicides and 84.7% (277 of 327) of homicides. For both suicides and homicides, the majority of victims were male. While the state’s overall suicide and firearm suicide rates were similar to national rates, both its homicide and firearm homicide rates were lower than national rates.
• Black Wisconsin residents are disproportionately affected by lethal gun violence. While Black residents comprise only 6.3% of Wisconsin’s population, 75.5% of firearm homicide victims were Black, with the Black firearm homicide victimization rate more than doubling from 23.0 per 100,000 in 2019 to 55.9 per 100,000 in 2022. Black Wisconsin residents were almost 70 times more likely to die from firearm homicide than white residents. And while the white population in Wisconsin has historically had the highest rate of suicide by firearm in the state, the Black population surpassed this disturbing metric in 2022. Between 2018 and 2022 the firearm suicide rate for Black Wisconsin residents more than tripled — from 3.0 per 100,000 to 9.4 per 100,000.
• Most gun deaths in rural Wisconsin are suicides, not homicides. Suicides increased from 81% of all rural gun deaths in 2018 to 91% of all rural gun deaths in 2022. For that same period, the rural firearm suicide rate increased from 8.1 per 100,000 to 11.4 per 100,000.
• Since 2020, gun deaths have outpaced motor vehicle deaths across the state, a shocking fact recognizing most people’s daily exposure to motor vehicles as opposed to firearms.
• For homicides in which the victim to offender relationship could be identified, 76.8%  of Wisconsin homicide victims were killed by someone they knew (162 of 211).
• For homicides in which the circumstances were known, 80% (184 out of 230) were not related to the commission of any other felony –  41.3% (76 homicides) involved an argument between the victim and offender.
• According to ATF, in 2022 more than 8,000 firearms were recovered in Wisconsin and traced. Almost all of the guns recovered and traced were handguns – 79.8% were pistols and 6% were revolvers. In addition, the vast majority of firearms recovered in Wisconsin (84.5%) were originally sourced in-state.

The report also cites WAVE’s recommended gun violence prevention policies for the state as well as its recent policy successes. 

The Violence Policy Center is a national educational organization working to stop gun death and injury. 

Wisconsin Anti-Violence Effort Educational Fund (WAVE) is a statewide grassroots organization dedicated to preventing gun violence, injuries and deaths through education and advocacy.

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Humanity Unlocked podcast series logo | Courtesy Wisconsin Humanities

“There was something happening that was bigger than anything, any one of us or any group of us was doing. It was just too big to be just about poetry. It was a voice restored,” said  Joshua Wells, a formerly incarcerated person, speaking on the Wisconsin Humanities podcast series “Humanity Unlocked.”  

Now in its second season, the podcast offers listeners the stories of those who have been through the prison system and engaged with the humanities – poetry, writing, art and college classes  – discovering not only ways to express themselves but also an identity that’s larger than their criminal records.

The goal of the series is to “focus on amplifying the human stories of incarceration and lived experiences of individuals impacted by the justice system.” A thread through the series is that the humanities matter, especially in some of the darkest places where one’s humanity seems diminished the most.

The podcasts are hosted by Adam Carr, a Milwaukee storyteller, filmmaker, radio producer and historian who sets the narrative and places interviewees’ comments in a larger context. Co-host Dasha Kelly Hamilton is a writer, performance artist and creative change agent and 2021-22 Poet Laureate of Wisconsin.

In Episode 5, “Bead by Bead,” college student James Price talks about gaining discipline from practicing Native American beading at the Stanley Correctional Institute, a discipline he draws on in his college studies. 

Commenting on the story, Hamilton said that, contrary to reductive stereotypes, people who have been incarcerated are “philosophers. There are filmmakers. There are all brands of humans in those buildings (prisons) the same way there are all brands of humans walking around free, so finding a way to feed and fuel those parts of the people in those places is essential.” 

The idea for the podcasts grew out of Hamilton’s work in a poetry exchange with people inside and outside of prison, and producer Jen Rubin’s involvement with the University of Wisconsin’s Odyssey Beyond Bars Project conducting storytelling workshops in prisons.

“I think partly things like art, poetry and storytelling and history are ways that all of us can help find meaning in our life,” said Rubin. “I think Rob (Dr. Robert S. Smith, Director of the Center for Urban Research, Teaching & Outreach, Marquette University) from Episode Five says it really well – ‘If there’s any place we need help finding meaning in our lives, it’s in mass incarceration.’”

Over two years, interviews were conducted with residents inside and out of the prison system and with those who engaged them with poetry and writing courses, publishing newspapers and newsletters, offering space for art shows and teaching college classes.

Very little time is given to why the persons are or were in prison. Most of the podcast recounts their engagement with the humanities. Robert Taliaferro, who is mainly featured in Episode 3: “Three convicts, twenty dollars and a newspaper,” spent 38 years behind bars, but the podcast focuses on his path to become editor of the leading prison newspapers in America, The Prison Mirror.

Episodes

Episode 1: “Death-defying Feats,” takes excerpts from Hamilton’s poetry seminar in the Racine Correctional Institution. She sets up the writing prompts and then we hear commentary of the residents and excerpts of their work.

Episode 2: “A Mic and Five Minutes,” is about the Wisconsin Odyssey Beyond Bars project at Oakhill Correctional Facility where incarcerated students take an English 100 story and then tell  their stories in their own voices in a five-minute presentation.

Episode 3: “Three Convicts, Twenty Dollars, and a Newspaper” tells the history of a prison newspaper from the 1880s started by members of the Jessie James Gang, and the experience of Taliaferro to become an award-winning writer, and also about Shannon Ross, who started a newsletter that reaches 30,000, including those inside and out of prison.

Episode 4: “Art Against the Odds,” details the art-making journey of residents who struggled to find both the resources and encouragement to make art in prison, and the 2023  “Art Against the Odds” show in Milwaukee featuring 250 works by those who are or were incarcerated.

Episode 5: “Bead by Bead,” is a look at the Educational Preparedness Program (EPP) at Marquette University that integrates students enrolled at the Milwaukee campus with those who have been incarcerated or are still in the system.

Episode 6: “It’s Not Just a Vote,” explores those disenfranchised from voting because of their criminal record. Convicted felons in Wisconsin cannot vote until they have served their sentence and probation and parole. There are approximately 45,000 people in the state who are waiting to be allowed to vote.

There’s also more information with each episode, including profiles and information about the criminal justice system.

The first five episodes explore how humanities have affected people’s  lives both inside and outside the system. The  sixth explores  how the legacy of being in prison continues to affect  one’s humanity by witholding the right to vote.

“If your government’s telling you that you don’t count, you know, then how are you supposed to feel like you belong in your community?” said Rubin.

Carr said the sixth episode came out of the larger discussion of recognizing people’s  humanity.“I don’t know that most people would connect this specifically with a humanities curriculum,” he said of voting. In the larger conversation about how people survive the prison system and how they recover a sense of their own humanity when they get out, he said,  “it made sense for the arc of the season.” 

Inside the podcasts

The first five episodes illuminate why engaging with the humanities is more than just a feel-good  exercise.

Peter Moreno, featured in Episode 2: “A Mic and Five Minutes,” is the director of Odyssey Beyond Bars and an attorney and former law professor, who touts the merits of bringing writing classes to inmates to tell their stories.

“When people are given a platform to express themselves and are able to convey their personal story from inside prison in a way that other people can hear and understand, boy that humanizes things in a hurry,” he said.

Mark Español recently served a nine-year prison sentence, and talked about the impact of writing a story from his life and delivering a 5-minute presentation as part of a class he took from Kevin Mullen, an assistant professor of Continuing Studies at UW-Madison and director of  adult education for the UW-Odyssey Project, the larger campaign to bring higher education to low-income adult students.

“It made me feel human again,” Español said. “It made me feel human that class, that environment that he created allows us as inmates to not only be vulnerable, but to get to know each other personally.”

Students in Odyssey Beyond Bars can write about any subject. Español chose to write about one day in his life as a 5-year-old in his apartment and walking into a room where his sister was holding her boyfriend who had been shot.

“You know for almost a decade I’ve sat in prison just wondering where I went wrong, you know, how did I get here?” he said. “It all went back to that apartment. Things that I witnessed, that I was exposed to as a child that I should have never been exposed to, and that story was one day. It sucked that I had to go through that as a 5-year-old.”

Presenting a story has a deep effect, Hamilton said. 

“It shifts the skill sets and the calculation,” she said, describing a way of calculating how to survive that is different from the skills involved in storytelling. Instead of staying in “survival mode,” being able to  able to “process a story,”  to  “convert that memory into a five-minute presentation that is engaging to someone who doesn’t know you and wasn’t at that memory – it is not a small thing.”

Carr said those in the system are often reminded that what counts most about them is their crime or “the biggest mistake you’ve ever made and nothing else,” but engaging with the humanities opens another conversation.

Much of what is offered in prison under the umbrella of rehabilitation, Hamilton said, is premised on the assumption that a  resident has a “deficit” that is addressed with counseling or parenting or financial literacy classes. The humanities operates from a different assumption.

“It’s meeting people where they’re already full,” she said. “It’s giving people an opportunity to lean into that part that doesn’t deplete, that doesn’t diminish their humanity, their creativity.” 

A touching moment in Episode 4: “Art Against the Odds” comes when former incarcerated resident, Sarah Demerath, who missed years with her 14-year-old daughter while in prison, has the opportunity to see her daughter’s reaction to Demerath’s art featured in a large gallery show.

“When we got to the gallery, I had never seen her be so proud of me,” said Demerath. “She’s an artist and she was just as excited as me and she was like, ‘That’s my mom,’ and she was watching me do the interviews with the news and she was buzzing around the entire exhibit with this huge smile. Never in my life did I ever think that my art would be in a gallery, let alone my daughter and mom would be there with me to see it and it was beautiful.”

Listen to the podcast at wisconsinhumanities.org/podcast/.

 

 

 

Signs to commemorate Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls are placed outside of the Wisconsin State Capitol on May 05, 2022 in Madison, Wisconsin. According to the Washington State Patrol, figures show that 126 Indigenous people are unaccounted for in the state. According to the Urban Indian Health Institute, data collected by researchers from 71 cities across 29 states shows 506 cases of missing and murdered native women and girls in the U.S. (Photo by Stacy Revere/Getty Images)

The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives Task Force established by the Wisconsin Department of Justice reviewed more than 40 recommendations at its Sept. 19 meeting, including one to “institute greater accountability measures for law enforcement,” urging the Legislature to pass state laws mandating stronger oversight of law enforcement investigations.

Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul said during the meeting that he was not “comfortable” with the recommendation because it didn’t have a specific focus and it read as though it was critical of law enforcement. He suggested exploring how “agencies can more effectively collaborate and respond to cases” involving missing and murdered Indigenous people.

Pushing back, task force member Andrea Lemke-Rochon offered an example of what she said was the lack of accountability concerning a case involving her cousin, Rae Elaine Tourtillott, who was murdered on the Menominee reservation in the 1980s, leaving behind a 7-week-old baby. The family, she said, had been kept in the dark about the subsequent investigation.

“I think the issue is we’re just really trying to get at the fact that the ball gets dropped a lot,” she said. “You know, there’s a box of evidence, supposedly from my cousin’s murder. Nobody knows where it is, who tested it, who worked on it, so I feel strongly about the fact that we need to have some kind of accountability measures.”

She encouraged a meeting between law enforcement and family members of victims to discuss their experiences and out of those discussions create specific recommendations. Kaul asked if the concern was “communication” or “the details of how the investigation is conducted.”

“Both,” responded Lemke-Rochon, adding she didn’t understand why Kaul was uncomfortable with a broad recommendation asking for more accountability for law enforcement, with the details to be worked out later. 

“Right now, it reads to me as sort of critical of law enforcement, but without providing specifics,” said Kaul, who added, “If we’re going to have a sort of criticism, I think it’s helpful to have specifics about how to address it.”
He noted many victims’ families often feel frustrated that they are not getting information.

“It’s not just getting the information,” responded Lemke-Rochon. “It’s really doing the investigation and being taken seriously when something’s happening. So it’s so much bigger than that. I can appreciate what you said that this sounds critical of law enforcement and I think it is, because so often law enforcement lets us down. And, no disrespect to all of you hard working folks in DOJ, I think that’s just a reality that sometimes impacts Indigenous peoples and other people of color. And so I would like to word this in a way that it doesn’t sound like such a strong finger point, and yet it’s an issue.”

Brooke Johnson, the Justice Department’s crime victim services and MMIW/R task force coordinator, suggested an “assessment of the barriers as far as why the ball is being dropped.” 

“If a case isn’t solved or doesn’t result in charges, as a family member it’s incredibly painful, and particularly when you’re talking about a missing person who hasn’t been found,” said Kaul, “and you know, I think in a perfect world there would be always great communication, and people would be kept informed on exactly what’s happening, and people would be consulted. But you know, in reality, that probably doesn’t always happen as well as we would like, for perfectly legitimate reasons, right? People have resource constraints. You know, they’ve got a lot of cases going on, and to an extent that there are barriers to that kind of communication.” 

Renee Gralewicz, a Brothertown Indian Nation member, weighed in. “But I keep going back to the example of Andrea’s relative. It’s been a cold case for decades,” she said. “I mean, and then they’re told you can’t have any information because it’s an ongoing case. But how does the family even know it’s still an ongoing case when the remains have been found?”

She added, “That’s part of my concern about not having more accountability is when can the case be called a cold case? When can the law enforcement share with the family what they have, you know? Because, again, this is probably not the forum to go into it, because it is fairly complicated, but we have cold cases that are 30, 40, 50 years old, and their families are not informed of anything, because oftentimes they’re told it’s an ongoing investigation.”

Myrna Warrington, a Menominee Indian Tribe councilwoman, said her uncle, Paddlefish, a tribal police officer, helped create a multi-jurisdictional task force that met yearly with agencies all over the state and talked about issues and collaborated on goals.

“So it just seems like something that we should be doing, having multi-jurisdictional meetings to see how things are going. What can we do to improve these situations?” said Warrington.

Kaul said the group Warrington referred to still exists and is called the Native American Drug and Gang Initiative. The group won a national award in 2016 from Harvard University’s Project on American Indian Economic Development for “excellence in tribal governance.” 

Seeking a tribal liaison

Kaul reported to the task force that he is seeking a tribal liaison position at the Department of Justice to work on cases involving missing and murdered Indigenous people.

“We think there’s a lot of benefit to having a liaison within each tribe and then having somebody at the DOJ who would work with those folks,” Kaul said. He noted the DOJ’s request was not on the behalf of the task force. 

The DOJ budget request, totaling about $3.6 million, includes one DOJ tribal liaison/coordinator position and funding for individual liaison positions spread out among each of Wisconsin’s 11 tribes.

Christopher McKinny, the DOJ’s director of government affairs, told the task force that the “basic premise” of the DOJ’s request was to “decentralize the process as much as possible with state government and really provide resources for tribal governments.”

He said tribal representatives have told the DOJ that it is more important to have family liaisons available “as opposed to having those resources in Madison at the Department of Justice.”

Gov. Tony Evers’ 2023-25 budget request included $7.4 million for a Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives (MMIW/R) office within the DOJ to provide training and services to crime victims and witnesses. That request didn’t make it through the Republican-controlled Legislature. 

If it had passed, it would have made Wisconsin only the second state with such an office. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz signed legislation establishing the first such office in in 2021.

Task Force request

Justine Rufus, the task force co-chair, said task force members needed to organize and gain public support for additional funding through  the governor’s budget request.

“I think it is very important for us to share this publicly; get support rallied in our communities for these asks because we aren’t going to get the dollars if we’re not doing that type of work,” she said.

Eugenia Hedlund of Wisconsin Judicare Legal Aid said the Task Force had been looking at replicating the office that Minnesota created.

“The folks (legislators) who are on there (the budget committee) are good people,” said Kaul. It’s important for the task force to build relationships, he added, “and not be discouraged even though I understand that the process is frustrating.”

Rufus said the Task Force members needed to have “face-to-face” conversations with legislators.

Working collaboratively

Hedlund also suggested the task force work with other groups concerned with  “intertwined” issues, such as human trafficking.

Kaul agreed that the soon-to-be-created  Human Trafficking Council and  the existing Human Trafficking Task Force could be good partners in the effort to address missing Indigenous people. 

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Alternatives to incarceration drastically cut the jail population in Sawyer County, which used to have the fourth highest lock-up rate in Wisconsin | Getty Images

(This article is based on stories reported by Frank Zufall for the Sawyer County Record since 2017 and used with permission.)

In 2015 Sawyer County, a rural county in northwestern Wisconsin with a population around 18,000 at the time, had one of the highest incarceration rates in Wisconsin. 

According to a report by the Vera Institute of Justice,  Sawyer County ranked fourth in the state behind Menominee, Shawano and Forest Counties. As recently as 2019, the average number of persons in the jail each day in any month was 100.95. By August 2024, that number had fallen to 61.25. The trend is clearly downward. 

When so many county jails are bursting at the seams and struggling to recruit guards, why did Sawyer County’s jail population drop so much?

The biggest single reason is a decision made in 2017 to reconvene the county’s Criminal Justice Coordinating Council (CJCC), a group representing judges and district attorneys along with law enforcement, probation and representatives of social services, with the goal of looking for alternatives to incarceration, focusing on programming and therapy.

Another factor that began around 2017 and gained momentum in 2018 was the pursuit of a second judge for the county. From 2014-16, Sawyer County Circuit Judge John Yackel had the highest caseload for one judge in the state. Because of the sheer volume of felony cases, many people who had charges pending waited weeks or months in jail for their court appearances.

A second judge was approved for Sawyer County and then a second courtroom was constructed for over $10 million. In August 2023, the second judge, Monica Isham, was sworn into office. 

Background

In March of 2017, Brenda Spurlock, Bayfield County Criminal Justice Coordinator, asked Sawyer County to participate in a Department of Justice planning grant called “Bridges to Treatment.” The program diverts inmates with mental illness or substance abuse from jail to community treatment programs.

The proposal, she said, called for the participants – including Bayfield and Ashland counties along with the Red Cliff, Bad River and Lac Courte Oreilles Tribal bands – to try new strategies to  divert eligible offenders into community treatment. 

“If you don’t start doing things differently, you are going to keep adding to your jail,” said Bayfield County Circuit Judge John Anderson months later at the May Bayfield County CJCC meeting after Spurlock made her pitch to the Sawyer County Public Safety Committee. 

Anderson said he was quoting a jail designer who had spoken at a jail-building committee 20 years previously.

Taking to heart the words of that consultant, Bayfield County leaders formed their CJCC to look for alternatives to jail. In 2017, Bayfield County’s jail population had fallen significantly enough that it had room to take the overflow from Sawyer County’s crowded jail.

Members of the local LCO Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, including two – Tweed Shuman and James Schlender, Jr. – both of whom were also Sawyer County supervisors in 2017 (Shuman is still in office), raised concerns about the high jail population, with over 70% of the residents being Native Americans.

In July 2017, then-Sawyer County Administrator Tom Hoff announced that Sawyer County would reconvene its CJCC, which had been disbanded for years. Hoff said the primary goal of the Sawyer County CJCC was to lower the daily jail population.

Schlender, who advocated for the CJCC and also for hiring a full-time coordinator, said the point of the council was to have the judge, district attorney, sheriff and jailer in the same room to look at trends, such as a high revocation rate for driver’s licenses, and see what could be done to ensure the same people don’t keep returning  to jail. Schlender also noted that many were in jail because of drug and alcohol problems.

“Rather than having them sit in jail with no services offered to them, maybe we can get a diversion program working with (Sawyer County) Health and Human Services and get them off to a treatment program and then you are going to see a reduction in the jail population,” he said.

County Supervisor Iras Humpreys, an advocate for reconvening the CJCC, pointed out at the July 2017 meeting that Sawyer County had spent $70,000 in 2017 to pay for housing jail residents in other counties, notably Bayfield County.

Humpreys also noted that among the 90 residents in the Sawyer County jail at the time, only 26 had been sentenced while 31 were sitting in jail because they were not able to pay for a cash bond as part of their bail.

Judge Anderson said it took years for the Bayfield County CJCC to have a positive impact because there were some stakeholders committed to the punishment mode but others to rehabilitation, and the two sides were not working together. “At first, if you said ‘evidence-based practice’ you’d see people rolling their eyes,” he said. “It took a lot of years of saying, ‘This is what the evidence is showing.’ It took a lot of years to change people’s way of thinking.”

Anderson said there are several studies on lowering recidivism that reveal what works and what doesn’t. “Boot camps are horrible,” Anderson said. “The DARE program has made no impact on recidivism. It doesn’t mean it’s bad, but if you think the DARE program has helped reduce recidivism with people who have drug and alcohol problems — zero. There are enough studies out there to prove it.”

Another “dumb idea,” he said, is to put people who can’t pay their fines in jail and even more so to send them to another county’s jail because while they are in jail they will not be able to pay the fines.

Launch

In the first months after the new program began, instead of dropping, Sawyer County’s jail population rose, hitting a record high for daily jail population in 2019 of 101.

But Judge Yackel, a member of the CJCC, was working with the CJCC coordinator to put accountability measures in place for people convicted of drug charges, including  an aggressive schedule of drug testing as a condition of their bond and as a way to keep them out of jail. In addition, the county brought  new programming to the jail residents, offering on-the-job training in the construction trades and in-house classes. 

JusticePoint: The group that made a difference

In 2018 a non-profit with expertise in criminal justice programming, JusticePoint,  did a multi-month study of Sawyer County jail residents and offered insights into the jail population.  In particular, it highlighted the high rate of unemployment of residents prior to incarceration.

Sawyer County Sheriff Doug Mrotek said he had learned about JusticePoint while attending the 2017 Wisconsin Badgers State Sheriff’s Association meeting and hearing Dane County Sheriff Dave Mahoney talk about its diversion and jail programming which helped reduce incarceration in his county. 

In 2020, the CJCC asked JusticePoint to help with its application for the state’s Treatment and Diversion Grant to help pay program costs  for non-violent adult offenders as an alternative to jail.

The Sawyer County CJCC also began discussions with JusticePoint to see if it would be able to run programs for the county after the retirement of the full-time criminal justice coordinator.

In January 2021, JusticePoint opened an office in the county building and began administering the county’s pretrial and diversion programs.  It also helped with programming in the jail and eventually worked with the court as it reconvened its Recovery/Drug Court, while also helping the sheriff institute a deflection program.

Many of the key stakeholders – judge, sheriff, county administrator, and jailer – give much of the credit for the lower jail census in 2024 to the staff of JusticePoint, five individuals who work mostly through the state Treatment and Diversion  grant.

“I think they’ve done an outstanding job in the last three years,” said Sheriff Mrotek.

Keeping people out of jail as they await trial 

The biggest program JusticePoint administers for Sawyer County is a pretrial program, probably the most important factor in lowering the jail census. As of Sept. 11, there were 150 individuals in a pretrial program.

Pretrial is for those who have been arrested, charged, but not convicted and are often on a cash bond as a guarantee they will continue to make court dates and follow prescribed conduct, such as being sober while on release. It wasn’t that many years ago that on average nearly a third of the jail residents in Sawyer County were those who couldn’t make their cash bond. Pretrial supervision offers accountability without a high cash bond.

To help people qualify for the pretrial program, JusticePoint staff does a risk assessment of the person reoffending and makes a report to the judge, DA, and defense attorneys.

“The basic goal, the foundational goal of pretrial, is to ensure that clients are in the court, showing up for court and are maintaining the condition of their bond,” said JusticePoint Diversion Coordinator Kari Dussi.

Becky Barry, JusticePoint’s program manager for Sawyer County, said they often spend time reviewing specific conditions the court has ordered for a bond because often their clients are not fully aware of those conditions, yet if they violate them they could end up in jail. Clients meet with staff on a regular schedule.

For those struggling to meet a condition, such as absolute sobriety, there will be case management referrals to Alcohol and Other Drug Addiction (AODA) counselors, Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), or Narcotics Anonymous (NA) meetings or peer support – meeting with a recovering addict who has been trained to help other addicts struggling. If a person isn’t meeting the conditions of a bond, it is up to the court whether to send that person to  jail or impose a cash bond or just deliver a lecture from the judge on what is expected.

Diversion programs keep people out of jail

Another Justice Point service is a diversion program, which offers services to people charged with drug offenses or other offenses stemming from their substance use. In order for the diversion plan to proceed, the applicant has to agree to plead guilty or no contest.  If the person doesn’t complete the diversion plan, her or she will be facing punishment, but if they complete the diversion agreement, the charges are dropped.

To be eligible for diversion one must be 18 or older, a non-violent offender, have a low-moderate risk of recidivism, and be approved by the DA’s office for the voluntary program. Dussi offers an assessment of the person’s eligibility and a recommendation for the length of the program and different terms. If the DA approves, the person is accepted into the diversion program, but if the DA doesn’t approve, the case proceeds to court. One of the standard conditions of diversion is 25 hours of community service. The rest of the conditions are individualized.

“We meet people where they are at and [assess] how it’s helping them reach their goals,” said Dussi.

“If a person has alcohol or substance abuse issues, they’re probably going to AODA,” said Barry. “If they have mental health issues, they’re going to be referred to mental health; if one of their barriers is employment, they’re going to be referred for, like, transitional job skills or training.” 

A fundamental concept driving the diversion opportunity, especially for those without prior charges, is that those first few engagements with the legal system, especially jail time, can leave a permanent, negative impression resulting in future recidivism. 

“I think, as a society, we have this tendency to think that when people have criminal behavior, the answer is to throw everybody into jails, into prisons,” said Barry. 

“I think that we need to look at what the research and evidence is telling us,” she said. “When the people working in the criminal justice system continue to get the same results over and over and over, and the recidivism is not going down, what we’re doing is not working, so we need to look at evidence and start doing what that tells us is going to work.”

Sheriff Mrotek became an advocate for diversion when attending training in Eau Claire and heard the case of a woman who had helped her boyfriend elude law enforcement and was later arrested. She entered a diversion program and the charge against her wasn’t prosecuted upon successful completion of her program. The woman ended up finishing nursing school and became a registered nurse (RN).

“She really attributed the diversion opportunity to changing her life around in a positive way,” said Mrotek who noted she wouldn’t have been hired by a hospital with a felony charge on her record. “She was able to get her life straightened around and everything worked out pretty well.”

Recovery court

JusticePoint staff also work with the Sawyer County Recovery Court that reconvened in November 2023. Recovery Court is the newer edition of what used to be known as Drug Court, a special court meant to provide accountability and encouragement for those struggling with an addiction.

 “It’s for high-risk offenders and actually treatment court is also a post-sentence option, but it’s an alternative to a felony conviction, a serious felony conviction, whereas diversion is for more low-risk individuals,” Barry explained. Those in the program have a sentence imposed on them, but that sentence is stayed pending successful completion of Recovery Court.

Pre-arrest deflection

The JusticePoint staff also wrote a grant for the sheriff’s office for a deflection program with the purpose of keeping low-risk individuals out of the criminal justice system.  “It deflects them, if you will, from the criminal justice system into supportive resources and responses to mitigate risk of recidivism or become more involved in the criminal justice system,” said Dussi. 

“Law enforcement has the option to decide if they want to deflect that person instead of arresting that person,” said Barry.

In the deflection program, there are a variety of different supervision levels and options developed by peer support specialists working under the supervision of Dussi.

The premise, said Barry, “is to try to get that person services proactively and keep them out of the criminal justice system, because statistics tell us that those low-level offenders are the ones that, you know, a year down the line, two years, five years down the line, are the ones that we’re seeing in the more high-level offense areas. And so the whole purpose is to try to get them early and get them out of that risk area.”

Improved outcomes after hiring a second  judge

Starting in 2017, Judge Yackel began raising concerns at the local, regional, and state level that Sawyer County needed a second judge and second courtroom to process cases in a timely manner. The second judge was approved on the  condition that a second courtroom be constructed.  The county bonded over $10 million and began construction in 2022. Judge Monica Isham took the bench, presiding over the new courtroom in  August 2023. 

Judge Yackel said that prior to having a second judge it might have taken him months to consider whether a person should be in the diversion program and while that person was being considered they might be waiting in jail for as long as six to nine months.  Cases “would languish because we were being crushed by the amount of cases,” he said.

With two judges, Yackel said, there is more flexibility to respond to an urgent request, such as when a defense attorney asks that a client be allowed to attend in-patient treatment at a facility that has an opening with a short window for a response. “We will modify that bond to do that,” said Yackel, “and our ability to react to that is much quicker.”

In November 2023, with two judges in the county, the Sawyer Recovery Court reconvened. A lot of what Recovery Court is about is personal accountability between the two judges – Yackel and Isham – and the offenders, along with positive feedback for little steps of sobriety and stability.

Getting through the system faster

Sawyer County Administrator Andy Albarado is also pleased to see the reduced jail population. He gives much credit to the diversion program and especially the pretrial program, as well as having a second judge 

“People are able to get through the system faster,” he said, “and we’ve only had that second courtroom for a year, and I wouldn’t say that second courtroom is fully implemented. It has taken six months just to get the court calendar balanced out, to get the new judge assigned cases and get people their court dates.”

Albarado said even with two judges now available to respond to cases, there are still limiting factors such as the availability of public defenders. “People have to be represented and if it takes some time to get them a public defender assigned, they still might have to wait through the system,” he said. 

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