Wisconsin budgets nearly $463,000 a year to incarcerate each child at the state’s beleaguered juvenile prison complex in the North Woods, a figure that has ballooned over a decade as enrollment has plummeted.

A new Department of Corrections budget request would nearly double that figure to about $862,000 a year — 58 times what taxpayers spend on the average K-12 public school student.

It comes as efforts to close the Lincoln County complex — home to Lincoln Hills School for boys and Copper Lake School for girls — and build a new youth prison in Milwaukee have slowed to a crawl.  

Six years after the Legislature approved the closure plan, Republican lawmakers and Democratic Gov. Tony Evers are blaming each other during funding and policy disagreements that have delayed the closure. 

A 2018 legal settlement restricted how guards could discipline youth. That followed a series of scandals involving allegations of inhumane conditions, such as frequent use of pepper spray, strip searches and mechanical restraints and solitary confinement. 

Republicans earlier this year pushed to lift pepper spray restrictions after a 16-year-old incarcerated at Lincoln Hills struck a counselor in the face, resulting in his death. A judge denied requests to alter the settlement in a dispute that has added to closure delays, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

Meanwhile, the facility’s population is dwindling. As of late November, it served just 41 boys and 18 girls on a campus designed for more than 500 youth.  

Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service spoke to judges, lawmakers, former prison staff and researchers about the eye-popping price tag to incarcerate fewer young people. They attributed the trends to demographic changes, a paradigm shift from large youth prisons to smaller regional facilities and scandals on the campus that made judges hesitant to send teens to Lincoln Hills. 

“No judge wants to send a kid to Lincoln Hills,” said Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Laura Crivello, who has presided over juvenile cases. “You feel like you’re damning the kid. And if you look at the recidivism rates that come out of Lincoln Hills, you pretty much are damning a kid.” 

Here’s a closer look at the numbers. 

Who sets budgets for youth prisons? 

Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake schools are the state’s only youth prisons, but they are among four main state facilities for young people convicted of serious juvenile offenses. The others are Mendota Mental Health Institute, a psychiatric hospital in Madison that treats youth involved in the juvenile justice system, and Grow Academy, a residential incarceration-alternative program outside of Madison.

The Legislature sets uniform daily rates that counties pay to send youth to any of the locations — spreading costs across all facilities. 

In 2015, lawmakers approved a daily rate of $284 per juvenile across all four facilities, or nearly $104,000 a year. This year’s rate is $1,268 a day, or nearly $463,000 annually. 

The annual per-student rate would jump to about $841,000 in 2025 and nearly $862,000 in 2026 if the Legislature approves the latest Department of Corrections funding request. 

By contrast, Wisconsin spent an annual average of $14,882 per student in K-12 public schools in 2023, according to the Wisconsin Policy Forum. 

Why have costs ballooned? 

A campus built for more than 500 is mostly underused as enrollment declines, but taxpayers must still pay to maintain the same large space. It affects county budgets since they pay for youth they send to state juvenile correctional facilities.

Fixed infrastructure and staffing costs account for the largest share of expenses, said department spokesperson Beth Hardtke. Spreading the costs among fewer juveniles inflates the per capita price tag.

But taxpayers haven’t seen overall savings from the steep drop in enrollment either. The state in 2015 budgeted about $25.9 million for the Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake complex. That number climbed to about $31.3 million by 2023 with the addition of staff — a cost increase nearly in line with inflation during that period. 

Driving requests to further hike rates: The Department of Corrections seeks $19.4 million in 2026 and $19.8 million in 2027 to expand Mendota Mental Health Institute’s capacity from 29 beds for boys to 93 beds serving girls or boys — an expansion required by state law. 

The expansion requires adding 123 positions at the facility. Such additions affect calculations for the rates of all state facilities for incarcerated juveniles, including Lincoln Hills.  

Why are there fewer incarcerated students? 

The trends driving high costs at Lincoln Hills started more than 20 years ago, said Jason Stein, president of the Wisconsin Policy Forum.

First, Wisconsin is home to increasingly fewer young people. 

The state’s population of youth under 18 has been shrinking. The state saw a 3.2% dip between 2012 and 2021 — from 1,317,004 juveniles to 1,274,605 juveniles, according to a  Legislative Fiscal Bureau report.

Juvenile arrests in Wisconsin dropped by 66% during the same period.  

Meanwhile, judges became reluctant to sentence juveniles to Lincoln Hills —  even before abuse allegations escalated and prompted authorities to raid the campus in 2015.     

“I was the presiding judge at Children’s Court, when we blew open the fact that kids weren’t getting an education and they were having their arms broken,” said Mary Triggiano, an adjunct professor at Marquette University Law School and former District 1 Circuit Court chief judge.

“But we knew before that there were problems with Lincoln Hills because we watched the recidivism rates. We would bring in DOC and say: ‘Tell me what kind of services you’re going to give. Tell me why they’re not in school. Tell me why you’re keeping them in segregation for hours and hours and hours’ — when we know that’s awful for kids who experience trauma.”

Enrollment dropped and costs increased, but outcomes didn’t improve. 

More than 61% of the 131 boys who left Lincoln Hills in 2018 committed a new offense within three years, while about 47% of the 15 girls who left Copper Lake reoffended. The recidivism rate for boys during that period was roughly the same as it was for those released in 2014. The rate for girls was worse than the nearly 42% it was four years earlier. 

Stein compared Lincoln Hills to a restaurant that tries to compensate for lost customers by raising meal prices. If prices keep rising, customers will look for a different restaurant, he said. 

“That, in a nutshell, is how you get into this spiral where you’re seeing fewer residents, higher rates, and greater costs for counties,” Stein said. “Then it’s just rinse and repeat.”

How much do other states spend to incarcerate youth?  

Wisconsin is not the only state spending hundreds of thousands of dollars per juvenile it incarcerates. 

A 2020 Justice Policy Institute report showed Wisconsin spent less than the national average in 2020. But Wisconsin’s per-juvenile costs have since more than tripled as Lincoln Hills remains open and incarcerates fewer young people.  

Incarcerating juveniles is generally more expensive than it is for adults, said Ryan King, director of research and policy at Justice Policy Institute. Rehabilitation plays a bigger role in juvenile corrections, and those programs cost more. Incarcerated children typically access more  counseling, education and case management programs. 

States nationwide are rethinking their approach to youth incarceration as crime rates fall and more research shows how prison damages children, King said. 

“There was an acknowledgement that locking kids up was not only failing to make communities safer, but it was making kids worse, and really just putting them in a position where they were more likely to end up in the adult system,” he said.  

How is Wisconsin trying to reshape juvenile justice? 

In 2018, then-Gov. Scott Walker signed Act 185, designed to restructure the state’s juvenile justice system. The law kicked off plans for a new state youth prison in Milwaukee and authorized counties to build their own secure, residential care centers.

Milwaukee and Racine counties are moving forward on such plans to build these centers. The centers function similarly to county jails: County officials operate them under Department of Corrections oversight. Officials hope keeping youth closer to home will help them maintain family connections. 

“We have always pushed smaller is better. You can’t warehouse young people like you do adults,” said Sharlen Moore, a Milwaukee alderwoman and co-founder of Youth Justice Milwaukee. “Their brain just doesn’t comprehend things in that way.”

The law aimed to close troubled Lincoln Hills and give judges more options at sentencing while balancing the needs of juvenile offenders and the public. But those options have yet to fully develop. 

Today’s alternative programs typically have limited space and extensive waitlists. That won’t be fixed until more regional facilities go online. 

How else could Wisconsin spend on troubled youth? 

Triggiano, now director of the Marquette Law School’s Andrew Center for Restorative Justice, was astounded to learn youth incarceration costs could nearly double next year. 

“You just want to drop to your knees because if I had that money, we had that money, what could we do differently?” she said. 

She quickly offered ideas: programs that recognize how traumatic experiences shape behavior, violence prevention outreach in schools, community mentorship programs — evidence-based practices shown to help children and teens. Milwaukee County had worked to create some of those programs before funding was pulled, Triggiano said.

“It all got blown up in a variety of ways at every juncture,” she said. “Now there’s going to be an attachment to the secure detention facility because that’s all people could muster up after being slammed down every time we tried to do something that we thought was going to work.”

State Rep. Darrin Madison, D-Milwaukee, echoed Triggiano and offered additional spending suggestions, such as housing resources, mental health support and summer jobs programs. 

“The cost of sending one young person to Lincoln Hills would be enough to pay several young people working jobs over summer or the span of the school year,” Madison said.  

Wisconsin’s disproportionate spending on incarcerating its young people runs counter to the Wisconsin Idea, its historical commitment to education, he added. 

“We’re so committed to incarcerating people that we’re willing to eat the cost of doing so, as opposed to making investments in deterrence and getting at the root cause of the problems.” 

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.

One child, $463,000 per year: Ballooning costs of troubled Lincoln Hills youth prison 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.

An odd standoff brewed Tuesday afternoon at a polling place in Kenosha’s Lincoln Park neighborhood: Two groups of election observers began scrutinizing each other. 

Tanya Mclean, executive director of Leaders of Kenosha, stood outside the Oribiletti Center with two volunteers who joined her effort to protect against voter intimidation at the polls. Minutes after they arrived, a woman wearing an election observer sticker walked up to monitor the volunteers. She photographed them and occasionally typed in her phone. 

Soon, two police officers arrived to monitor both groups. As if to settle the dispute, an officer took out a tape measure and walked 100 feet from the door. Wisconsin law bars “electioneering,” or attempts to influence elections within 100 feet of a polling place door. The rules extend to nonpartisan observers, who additionally can’t talk about the contests on the ballot, handle election documents, make calls, or interact with voters unless requested.

But if anyone thought Mclean and her colleagues were doing so, she couldn’t understand why. Dressed in yellow sweatshirts that read “Election Defenders,” the women had done little more than stand near the door and keep an eye on their surroundings.   

In the end, the volunteers moved 10 feet further from the door, ending the standoff without incident.  

While joy and enthusiasm for the democratic process permeated many Wisconsin polling places on Election Day, the brief episode in Kenosha exemplified how suspicion and unspoken tension played out elsewhere, said Mclean, whose four-woman group pushes for racial justice and progressive social issues. 

A chief inspector asked Mclean to leave a separate polling place earlier in the day, accusing her of electioneering with little explanation, she said. And just minutes before police arrived in Lincoln Park, a man approached her group to ask if they were working as election officials — or simply out to create “visual antics.” When they said they were there to observe, he left, ripping a Kamala Harris/Tim Walz yard sign from a nearby lawn, carrying it away.

“It’s been interesting, and not in a good way,” Mclean said. “It’s not the voters who have been the problem. It’s people tasked with observing elections who assume we’re here for nefarious reasons. They just assume we’re here to disrupt.”

Mclean doesn’t remember this kind of suspicion during the 2020 election, which unfolded months after Kenosha police shot Jacob Blake, sparking a protest that left two dead and another wounded. While Mclean said the city has since taken steps to move past the protests, some tensions still linger. 

“A lot of issues that needed to be addressed during that time and that fed into those feelings of uprising are still there,” she said. “In some ways, I feel like we’re in the same place.”

Several volunteers from Chicago joined Mclean Tuesday in helping drive voters to the polls and look out for voter intimidation. 

“By comparison, Illinois is a safe state,” said Ivy Czekanski, who drove to Kenosha to volunteer. “We don’t see the same kind of intimidation there as we do in Wisconsin.” 

She added, “I was also here in Kenosha in 2020, and this is the first time I’ve seen people so whipped up about voter intimidation. They’re observing us, and we’re observing them, and it becomes this dueling effort to watch each other.”

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.

Tension in Kenosha: Election observers start watching each other 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.

Ray Mendoza doesn’t care who you vote for. He just wants you to vote. 

To Mendoza, 54, the right to vote is too precious to squander. That’s how the Milwaukee man feels after surrendering that right for the roughly 20 years he spent in a federal penitentiary and on probation.

“I encourage everybody, if you’re a convicted felon and you’re not on probation or parole, get out and vote. Use your voice,” Mendoza last week told a reporter outside Milwaukee’s Frank P. Zeidler Municipal Building, where he voted for the third time in his life — casting an in-person absentee ballot.

Each state sets its own process around removing and restoring voting rights following a felony conviction. Maine and Vermont are the only states that allow people to vote while still in prison. People in Florida can’t vote until completing their sentence and paying all fines and fees — a requirement some critics have likened to poll taxes that barred African Americans from voting during the Jim Crow era.

Wisconsin automatically restores voting rights after someone is “off paper,” meaning they have completed their prison sentence and time on probation or extended supervision. In a state of roughly 6 million people, that puts voting off limits for the roughly 23,000 in state prisons and more than 45,000 serving probation or extended supervision for felony convictions. 

Those figures represent just a fraction of people living with felony convictions on their criminal record.

Meanwhile, roughly 2 million people are incarcerated in jails or prisons nationwide, while about 17 million more live with a felony conviction — a status that can bar them from certain jobs, public assistance or housing. 

Mendoza regained his right to vote in 2019 after completing his prison bid and probation. But even now, voting stirs an anxiety he can’t fully shake. He feels at times as if restoration is a ruse to send him back to prison for unwittingly violating some rule.

“I’m waiting for somebody to come up and say, ‘You’re under arrest for fraudulent voting,’” he said of the back-of-mind feeling. “But I know I’m registered. I know I’m legit.” 

Nevertheless, he votes, and he urges all eligible voters to do the same, telling them: “If you don’t vote, you don’t have any right to complain.” 

Still, he recalls meeting community members who plan to sit out on Election Day, believing their vote counts for little. Mendoza’s experience helps him see things differently. 

He asks: “If your vote wasn’t important, why is that the first thing they take when they take your freedom?”

Mendoza now hopes his work and perspective will shape a more peaceful Milwaukee, where he lived before going to prison for participating in a violent crime that included charges of attempted murder and kidnapping. 

Mendoza, a Marine Corps veteran, began turning his life around even before going to prison. Just before his 1997 conviction, Mendoza publicly denounced the life of gang violence he previously embraced. When a Milwaukee police officer shot a man named James Rey Guerrero who was allegedly fleeing police, Mendoza worked with community leaders and police to calm tensions and organize a nonviolent prayer vigil.

At his sentencing hearing, family members and community leaders pleaded with the judge to show leniency, citing his work in the community, court transcripts show. 

“There were a lot of threats against Milwaukee police by gang members who were upset with what had transpired, and Ray was very instrumental in helping to kind of calm that and allow that prayer vigil in March to go on,” an employee of Milwaukee’s Social Development Commission told the judge. 

But redemption would have to wait. Mendoza was sentenced to 20 years in a federal penitentiary. 

His path to rehabilitation wasn’t a straight line. He said he spent his first 13 years in and out of solitary confinement, contemplating how to return to selling drugs without getting caught. 

 “All the way up until year 14 of my sentence, my mind said, ‘Well, I’m gonna come home and I’m gonna make a phone call and I’m gonna get a truckload of drugs and up here so I can get back to work,’” he said.

But returning to old habits, he eventually realized, would return him to prison. 

“One day I was sitting in the hole, and I just say, ‘You know, if I want to go home and stay home, I gotta change the way I think. I gotta change the way I live my life, and I gotta change the way I view everybody else and everything else around me,’” Mendoza said. “I refuse to go back to prison.”

He’s kept the promise he made to himself. After his release, Mendoza went to work as a violence interrupter, sharing his experiences and helping to head off gunfire. More recently, he began work as a restorative justice coach at The Northwest Opportunities Vocational Academy, designed for students determined to be at risk of not graduating. 

“According to (Milwaukee Public Schools), these (students) are the worst of the worst of the school system. Those are the ones that I love the most. Those are my favorites,” Mendoza said. 

He sees a version of himself in every young person he works with. For them, his message is simple: They don’t have to go through the pain and heartache he endured. They can do things differently.  

On this Election Day, the nation, including Wisconsin, faces partisan divisions so deep that some have vowed to move to another country if their preferred presidential candidate loses.

But where many see hopelessness, Mendoza sees something different.  

“I don’t think things are hopeless right now. I’ve seen hopeless,” he said.

“I see opportunity. Even with all the negativity that’s going on in our city, I still see opportunity, not for me, not for people my age, not for people in the work that I do, but for the young people.”

‘Use your voice’: Ex-incarcerated Milwaukee man cherishes regained voting rights 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.

The Wisconsin Department of Corrections has halted the work of a nonprofit that donated used books to prisoners for nearly 20 years, calling it necessary to prevent drugs from entering state prisons through secondhand books.

The move is drawing pushback from leaders of the nonprofit Wisconsin Books to Prisoners and prisoner rights advocates. They say the department is limiting inmates’ access to information while failing to narrow wider entry points for drugs, like prison staff. 

The used book ban comes after Wisconsin rerouted prisoner-bound mail out of state in the name of blocking drug shipments — an effort that has cost millions yet has had little visible impact on the numbers.

As they restrict books and mail shipments, Wisconsin prison officials have shared less about plans to stop prison employees from bringing in drugs. 

That’s despite last year’s launch of a federal investigation into employees suspected of smuggling contraband into Waupun Correctional Institution. Separately, multiple Wisconsin prison workers have faced charges related to drug smuggling in recent years. 

Prison officials ban used book donations

Wisconsin Books to Prisoners (WBTP), a small volunteer-run organization, has sent over 70,000 free books to state prisons since 2006.

Camy Matthay, the group’s director and co-founder, said she was alarmed in August to learn state prisons would no longer accept the group’s used books.

“The decision to bar WBTP from sending books unnecessarily restricts incarcerated peoples’ access to valuable educational resources, particularly when many facilities suffer from underfunded, outdated, or non-existent library service,” Matthay’s group wrote on social media when announcing the ban.

“We just want to send books to prisoners, that’s all,” Matthay said in an interview.

The organization inspected all books before sending to ensure they met prison “clean copy” criteria: no highlighting, underlining or marks of any kind, she said. 

In an Aug. 16 email to the nonprofit, Division of Adult Institutions Administrator Sarah Cooper wrote that her agency is not concerned with the organization itself, “but with those who would impersonate your organization for nefarious means.” 

“Bad actors” may send packages and books laced with drugs that “appear to be sent from the Child Support Agency, the IRS, the State Public Defender’s Office, the Department of Justice and individual attorneys,” she wrote.

The corrections department announced its latest ban of used books in January. Then Oshkosh Correctional Institution officials in February and March detected drugs in three shipments of books purporting to be from Wisconsin Books to Prisoners, spokesperson Beth Hardtke told reporters Monday in an email.

That was news to Matthay, she said Monday. The department never notified the group about the incidents, nor did Cooper’s August email mention them. 

Latest effort to restrict book donations 

This isn’t the first time restrictions have threatened the group’s work.  

Prison officials cited drug concerns in halting the nonprofit’s donations in 2008 before eventually agreeing to let it send only new books, following ACLU of Wisconsin intervention. In 2018, the department clarified that the nonprofit, as an approved vendor, could send used books so long as they were clean copies. It reaffirmed that decision in 2021. 

Hardtke said the latest restrictions don’t specifically target Wisconsin Books to Prisoners. They are instead part of a broader ban on all secondhand book deliveries. Prisoners may still receive new books sent directly from a publisher or retailer with a receipt, she said. 

Matthay’s group cannot keep up with demands while being limited to only new books, she said.

The policy will chill prisoners’ access to information, said Moira Marquis, a senior manager at the freedom of expression advocacy group PEN America. Marquis authored the report “Reading Between the Bars,” which detailed state book restrictions nationwide.  

Wisconsin Books to Prisoners sent donated books to inmates for free to address a specific barrier to information. Many prisoners, who in 2023 made as little as five cents per hour in jobs behind bars, cannot afford to buy new books from retailers. 

“If you’re going to limit somebody’s First Amendment rights excessively, you really should have a very strong burden of proof that not only is this necessary, but also that it’s effective,” Marquis said.

Wisconsin Watch asked the corrections department for evidence that necessitated the ban. 

“Unfortunately, in recent years individuals have repeatedly used paper, including letters and books, as a way to try to smuggle drugs into DOC institutions,” Hardtke said in an email.  

The department since 2019 has flagged 214 incidents of drugs being found on paper, representing a quarter of all 881 contraband incidents flagged during that time, according to figures Hardtke provided.  

“DOC is continuing the conversation with Wisconsin Books to Prisoners in the hopes we can come to an agreement to help fulfill the reading requests of those in our care and do so safely,” Hardtke wrote. 

Matthay in August asked the department if providing tracking information on its packages could help it verify that book shipments were indeed coming from Wisconsin Books to Prisoners. 

The department has yet to respond, she said Monday.  

Millions spent rerouting prison mail to Maryland

The corrections department’s broader efforts to restrict mail do not appear to have slowed the flow of drugs. The department counted more incident reports of drugs being found on paper (55) thus far in 2024 than it did in 2021 (49), the year it overhauled its mailing system, the figures Hardtke provided show. 

Not all incident reports flagged as drug-related turn out to actually be so, Hardtke noted, and the figures may not account for drug-related incidents logged in separate medical or conduct reports. 

In December 2021, the department began rerouting all prisoner-bound mail to Maryland, where a company called TextBehind scans each piece of mail and sends a digital copy to those incarcerated. The department has paid nearly $4 million for those services since they began, according to information Wisconsin Watch obtained through an open records request.

Some incarcerated people told Wisconsin Watch the loss of physical mail has increased their feelings of isolation. They can no longer hold the same handwritten letters and photographs their loved ones sent; photocopies aren’t the same. 

“I don’t get to smell the perfume on a letter. I don’t get the actual drawings my kid sends me. It takes away from the sentimental value of it,” said a Waupun prisoner who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution.  

A range of research has shown that maintaining connections to loved ones improves the likelihood that a prisoner will reintegrate into society and avoid recidivism. 

The prisoner said the mail policy hasn’t stopped the flow of drugs into prison.

“Every day I smell weed,” he said. “They’re trying to blame us for the drugs, but if the administration doesn’t hold their staff accountable for their actions, it won’t solve the problem.”

Lockdowns don’t stop drug flow 

Wisconsin in recent years has locked down prisons, limiting inmate movement and privileges to alleviate staffing shortages. Drugs kept flowing even after in-person visits and direct mail to prisoners stopped. 

The department counted 214 total drug-related contraband incident reports in 2024, up from 142 a year earlier and 164 in 2022. 

Last year, a U.S. Department of Justice investigation into a possible drug and contraband smuggling ring prompted the state to place 11 Waupun prison employees on leave. In September, a former Waupun prison employee was convicted of smuggling contraband into prisons under the guise of completing repairs.

And in October 2023, three months after state officials asked federal authorities to investigate staff-led smuggling inside Waupun’s prison, 30-year-old Tyshun Lemons was found dead from fentanyl poisoning. In June, prosecutors criminally charged nine Waupun prison workers, including the former warden, following multiple inmate deaths, including Lemons’.

At least two dozen correctional officers have been caught smuggling contraband into Wisconsin prisons since 2019, according to public records obtained by the advocacy group Ladies of SCI and shared with Wisconsin Watch. 

Wisconsin Watch is awaiting department records requested Sept. 5 detailing additional information related to recent drug incidents in its adult facilities. 

Mail restrictions scrutinized in other states

Multiple states have restricted books and mail since 2015, citing drug smuggling concerns, Marquis said. Meanwhile, prisoners have increasingly relied on electronic tablets, which have come with new limits on what they can read, Marquis said. 

Have such restrictions limited the flow of drugs in those states? Not necessarily, news reports have found. 

A Texas Tribune/Marshall Project investigation in 2021 found that curtailing mail did not curb drugs found in Texas prisons. Guards wrote up even more prisoners for drugs after the policy change. Prisoners and employees reported that staff were most responsible for smuggling drugs.

Pennsylvania’s prison officials banned physical mail in 2018 after blaming a series of staff illnesses on drugs allegedly sent by mail. But less than five years later, the number of prisoners who tested positive on random drug tests substantially increased, The Patriot News reported last year. 

Florida in 2021 stopped all paper mail from entering prisons, citing 35,000 contraband items found in mail between January 2019 and April 2021. But those represented less than 2% of all such items found in the prisons during that period, the Tampa Bay Times reported.  

Wisconsin in 2022 issued new screening requirements for people entering prisons and added metal detectors at points of entry. But one Waupun prison worker said screeners at entrances do not routinely inspect employees’ bags or lunches, allowing drugs to pass through undetected. The prison worker requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to media.

“If it were me trying to stop drugs, the first thing I would do is come up with a system where employees are screened better,” he said. 

To Rebecca Aubart, executive director of Ladies of SCI, the secondhand book ban is an example of how policies touted as safety measures harm incarcerated people. 

“To me this policy is another way DOC is blaming families and the people they incarcerate for the problems their staff can’t or won’t address,” she said. 

“It’s a false narrative that gets repeated, and when it becomes policy, the false narrative gets reinforced.”

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.

Wisconsin prisons restrict books and mail to keep drugs out, but some staff still bring drugs in 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.

Wisconsin lawmakers have offered few remedies for deteriorating prison conditions spotlighted this year by investigative journalism, litigation surrounding extended lockdowns and criminal charges against nine Waupun prison officials following a string of inmate deaths.

But prisoner rights advocates remain energized by the recent attention. They are calling for the creation of an independent ombudsman to investigate concerns inside prisons and to study solutions.

Experts say such an office, versions of which exist in 19 states and the District of Columbia, could improve safety. Allowing prisoners and their families to air grievances could decrease tension that fuels violence between guards and inmates. And independent monitoring could prevent neglect and abuse — limiting tax dollars paid out in lawsuits, advocates say. 

Between 2013 and 2023, Wisconsin paid out at least $17 million in 450 legal settlements to people alleging abuse, neglect or civil rights violations while incarcerated, according to a Wisconsin Watch analysis of settlement data. The cases involved alleged failure to prevent self-harm, deliberate indifference to medical needs and reckless disregard for the safety of prisoners, among other complaints. As a matter of practice, the state typically admitted no fault in its settlement agreements. 

The Wisconsin Watch analysis does not include more than $25 million in settlements and legal fees related to allegations of abuse at Wisconsin’s only youth prison at Lincoln Hills-Copper Lake, including excessive pepper spray use, strip searches and restraints. A counselor was killed this summer in a fight at the prison.  

Prisoners and advocates say they have nowhere to turn outside of courts for an impartial review of complaints.

While concerned family members can write to the Department of Corrections, their letters often get ignored or routed to prison staff who may retaliate — for instance by writing up the prisoner in question or reducing privileges like family visitation, Rebecca Aubart said. She’s the executive director of Ladies of SCI, a statewide advocacy group that initially focused on prisoners and loved ones at the medium-security Stanley Correctional Institution. 

“What’s going to happen is that it’s going to eventually end up in front of the warden, and nothing will be done about it,” Aubart told Wisconsin Watch.

Creating an ombudsman office, she said, “would give family members a place to go, and it would be kept confidential. We wouldn’t be experiencing the retaliation that we do now.” 

Aubart and other advocates brought the idea to the Republican-controlled Assembly’s Committee on Corrections during a July hearing. Lawmakers signaled openness to the idea.  

Rep. Angie Sapik, R-Lake Nebagamon, said she had previously considered writing a bill. Rep. Darrin Madison of Milwaukee said he and fellow Democrats have worked on their own proposal.

Aubart asked lawmakers to work together. 

“One side cannot fix it,” she said. 

Department of Corrections spokesperson Beth Hardtke said the agency is reviewing the idea, but cautioned a new office would require funding and staff resources.

“We would also note that DOC does have a complaint system, including an appeals process, for individuals in our care,” Hardtke added. “We also regularly offer guidance to the public, route complaints or concerns to the appropriate place, and resolve issues.” 

That complaint system is Wisconsin’s primary avenue for resolving prison grievances, with concerns submitted to and reviewed by an institution complaint examiner. Prisoner advocates call it unresponsive. Unlike an independent ombudsman, it exists completely within the Department of Corrections. Complaints first flow to staff at the prison where they originate, creating a perverse incentive to dismiss them out of hand, critics say.

Rep. Ryan Clancy, D-Milwaukee and a corrections committee member, calls it “the worst possible system.”

“We need an independent fact-finder to investigate because a system where you can be punished for speaking out is not a good one,” Clancy said. 

Independent prison oversight in other states

Lawmakers outside of Wisconsin are increasingly turning to independent prison monitors. Virginia and Maryland this year passed bipartisan bills to create ombudsman offices, as did Congress — strengthening oversight of federal prisons. 

“States and legislators around the country are starting to understand how essential this is. It’s basically what democracy and good governance is all about,” said Michele Deitch, director of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at the University of Texas at Austin, who has extensively researched independent prison monitoring. “And that’s why these bills are passing with bipartisan support, unanimous support.”

New Jersey and Washington state represent strong models of oversight, Deitch said, giving investigators broad access to inspect facilities. Internal inspection offices can serve a purpose, she added, but they rarely share findings publicly, limiting transparency and accountability. 

Some corrections staffers who initially bristle at outside oversight end up benefiting through improved relations with prisoners and working conditions, Deitch said. 

“Oversight benefits everybody involved in the system, from incarcerated people and their families, to staff and administrators,” Deitch said.

Employees at understaffed Waupun Correctional Institution might welcome such results. The prison experienced 176 assaults on staff from June 2023 to June 2024 — more than a third of assaults systemwide, Department of Corrections data show.

One Waupun prison staff member said the many assaults and tensions from ongoing litigation at times make correctional officers reluctant to impose consequences for threatening or assaultive behavior for fear of triggering additional lawsuits or charges.

“You can’t run a prison in fear, and right now, we’re on our heels,” said the staff member, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.  

How Minnesota does it

Wisconsin can look to its neighbor for one oversight model.

In the early 1970s, in the wake of one of the country’s bloodiest prison riots in Attica, New York, problems brewed at Minnesota’s Stillwater prison, which saw uprisings, escape attempts, murders and a violent attack on the warden. In 1970, armed inmates took three officers hostage and tried to walk out wearing their uniforms. The prisoners gave up after listing their grievances to a reporter.

Two years later Minnesota created its ombuds office to address grievances before hostilities spiraled into violence. 

The office was defunded in 2002 and closed the following year, but it reopened in 2019 after the deaths of two correctional officers, said Margaret Zadra, the state’s ombudsperson for corrections. 

“A lot of people at the time were talking about the office as a pressure release valve,” Zadra said. “But we tend to talk about our office more like a flashlight. We shine a light on issues, and we can go behind the walls and see things that most people don’t have access to and can’t see.”

Although Minnesota and Wisconsin have roughly the same demographics and population, their corrections systems look dramatically different. Wisconsin locks up more than 22,000 people in adult prisons, more than twice as many as Minnesota.

Minnesota, as a result, spends proportionately less on corrections than Wisconsin: $111 per state resident in 2020, compared to Wisconsin’s $220, according to a Wisconsin Policy Forum analysis. 

Minnesota’s Office of the Ombuds for Corrections employs five staff members and plans to add three more. It oversees 11 prisons and 150 jails statewide and has a budget of $1.3 million. The office is independent from the state’s corrections department and reports to the governor. 

Minnesota’s ombuds fields complaints from prisoners, staff and community members and holds office hours at correctional facilities. It lacks enforcement powers but presents recommendations to the Department of Corrections and Legislature. The office helps those incarcerated resolve individual problems and advocates for systemic change after diagnosing larger problems, Zadra said.

Since 2020 the office has produced recommendations for improving use of force policies, unsafe practices when transporting prisoners and crumbling conditions within state prisons. Several recommendations have prompted legislative action, including creating a body-worn camera pilot project for correctional officers.

Costly complaints

Wisconsin prisoners who believe their rights have been violated can sue the Department of Corrections, but only after exhausting every step of the internal grievance process.   

Missing a step or deadline can trigger a case’s dismissal. 

That happened in May when a federal judge dismissed eight of 10 plaintiffs in a lawsuit alleging cruel and unusual punishment at Waupun’s prison. U.S. Magistrate Judge William Duffin ruled the eight incarcerated men failed to exhaust administrative remedies before suing. 

Lonnie Story, who represents the inmates, told Wisconsin Watch he plans to refile the case. 

Reliance on internal complaint systems stems from the Prisoner Litigation Reform Act of 1996, which Congress enacted to stem the tide of “frivolous” lawsuits. Legal scholars and prisoner rights advocates say the law created barriers to resolving grievances — aside from prompting more case dismissals. 

For instance it capped attorney fees plaintiffs’ attorneys can win, making it harder for prisoners to find representation.

Many prisoners represent themselves in lawsuits, and some win — evidenced by the 450 settlements over prison allegations from 2013 to 2023. 

Of the $17 million paid out in those lawsuits, $5 million went to the family of James Black. The family’s 2014 lawsuit alleged correctional officers ignored Black’s requests to be moved out of a cell he shared with an inmate known for sexually predatory and violent behavior. The prisoner later violently raped Black and stomped on his head, leaving him with severe and permanent brain damage that required 24-hour supervision, according to the suit.

Another $175,000 went to a Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility prisoner who was harassed and sexually assaulted by former correctional officer Paul Vick Jr., who later received a prison sentence for sexually assaulting inmates and misconduct in office. 

Improving prison conditions at the complaint stage might save the state money by reducing lawsuits, Deitch said, adding that critics counter that added scrutiny would expose more problems that festered in secret, perhaps at least initially increasing lawsuits. 

“It could cut either way,” said Deitch. “But the reality is, if you clean up what’s going on inside prisons, of course, you’re going to reduce the number of lawsuits.” 

Minnesota’s ombuds office operates parallel to the internal correction department grievance system. Investigators encourage prisoners to follow the internal complaint process ahead of an ombuds investigation. 

Little progress

The push for increased scrutiny over Wisconsin prisons follows months of lawmaker inaction. 

In November, months after Wisconsin Watch and the New York Times exposed worsening conditions and extended lockdowns at Waupun’s prison, Democratic lawmakers called a press conference to unveil  17 bills that they said would improve transparency, oversight and conditions of confinement. The bills did not advance in the Republican-controlled Legislature. 

Speaking at the July hearing, Rep. Michael Schraa, R-Oshkosh, the outgoing Assembly Committee on Corrections chair, said he may have supported some bills had Democrats sought his input before the press conference. 

“You guys went in front of the TV cameras. You took your five minutes of fame. You never came to any member on this committee, on the Republican side, and worked with any of us,” Schraa said. “That’s not the way that things work here. The majority party brings these bills forward, and if they’re bipartisan bills, they get hearings.”

Clancy, the Milwaukee Democrat, disputed that account. Email correspondence he shared with Wisconsin Watch showed he contacted Schraa’s office about the bills weeks before the press conference. Schraa’s office canceled the meeting before it took place, Clancy said. Through an aide, Schraa declined to be interviewed for this story. Schraa lost his reelection bid in a Republican primary earlier this month.

Entrenched partisanship has fueled gamesmanship that prevents lawmakers from solving problems, Clancy said.  

“It’s just a really toxic environment of them not wanting to give us, as Dems, a win.” 

Legislative stalemates left chronic prison staffing shortages unaddressed for years. While DOC officials warned of a looming staffing crisis nearly a decade ago, the Legislature took no meaningful action to hire and retain correctional staff until 2023 — after the prisons began locking down due to a lack of staff to fully operate. 

DOC has since filled vacancies in some prisons. The systemwide vacancy rate for correctional staff and officers as of Aug. 28 sits at 12%, down from its 35% peak in August 2023. The vacancy rate at Waupun still remained above 41%, higher than any other prison. 

Madison, the Milwaukee Democrat, recalled seeing a stack of letters from incarcerated people during his first day in office. The letters detailed problems Madison saw evidence of while touring prisons as a member of the Assembly corrections committee. 

“If an office of ombudsman existed, those complaints would fall on them instead of an internal system, which is not a good model of accountability anyway,” Madison said. “We’d likely see more results in changing practices within facilities if it was independent of administration.”

Douglas Duncan contributed research for this story.

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Short on fixes for prison problems, Wisconsin weighs independent oversight 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.