Green Bay Correctional Institution. (Photo by Andrew Kennard/Wisconsin Examiner)

When a prison built in the 1800s is still housing people in 2025 with the same aging infrastructure, we have to be honest, the system is broken. Wisconsin’s prisons have been in crisis for years, and for the first time in a long time, we’re seeing a small but important step toward change. 

Gov. Tony Evers recently received bipartisan approval to overhaul Wisconsin’s aging prison system and close the outdated Green Bay and Waupun prisons. The overhaul strategy includes a $15 million project investment and outlines a four-year process to reduce the number of beds, modernize facilities, and shift the focus toward rehabilitation and safety. That’s progress, but 2029 is too far away, and Evers’ plan lacks the kind of decarceration measures needed to actually reduce the prison population and make Wisconsin safer. 

The reality inside our prisons doesn’t have four years to wait. People are dying. Staff are exhausted. Families are breaking under the weight of a system that punishes more than it prepares people to come home. Every delay costs lives and wastes taxpayer dollars that could be used to help people rebuild instead of being locked away. 

I know this firsthand because I lived it. I spent part of my incarceration inside Green Bay Correctional Facility, one of the oldest and most overcrowded prisons in Wisconsin. The facility was built in 1898 with a design capacity of about 17,000 people statewide, yet Wisconsin’s prison population has hovered above 22,000 for years. That means thousands of people crammed into cells meant for far fewer. Walking those halls, you can feel the age of the place, the air thick with humidity, the bitter cold in winter, and the lack of ventilation that makes it hard to breathe. The walls are cracking, the infrastructure is failing, and the environment itself strips people of their dignity. 

Those conditions don’t make anyone safer. They don’t prepare people for reentry. They create desperation, both for both the incarcerated and the staff working inside. The best way to ensure a safer Wisconsin is to get the people who are ready to reenter society out of our prisons and into reentry. Overcrowded and understaffed prisons overtax our correctional officers and make prisons unsafe for officers and incarcerated people. In addition, understaffing makes it harder to ensure that everyone gets the programming that they need. The Federal First Step Act and CARES Act Home Confinement have both proved that bringing the right people back early can result in lower recidivism, better public safety and safer and more effective prisons. 

I was one of the many people affected by Wisconsin’s Truth in Sentencing law, which eliminated parole and early release. That law has kept countless people behind bars longer than necessary, removing the hope and incentive that parole once provided.

If Wisconsin wants to lead on justice reform, this can’t just be a construction project. Real reform means reducing the number of people behind bars, ending excessive revocations, expanding reentry programs, and investing in housing, treatment, and mental health care. It means giving people a path forward, not just warehousing. 

According to the Prison Policy Initiative, Wisconsin imprisons about 663 people per 100,000 residents, far more than Minnesota (173) or Illinois (341). Despite years of promises to reform, the state’s prison population has remained between 21,000 and 23,000 people for nearly two decades. 

Nearly 40% of new admissions each year come from revocations, not new crimes, meaning thousands are sent back to prison for breaking supervision rules like missing curfew, losing housing, or failing a drug test. That’s roughly 4,000 to 5,000 people every year, based on Department of Corrections data. I lead a statewide Smart Justice campaign focused on ending these excessive revocations, because it’s one of the biggest drivers of mass incarceration in Wisconsin. 

Add to that the worst racial disparity in the country. Black residents are imprisoned at 11 times the rate of white residents, according to the Sentencing Project, and it’s clear that our problem isn’t just old buildings. It’s old thinking. Reducing prison beds without changing these policies is like draining a bathtub while leaving the faucet running. Until we reform supervision, expand early release and invest in reentry and community support, the system will keep refilling itself. 

Closing prisons built in the 1800s is a step in the right direction, but it has to come with urgency and intention. We can’t keep reacting; we have to start transforming. The same energy that went into passing this plan must go into implementing it quickly and with input from the people most affected by it, those who have lived behind those walls, their families and the communities most affected by incarceration. 

As we head into a new election season, this issue must be front and center for every candidate running for governor. Wisconsin deserves leaders who will move us forward, not just talk about reform, but act on it. The next administration should be judged on whether it has the courage to close outdated prisons, expand second chances, and build a system rooted in rehabilitation, dignity, and justice. 

Gov. Evers was right when he said, “We’ve got to get this damned thing done.” But getting it done means more than moving money; it means moving with purpose. Justice reform isn’t about buildings; it’s about people. 

Wisconsin’s motto is Forward. It’s time for our justice system and our next governor to finally live up to that.

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Lawmakers and community organizers gather outside the Milwaukee County Courthouse to announce a package of bills related to conditions inside prisons and jails. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

On Monday, a group of state and local lawmakers expected to see firsthand the conditions within the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility (MSDF), a state-run facility imprisoning people for things like probation and parole violations. Lawmakers said the Department of Corrections (DOC) approved the tour, only to back out. It wasn’t the first time that elected officials have reported being denied tours of prisons and jails around the state, many of which continue to produce troubling accounts of the conditions inside their walls. 

“Let me be clear, the conditions in Wisconsin’s correctional facilities are not simply unfortunate,” said Rep. Darrin Madison (D-Milwaukee), standing with other elected officials and community organizers on the steps of the Milwaukee County Courthouse on Monday. “They are unacceptable…We are not going to normalize inhumanity.” 

Madison said that in some incarceration facilities, people may be locked in their cells for 20-23 hours a day for months. “They are denied sunlight,” said Madison. “They’re denied movement. They’re denied programming. They’re denied medical care. They’re denied basic human contact. There are facilities where people can’t even get consistent access to quality hygiene products. Where food is so poor, it does not meet the nutritional needs of grown adults…Where communication with family, the very thing that reduces recidivism, is treated like a privilege instead of a right.” 

Inhumane conditions in Wisconsin’s  jails and prisons, Madison said, is “state-sanctioned violence, and it’s being done in our name and disguised as justice.” Rather than creating spaces where rehabilitation can occur, Madison said, the Legislature has favored “choices related to punishment over rehabilitation, control over care, silence over accountability.” He stressed that “when you run a system on punishment and silence, abuse becomes the operating procedure.” 

That’s why Madison, alongside other elected officials and organizers from Ex-Incarcerated People Organizing (EXPO) and the Milwaukee Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, gathered outside the courthouse in Milwaukee to announce a package of bills aimed at improving conditions in prisons and jails. The bills would accomplish a number of things including:

• Guaranteeing 180 free minutes of telephone access, 60 minutes of free video calling, and 100 free messages per week to incarcerated people. In-person visits would also not be replaced with video or phone calls, 
• Increase wages to incarcerated people to at least $2.33 per hour. In  Wisconsin most incarcerated people are paid anywhere from nothing to 40 cents per hour, 
• Guaranteeing at least four bathing periods for people incarcerated in  state and county facilities, 
• Providing culturally sensitive products and a $25 a month stipend to help pay for them, female hygiene supplies, and other grooming and hygiene products, 
• Guaranteeing up to two in-person visits a week, and allowing incarcerated people to have up to 25 registered visitors who may embrace them for up to 20 seconds before and after visits, 
• Requiring that all state and county correctional facilities provide recreational activities, as well as organized and structured programming,
• Ensuring that people placed in solitary confinement are given a book, pen or pencil, paper, envelopes, hygiene products, a personal address book, and other supplies within two hours of being placed in restrictive housing, requiring structured programming while in solitary confinement, guaranteeing access to case managers, and providing three 25-minute video visitation periods per week, 
• Ensuring that housing units are kept at 68-76 degrees Fahrenheit, 
• Granting incarcerated people the ability to see the outdoors at least three hours daily, and the ability to be outside and up to three hours a week, 
• Creating a public dashboard with status on solitary confinement, prison lockdowns, and complaints, 
• Ensuring that lawmakers are able to access prisons and jails for oversight purposes, 
• Allowing counties to oversee control of a jail if lawmakers vote to do so, 
• And requiring jails and prisons to provide written documents to incarcerated people detailing their rights, and ensuring the document can be viewed and accessed throughout any correctional facility. 

Justin Bielinski, a Milwaukee County supervisor and chair of the Judiciary, Law Enforcement, and General Services Committee, quoted the adage that with great power comes great responsibility and added, “our carceral system is the ultimate power, depriving people of their freedom.” Bielinski said she  fears that “we’re not holding up our end of the bargain and our responsibility to keep people safe and free from harm.” 

Meanwhile, Milwaukee County is running out of space in the jail and Community Reintegration Center (CRC). “So it’s more important than ever that the conditions inside these facilities are the best that we can make them so that when people come out, they are not worse, that they are at least the same, if not better.” Bielinksi said. She added, “The Sheriff’s Office has been resistant to every attempt that we’ve made to offer change, offer oversight within the jail.” Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-Milwaukee), who was also in attendance on Monday, said he has also battled the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office to visit the jail and improve conditions there.

Although the county board can pass resolutions, they are not binding and do not usurp the authority the sheriff has over the jail. “We cannot force change inside of that facility,” said Bielinski. “And so we do need state legislation to help us out with that…We know these things are going to cost money, but we cannot let money be the excuse for treating people in a way that is less than human. And if we can’t find the money, then we shouldn’t be locking this many people up.” 

Bielinksi recalled the string of deaths inside the Milwaukee County Jail from 2021 to 2022, which led to a third-party audit of the jail. Yet in that audit, Bielinksi said, the county didn’t address the specific circumstances that led to the deaths. Among the people who died were 21-year-old Brieon Green and 20-year-old Cilivea Thyrion, whose deaths were both ruled suicides despite  their families’ insistence that jail staff were at the very least negligent in their care. Green and Thyrion’s loved ones joined local activists in calling for reform to the jail and sheriff’s office. 

December will mark three years since Thyrion died. Kayla Patterson, a member of the Milwaukee Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, highlighted the deaths and riots at the jail in recent years. “And we will continue to see that until the sheriff and her office are held accountable,” said Patterson. “This legislative pack should represent one of the first steps in standing with the people of Milwaukee for jail oversight that works with them, and not against them. For real transparency input into how our loved ones are kept while in custody. In the Alliance there’s a slogan we use: ‘In your custody, in your care.’ These are not just inmates, but community members that deserve dignity 24-7 during their time in the jail.” 

Conditions within state prisons have also been under the microscope. Last year, the warden of Waupun Correctional and eight other staff members were charged with crimes related to the treatment and neglect of people within the prison, which may have contributed to a string of four deaths from 2023 to 2024. 

The deaths included Dean Hoffmann, ruled suicide by hanging, Tyshun Lemons who overdosed on a substance containing fentanyl, Cameron Williams who complained of breathing issues and was found unresponsive in his bed, and Donald Maier, who died while in solitary confinement of dehydration and malnutrition. Water to his cell had been shut off, and correctional officers allegedly knew that Maier’s mental condition was worsening, that he had not eaten for days, and had begun drinking sewage water. In 2025, Waupun warden Randall Hepp was convicted of a misdemeanor in Maier’s death, and fined $500. Hepp pleaded no contest. 

The DOC didn’t respond to a request for comment, and the story will be updated with any reply from them. 

Sen. Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee) said at the press conference, “We invest, as a state, millions of dollars in folks who are in our care. And they should be coming out on a trajectory of success to make sure that they are finding a job, finding a community, and the only time they think about their time incarcerated is in the rear view mirror, in the past tense. Unfortunately, the way that we have this set up is a broken ‘tough on crime’ idea that once you touch the criminal justice system it is cruel to you, it diminishes you, and it never lets you go.” 

Androne Lane has experienced the struggles Larson described. He came home in 2018 after spending time in several prisons including Waupun, Green Bay, Red Granite and  Fox Lake. “I think it was important for me to come out and speak today because being a returning citizen, this bill or this movement that these guys are pushing to me is like a basic, like our own constitution for returning citizens,” Lane told the Wisconsin Examiner. “We’re not asking for a lot, we’re asking for dignity. We’re asking for humanity.” 

The priorities outlined in the bill package cover things that would help incarcerated people heal and become whole, Lane said. When people return home from prison, Lane continued, “How do you get a community to accept them coming back in there? And what does that look like for encouraging the community or an individual coming back to recover something that wasn’t replaced?” 

Lane and other advocates say there needs to be a “community care plan” for people returning home from incarceration. When Lane returned home, he told the  Examiner, it took a while for him to accept that he needed mental health therapy. “I think one of the hardest things for individuals is to ask for help, not knowing what help you need,” he said. “When I came home there was a lot of things that was on the surface that I had to deal with. But there was a lot of things inside that I didn’t know I was dealing with.” On the surface, Lane was unemployed and deeply stressed, but on the inside he was struggling with the trauma of being molested as a child, and he didn’t know how he’d be accepted in the community. “What does mental health look like for us? What does wellness look like …and what is this ‘whole’ that everybody is working for?” 

Rep. Margaret Arney (D-Wauwatosa), said the bills embody important work for Wisconsin to take on. “I hate living in a state where we lock up so many people and have so little regard for how those people live their lives,” Arney told the Examiner. “It’s a heartbreaking, enraging type of situation…When I look around and say, ‘What’s as bad as slavery was?’ And I think of the conditions of incarceration in the state of Wisconsin. That us as the United States, we’re addicted to locking people up, and in Wisconsin we do it even more so and even worse than in other states. And even though it costs a tremendous amount of resources, there’s so little willingness to engage in what those resources are here for, what we’re doing. Why does it cost so much to treat people so badly? Why do we, everyday, just put up with the fact that we’re somewhere on the order of 5,000 people over capacity?” 

Although “conditions of confinement” sounds like a “sterile” term to Arney, she said,  it’s not. “It’s human beings that are being treated at torture-level conditions, and I just can’t stand that.” 

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A bipartisan bill in the Wisconsin Legislature would launch a pilot project to provide health care and substance abuse recovery services to incarcerated people before and after release.(Photo by Caspar Benson/Getty Images)

This story has been updated to reflect the fact that the proposed bill would cover general health care needs in addition to substance use disorders

“When people don’t receive support, they tend to go back to what they knew,” Tom Denk, who was released from state prison in 2022, told the Wisconsin Examiner.

In an email, Denk said that he has experienced incarceration for a substance use issue and has had many friends who have had similar experiences. 

“One of my best friends was in prison with me,” Denk said. “It was his tenth time in prison — all for substance use issues. However, after he was released, this last time, he died from an overdose.”

Denk said he would like to see wrap-around services extended to include all prisoners. However, he supports a bipartisan effort in the Wisconsin Legislature to request a specific type of waiver of federal Medicaid law for a state demonstration project to provide eligible incarcerated people with up to 90 days of prerelease health care coverage. 

The coverage would include case management services, medication-assisted treatment for all types of substance use disorders and a 30-day supply of all prescription medications, which are the minimum benefits a state is expected to propose in its application. . There are 19 other states that have approved waivers, while nine, including D.C., are pending. 

In 2023, the Biden administration put out guidance encouraging states to test strategies to support the re-entry of incarcerated people into communities, according to the health policy research organization KFF.

While Medicaid is prohibited from paying for non-inpatient services provided during incarceration, states can apply for a partial waiver of that policy.

A bill in the Wisconsin Legislature, AB 604, would require the Wisconsin Department of Health Services to request the waiver from the federal government. Incarcerated people who would receive coverage must be otherwise eligible for coverage under the Medical Assistance program. It will receive a hearing Tuesday afternoon in the Assembly Committee on Mental Health and Substance Abuse Prevention. Its senate counterpart, SB 598, has been referred to the Committee on Health.  

In a press release, Sen. Sarah Keyeski (D-Lodi) said the bill would offer a way to reduce state and local health care costs for individuals with substance use disorders who are already eligible for Medicaid and are incarcerated in state prisons or county jails. 

The 2023 guidance states that the goal is not to allow prison authorities to transfer costs of providing needed prisoner health care to the Medicaid program. States have to reinvest federal matching funds received for carceral health care services currently funded with state or local dollars, according to a KFF publication last year.

Reinvested money must go toward activities that increase access or improve the quality of health care services for people who are incarcerated or were recently released, or for health-related social services that may help divert people released from incarceration from involvement in the criminal justice system, according to KFF.

Keyeski said the bill would also enhance access to care after release. 

“If we can initiate treatment for more individuals struggling with substance use disorders while they are incarcerated, we can both improve health outcomes once they are released back into their communities and lower rates of recidivism,” Keyeski said. 

Denk said that upon release, he had to search for a new provider, which “got more and more difficult to do.” He said that “case management would help with this issue — and reduce stressors that cause people to use substances.”

Support from lawmakers of both parties, activists 

Sen. Jesse James (R-Thorp) and Rep. Clint Moses (R-Menomonie) are among the bipartisan group of lawmakers who introduced or cosponsored AB 604.

James is the chair of the Senate Committee on Mental Health, Substance Abuse Prevention, and Children and Families, while Moses is chair of the Assembly Committee on Health, Aging and Long-Term Care. Sen. Howard Marklein, co-chair of the Joint Committee on Finance, is another cosponsor. 

“This bill is about saving lives and giving people coming out of the criminal justice system the best chance of recovery and reintegration into their communities,” James said in an emailed statement. 

The statement cited a North Carolina study of opioid overdose death rates between 2000 and 2015, which concluded that people released from prison are highly vulnerable to opioids and need urgent prevention measures. 

“When treatment begins pre-release and is maintained throughout reentry, we will see meaningful improvement in health outcomes,” James said.

Moses said in a statement that the bill will help give incarcerated individuals a positive start in a transitional phase in their lives, and would also reduce costs for local governments. 

The criminal justice reform advocacy groups EX-Incarcarated People Organizing (EXPO) and WISDOM expressed support for the legislation in statements to the Examiner. 

“For too long, people leaving incarceration have faced dangerous gaps in healthcare coverage — especially those living with substance use disorders,” EXPO stated. 

The legislation “recognizes what we see every day in our work,” according to the organization, “that people returning home are far more likely to succeed when their health and basic needs are supported from the start.”

In an email to the Examiner, Mark Rice of WISDOM said that many formerly and currently incarcerated people are struggling with poverty, mental illness and addiction. He said that “far too many people” detained in prisons and jails are needlessly dying and suffering due to health issues that could be fixed through increased access to care during and after incarceration. 

“The system must be fundamentally transformed so that health is prioritized over punishment,” Rice said. 

Under the bill, the Department of Health Services would submit the request for a waiver by Jan. 1, 2027. 

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Reading Time: 2 minutes

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ sweeping plan to overhaul Wisconsin’s aging prison system, which includes closing a prison built in the 1800s, moved forward Tuesday with bipartisan support despite complaints from Republican lawmakers that their concerns weren’t being addressed.

The bipartisan state building commission unanimously approved spending $15 million to proceed with planning for the Evers proposal. Republicans objected, saying his plan was “doomed to failure,” but they voted for it in the hopes it could be changed later.

Evers voiced frustration with Republicans who said they weren’t part of development of the plan.

“We’ve got to get this damned thing done, that’s the bottom line,” he said.

Evers in February presented his plan as the best and only option to address the state’s aging facilities. Problems at the lockups have included inmate deaths, assaults against staff, lockdowns, lawsuits, federal investigations, criminal charges against staff, resignations and rising maintenance costs.

Republicans have opposed parts of the plan that would reduce the overall capacity of the state prison system by 700 beds and increase the number of offenders who could be released on supervision. The GOP-led Legislature called for closing the troubled prison in Green Bay by 2029, but Evers vetoed that provision earlier this year, saying it couldn’t be done without getting behind his entire plan.

The building commission’s approval on Tuesday for spending the $15 million in planning money starts that process.

Republican members of the building commission complained that Evers was plowing ahead without considering other ideas or concerns from GOP lawmakers. Republican state Sen. Andre Jacqué objected to reducing the number of beds in the prison system that he said is currently “dangerously unsafe.”

He called it a plan “doomed to failure” and “not a serious proposal.”

“I feel like we’ve decided to plow ahead without the opportunity for compromise,” Jacqué said. “We’re merely asking that any ideas from our side of the aisle have the option of being considered.”

A GOP proposal to expand the scope of the plan was rejected after the commission, evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, deadlocked.

Evers said any Republican who wanted to be involved in the process going forward could be. Republicans said ahead of the vote that they were not included in discussions that led to the current proposal.

“Those other options will be discussed,” Evers said.

Department of Corrections Secretary Jared Hoy said that approval of the planning money was needed to keep the momentum going for closing the Green Bay prison, which Republicans support.

The entire plan, once fully enacted, would take six years to complete and cost an estimated $500 million. Building a new prison, as Republicans had called for, would cost about $1 billion. Evers is not seeking a third term next year, so it would be up to the next governor to either continue with his plan or go in a different direction.

The multitiered proposal starts with finally closing the troubled Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake juvenile correctional facilities in northern Wisconsin and building a new one near Madison at the site of a current minimum-security prison. The Lincoln Hills campus would then be converted into a medium security adult prison. The prison in Green Bay, built in 1898, would be closed.

The plan also proposes that the state’s oldest prison, which was built in Waupun in 1851, be converted from a maximum-security prison to a medium-security center focused on vocational training. The Stanley Correctional Center would be converted from a medium- to a maximum-security prison and the prison in Hobart would be expanded to add 200 minimum-security beds.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup. This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.

Wisconsin moving ahead with prison overhaul plan despite Republican objections 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.

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ plan to overhaul Wisconsin’s prisons is set for a crucial vote this week that could determine whether the state can meet a 2029 closure of the Green Bay Correctional Institution and the long-awaited shutdown of Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake youth facilities. 

The State Building Commission at a public meeting Tuesday is expected to vote on whether to release $15 million for advancing Evers’ plan, an amount the Legislature included in the 2025-27 biennial budget. Subcommittees will meet prior to the full commission Tuesday afternoon, which could signal how Republican members may vote on the money for Evers’ plan. Republican lawmakers were tight-lipped Monday morning about whether they have an alternative plan and whether they plan to roll it out Tuesday. 

Evers in February announced what he called a “domino series” of projects that would include closing Green Bay Correctional Institution, converting Lincoln Hills into a facility for adults and turning Waupun’s prison into a “vocational village” that would offer job skill training to qualifying inmates. Evers describes the plan as the most realistic and cost-effective way to stabilize the state’s prison population. 

The Green Bay prison has been roundly criticized as unsafe and outdated, Lincoln Hills has only in recent months come into compliance with a court-ordered plan to remedy problems dating back a decade, and Waupun has had lockdowns, inmate deaths and criminal charges against a former warden.

The $15 million would fund initial plans and a design report that would allow capital projects in Evers’ proposals to be funded in the 2025-27 budget, according to the governor’s office. It would also prevent delays of Evers’ plan while he is still in office. Evers is not seeking reelection next year, and Wisconsin will have a new governor in 2027. 

But it’s unclear how the eight-member commission, which includes four Republicans, will vote on whether to release the $15 million for the governor’s plan. Sens. Mary Felzkowski, R-Tomahawk, and Andre Jacqué, R-New Franken, declined to comment while still reviewing the proposals. Reps. Rob Swearingen, R-Rhinelander, and Robert Wittke, R-Caledonia, did not respond to questions from Wisconsin Watch. 

In addition to Evers, the commission includes Sen. Brad Pfaff, D-Onalaska; Rep. Jill Billings, D-La Crosse; and citizen member Barb Worcester, who served as one of Evers’ initial deputy chiefs of staff. 

Pfaff, who said he will support Evers’ request, said he is “cautiously optimistic” that the $15 million will get approved with the necessary bipartisan support for it to pass. It’s not a final policy decision, Pfaff said. 

“I think it’s important to know that the proposal that’s being brought forward is a design and planning stage, so it’s not the end-all or be-all,” Pfaff said. 

At least one Republican, Rep. David Steffen, R-Howard, has asked fellow party members on the commission to support Evers’ request. Howard represents a district near the Green Bay Correctional Institution. 

“I believe that the release of the $15 million will be important in moving corrections planning forward in our state,” Steffen wrote in an Oct. 14 letter to the Republican commission members. 

Corrections plans in the Legislature 

The funding for Evers’ prison plan, which was included in the governor’s original budget proposal, totaled $325 million. During the budget process the Legislature approved just $15 million for corrections projects and a 2029 closure of the Green Bay Correctional Institution.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, criticized the governor for not including GOP lawmakers in the process and suggested the party would form its own plan. 

“The idea of letting thousands of people out of jail early, tearing down prisons and not replacing the spots, I can’t imagine our caucus will go for it,” Vos told reporters in February. 

A spokesperson for Vos did not respond to questions from Wisconsin Watch about whether the party started a process for forming its own plan. Evers in July partially vetoed the 2029 deadline for the Green Bay Correctional Institution and criticized Republicans for setting a date without providing a plan to close the prison.   

While lawmakers on the State Building Commission have since been tight-lipped about which way they plan to vote, leaders in both Waupun and Allouez — on whose land Green Bay Correctional sits — haven’t been shy to express their support for the plan. 

Waupun Mayor Rohn Bishop said he favors any plan that will keep Waupun Correctional Institution open. With three prisons within its jurisdiction, Waupun has been called Prison City in honor of its major employers. 

“We take pride in the fact it’s here,” Bishop said of the 180-year-old prison. 

Under the proposal, Waupun’s prison would turn from a traditional, maximum prison to what’s been called a vocational village that would offer job-skill training to those who qualify. The idea is modeled after similar programs in Michigan, Missouri and Louisiana. 

“The first and most important thing is to keep the prison here for the economic reasons of the jobs, what it does for Waupun utilities, and how our wastewater sewage plant is built for the prison,” Bishop said. “If it were to close, that would shift to the ratepayers.”

In recent years, complaints about dire conditions within the cell halls have mounted, with inmates describing a crumbling infrastructure and infestations of birds and rodents. Under Evers’ proposal, Waupun’s prison would have to temporarily close while the facility undergoes renovations.  

Meanwhile, under Evers’ plan, Green Bay’s prison is slated to close. In Allouez, where the prison stands, village President Jim Rafter said the closure can’t come soon enough.   

“I’m more optimistic than ever that the plans will move forward this time,” Rafter said, pointing to the bipartisan support he has seen on the issue. 

For Rafter, his eagerness to close the prison is partly economic: The prison currently stands on some of the most valuable real estate in Brown County, he said, and redeveloping it would be a financial boon for the village of Allouez. 

But it also comes from safety concerns for both correctional officers and inmates. 

“GBCI historically has been one of the most dangerous facilities across Wisconsin, built in the 1800s, and it has well outlived its usefulness,” Rafter said. “Its design doesn’t allow for safe passage of inmates from one area to the other. So safety is a huge concern.”

Wisconsin Republicans mum on prison plans heading into key vote on moving projects forward 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.

At the Cell To Table cooking event, the audience witnessed how people use scarce resources to create dishes like fried rice and Pop-Tart pie in prison. But participants say cooking in their cells also created a community.

The post Milwaukee event showcases creativity and talent chefs developed while behind bars appeared first on WPR.

The Journey to Justice Bus at Madison Christian Community Church on Sunday, Oct. 12. | Photo by Frank Zufall/Wisconsin Examiner

Solitary confinement, the practice of putting someone in isolation in a small cell, is not a topic you expect to hear discussed at church on Sunday.

But on Oct. 12, at the Madison Christian Community, was a stop of the 18-city, nationwide Journey to Justice Bus Tour, that included two panel discussions focused on the topic, one with four state legislators, including two candidates for governor.

Visiting the Journey to Justice bus, standing in a bathroom-sized solitary jail cell replica and hearing the real-life stories of those who had spent part of their lives confined in such spaces, visitors gained a visceral appreciation of the United Nations declaration that punishing people with more than 15 consecutive days in solitary is a form of  torture.

In the Hollywood presentation, the practice is reserved for hardened criminals, a safeguard against violence that’s necessary to keep good order and discipline.

But the reality is that small procedural violations, medical conditions, mental health crises sometimes even pregnancy are reasons people inside our prisons end up isolated for multiple days at a time.

Those who have experienced solitary confinement, otherwise known as restrictive housing or segregation, say it is traumatizing and even years after they’ve been released from prison, they are still reliving dark memories.

The Solitary and Conditions of Confinement Legislation panel at the church included four Democratic state legislators, including gubernatorial hopefuls  Sen. Kelda Roys and Rep. Francesca Hong, both of Madison. Roys, an attorney, has served on the Judiciary Public Safety Committee and worked on the Innocence Project when she was a law student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Milwaukee area Reps. Darrin Madison and Ryan Clancy also participated. Madison is a former organizer for Youth Justice Milwaukee and a member of the Correction Committee. Clancy sits on the Corrections Committee and has served on the Judiciary and Law Enforcement Committee.

Jen Ann Bauer, who spent five and a half years in prison and is currently serving the remainder of her sentence on community supervision said she was put in solitary confinement at least four times, with the longest lasting 90 days.

“When people hear you’re in solitary confinement, they think discipline, and it is so much more to the detriment of human beings,” she said. “It is isolating. It is defeating. It is control and it is torture. We are often placed in solitary confinement for protection or safety measures, minor and major rule violations, or simply for struggling with trauma and mental health. And let’s be honest, most incarcerated people are already trauma survivors. So I ask, how is isolating a wounded person somehow equal to safety? Solitary doesn’t lock a body in a cell. It locks a person inside their own mind. Time stops and pain does not.”

In solitary, Bauer said, she paced the floor just to remind herself that she still existed.

“Women survive through connection, through relationships, and so when you take away human contact, you take away the very thing that keeps us alive,” she said. “No one is built to handle 23 hours a day in a cell. That’s not discipline, that’s psychological torture.”

She added  that in solitary there is no interaction with outside family members, weakening relationships with children.

Observing  people who spent time in solitary,  she said, she saw that they changed for the worse.

“People with dreams come out of solitary unable to make eye contact, unable to trust and unable to believe in themselves or the world around them,” she said. “Solitary doesn’t confine a body. It suffocates the heart. It doesn’t correct behavior. It destroys identity. Solitary confinement causes psychological and emotional distress, more harm, more trauma. Solitary confinement is not a tool. It is a wound, and it is a wound the system continues to inflict on people and then blame them for bleeding.”

Ventae Parrow agreed with Bauer that solitary confinement  had no redeeming  impact on him in prison other than causing him to reflect on what he wanted for his life. He questioned who had the authority to determine whether one should be in solitary, and noted that many who experienced it came out angrier.

“And now you got angry humans coming out back to the community with the vengeance in their heart and their mind versus rehabilitation,” he said.

Tom Denk, an advocate with several WISDOM affiliates and a member of the Mental Health Action Partnership, moderated the panel. Denk, who had also spent time in solitary confinement, noted there is a high rate of mental illness among incarcerated residents, 45%, and the experience of being isolated exacerbates their conditions.

“The use of solitary confinement or restrictive housing is a correctional practice with significant ethical implications,” said Denk. “Prolonged isolation has been associated with severe psychological distress, including anxiety, depression and increased risk of self-harm. It also worsens existing mental health conditions and contributes to higher rates of recidivism.”

But Denk said solitary is often chosen as a method to address psychosis instead of treatment.

Talib Akbar, vice president of the non-profit advocacy group WISDOM, the organizer of the event, said any rule violation in prison could result in being sent to solitary. He said even being a couple of feet outside a cell door could result in being sent to solitary.

The Wisconsin Examiner recently heard from a former resident of Oshkosh Correctional Institution who said he was put in segregation after calling the nearby fire department to report concerns over the prison’s fire safety protocols. He claims that when the fire department called the prison’s facility manager, the manager became upset that the resident didn’t follow the chain of command, and the resident was placed in segregation.  

The panel also addressed the types of medical treatments residents receive in solitary.

Megan Hoffman Kolb whose father, Dean Hoffmann, died in solitary confinement at Waupun Correctional Institution in 2023,  said her father, who suffered from mental illness for 30 years, didn’t consistently get the right medication for the first 80 days in Waupun and never received a psych intake exam, which he was supposed to have received.

She said when her father recorded a credible threat from his cellmate, the prison’s response was to place him in solitary.

“In solitary, he was locked alone in a concrete cell, 24 hours a day, no books, no paper, no phone calls home, no medication,” she said. “The lights were left on constantly. Silence was deafening, broken only by the sounds of people crying out down the hallway. He told staff he was suicidal, hearing voices and couldn’t sleep. A correctional officer responded, ‘What do you want me to do about it?’”

She added, “Solitary confinement is not just isolation. It’s sensory deprivation. It’s a slow unraveling of a person’s mind in a small space. Days blur together, hope disappears for someone already struggling with mental illness, unbearable, and it’s not just emotional, it’s biological. Prolonged solitary confinement literally changes the brain.”

After nine days in solitary, Kolb said, her father took his own life by hanging himself from the cell door. She had viewed the video of his body being removed.

She said the cost of solitary is the trauma the family has experienced, along with the lawsuits, investigation and broken communities, and at the end of the day, taxpayers are being asked to pay for all of it.

“We are pouring millions into a system that tortures instead of treats,” she said, “and families like mine are left paying the ultimate price.”

Regarding the cost of operating solitary, Akbar noted that prisons have to assign more correctional officers (COs) for supervision there because they are considered more dangerous areas, which also raises the cost.

Rep. Clancy said he is against solitary and the ultimate goal should be to ban it outright, but a more attainable goal is proposed legislation that would restrict solitary to 10 days and require 15 hours a week of programming while in solitary to ensure there are visits by people.

“When you talk to people at the DOC and they say, ‘Well, we looked at your legislation, it is onerous. There’s no way we’re going to be able to do that.’ We’re like,‘Great, then don’t put people in solitary.’”

He added, “Please understand that the goal here is to end solitary, but it’s also to bring to people’s minds the real harm from it.”

Rep. Madison said he grew up with a friend who went to prison and was put in solitary, and when his friend got out he still struggled with isolation. One time, the friend wasn’t able to contact Madison and then attempted suicide but didn’t die.

“I was reminded that it is our correctional system that creates the conditions where folks, even when they are released into the community, feel locked up,” he said.

“We simply incarcerate too many people,” said Roys.  She added the goal should be to ensure public safety, not incarcerate people who don’t pose a threat. 

“If we actually want public safety, then we need to change the way we are thinking about that time when people are incarcerated, and it really should be that time that they are building their skills so that they are going to see that they can thrive, and that is why we need to be fostering relationships,” she said.

She also said there needs to be reform of the Truth-in-Sentencing law that is leading to longer prison stays without parole, resulting in more people in prison, and also reforming community supervision to change  a “gotcha” attitude — finding technical violations of those on extended supervision that would send them back to prison, instead of  focusing on helping people succeed in the community.

“If our parole officers, probation officers (POs) viewed their role as facilitating success, and they judged themselves not by how many people would get reincarcerated, but by how many people succeed and never have to be reincarcerated, that’s transformational, and you don’t necessarily need statutes to do that. You absolutely do need a strong will and strong leadership from the top director who says what we are doing.”

Hong said more could be done through executive orders and the governor’s clemency power to grant pardons. She also said she would like to invest more to hire social and mental health workers.

“The more helpers that we have in an institution, the fewer enforcers we need in that same institution,” Clancy said. 

“We have to stop saying that our jails and prisons are understaffed,” he added. “They are not understaffed. They are overpopulated.”

Clancy also said the DOC should pay mental health staff as much, or more, as it does  guards, to help hire and retain staff.

Women in solitary

During a panel discussion on women in solitary, Juli Bliefnick said that after she was assaulted inside  a prison while eating lunch, she was placed in solitary for six days, and during that time she had her monthly period, but male guards didn’t allow her to shower or have clean clothes. She had a similar experience in a county jail.

“That’s some of the most dehumanizing experiences of my whole life,” she said.

In another jail, Bliefnick witnessed a friend who was eight months pregnant put in a cell and stripped naked to look for drugs as the friend screamed.

“You can even move from that environment for decades, and you can still dream about it,” she said.  “You can still think about it like til this day, like I can hear jingling keys, and I’ll still get like, you know, like a fear of like a guard coming to, you know, harass me about something or another, and it’s a terrifying thing because I’m not there anymore. You know, your brain tricks you into thinking that you are. You carry it with you no matter how long you’ve been removed from it.”

Jessica Jacobs, who has not been incarcerated for eight years, still said she is traumatized by her time in solitary.

“Various times I’ve been incarcerated, being stuck in a room like that kind of did something different to me that maybe other people might not understand,” said Jacobs, “but so I had post traumatic stress disorder already, and then the amount of treatment that I had to suffer and go through while I was incarcerated has made it worse. And so I find myself today, sometimes where I get overwhelmed or stimulated, I know my nervous system is out of whack, where I feel like I have to close myself up into my room, and that’s kind of weird, you know, and I feel like I have to lock myself up, and I just don’t even try to figure out what it is. I know that it’s connected to that.”

Jacobs said she remembers being locked up with a 17-year-old girl who had been sex-trafficked by her father, and the girl was missing her babies and was distraught and wanted mental health services, but Jacobs cautioned against it, knowing that seeking those services often meant being sent to solitary or being restricted to a chair.

“And the next thing I know, they hauled her off and stuffed her in solitary confinement by herself,” said Jacobs. “And then came the big banging and the cries began.”

Yolanda Perkins said her mother was in prison for 17 years and spent time in solitary, and that time changed her mother permanently.

“My mother hasn’t been incarcerated in about 20 years, but she won’t go into a room by herself,” said Perkins, adding, “It affects how she grandparents her grandchildren. It affects her communication with them. It affects her communication with society. And so she still struggles.”

Bliefnick spoke about her work with the Ostara Initiative, working with doulas to end the practice of putting pregnant and postpartum women in solitary for protective custody.

“Punishing women who are in that condition is actually a common practice,” she said, “and I mean, can you think of anything worse than putting a woman who just had a baby and had it ripped away from [her getting] 24 hours in solitary confinement like that? That’s like a horrible practice to begin with. It’s like they treat them like cattle, and then to put them in solitary confinement for their protection is like the cruelest thing that you could possibly imagine.”

This story has been updated to fix the photo captions identifying Jen Ann Bauer and Megan Hoffman Kolb

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Wisconsin Department of Correction Secretary Jared Hoy was one of the keynote speakers at the EXPO gala.

Jared Hoy, Secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, offered something the crowd gathered to celebrate Ex-Incarcerated People Organizing (EXPO)  could relate to – a confession, followed by a commitment to do better.

“I don’t think we’ve done a very good job of engaging with people who are receiving our services, friends and family,” Hoy said in a speech at the EXPO gala Oct. 11 at the Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center in Madison, explaining the reason for conducting Friends and Family Forums between DOC management and the public.

Hoy, one of two keynote speakers during the “EXPOnential” gala, expressed the aim of overcoming challenges confronted by people caught up in the carceral system, including several honorees at the event who had served time in prison, some still on community supervision, including a woman working on becoming a certified peer counselor, a former Iraq war vet and practicing lawyer from Eau Claire, and a newly appointed official for Milwaukee.

EXPO is a non-profit advocacy group in Wisconsin that works to end mass incarceration, dismantle structural discrimination and restore formerly incarcerated people to community life. It’s largely staffed by the formerly incarcerated, including its executive director, Jerome Dillard, who explained the theme of the gala.

The term exponential, he said, is  “not just a gala name, but it’s a map of mercy and it’s an algorithm of potential. An exponent takes a small number and it raises it and turns it into two, into many and sparks into a skyline. And that’s what Wisconsin EXPO is. It’s organizing with formerly incarcerated neighbors to restore rights.”

Marianne Oleson, operations director for EXPO, noted the Beth Israel Center, a conservative synagogue in Madison, was receiving the Ally Organization of the Year recognition for its “shared love” with EXPO’s goals.

“Beth Israel has opened their doors so that we can gather, learn and share our truth with the community, but their generosity extends far beyond the walls of their synagogue,” said Oleson. “They have opened their homes and they have opened their hearts to us. They share their wisdom, compassion, creativity. in so many ways that remind us what true allyship looks like. They give our state residents rides, share the incredible gifts of art, and they bring us homemade lasagna.”

Deandrea “Dee” Hardman received the Woman of the Year recognition. Hardman said before going to prison she had made many bad decisions, living on the streets, surrounded by people who took advantage of her, and burning bridges with people in her life, so that when she left the chaos of her life for prison, she actually felt free.

“Going to prison disrupted my tormented cycle,” she said. “It was the first time I felt like I had an option to choose a different life. I had every opportunity that came my way to grow and change.”

In prison she became a certified welder and participated in work release, and even though she was surrounded by others who didn’t want to change their behavior from the street, she chose differently.

She said being able to reenter society in the EXPO Safe House helped her succeed outside of prison.

“I came home and worked extremely hard, but it was not solely my hard work that got me here — It was my sisters who supported me in the home and everyone who works within the organization,” she said. “For the first time in my life, I was leaving an institution not alone, but with an entire team of people behind me who wanted to help me and have absolutely nothing but the best for me.”

Hardman noted that she had just received her certification to become a peer support specialist and her aim was to share her experience with others to overcome the trauma of addiction and imprisonment.

Man of the Year David Carlson said Expo was one of the first organizations that helped him gain a “foothold” and “get traction in rebuilding my life after re-entry.”

His wife, Alicia Carlson, said her husband was identified by  the number “558672” when he was serving time in prison, but recently he had obtained another number, “1138342,” his state bar license number to practice law in Wisconsin.

“He stepped out of a system that had silenced him and set out on a mission to make people listen, and just as important to make sure that those around him, especially those who’ve been overlooked, blocked out, written off, were seen and heard too,” she said.

Of the two numbers identifying her husband, she said, one reminded him of what it was like to be silenced and the other “gives him a platform to make sure others never are.”

Carlson described the initiatives  her husband launched since he left prison, including a peer support agency with 80 mentors operating in 30 western Wisconsin counties

Carlson, who is now the Justice Forward Wisconsin Coalition coordinator, noted he was sentenced after serving a second tour in Iraq in the military. While in the Stanley Correctional Facility, he had the opportunity to leave early under the earned release program, but he was a self-described  “hothead” who probably was going to serve his whole sentence until a mentor, a fellow resident, saw his potential.

“Instead of seeing me as a dumb, young hothead, he really took me time to mentor me,” Carlson said. “I think mentorship is a key theme in my life and my success in what I have accomplished.”

The Justice Forward Wisconsin Coalition, he said, is a network of “justice-impacted individuals mentoring each other and advocating for each other.”

He said the work needs to be led by those who have experienced incarceration.

“But if you’ve never felt what it feels like to be by yourself in solitary confinement, if you’ve never felt what it feels like to be a teenager in solitary confinement missing your mom, if you’ve never felt what it feels like to be treated and dehumanized after a visit, strip searched, told to bend over and cough — like, these types of things never go away,” he said. “I’m 10 years out, and it never goes away. I’m a lawyer, and it never goes away… I think that it’s time that individuals that have those experiences lead the way, and that’s what this coalition is about.”

Adam Procell, the new director of Community Wellness and Safety for the City of Milwaukee, a position that aims to prevent and reduce violence through community partnerships, received the Ramiah Whiteside Changemaker recognition.

Procell said on the first day of his new position he went back to the site where 35 years earlier, at age 15, when he was a gang member, he had killed 18-year-old Robert Bruce.

“Day One of my job, I went and started at the scene of my crime because I knew I was going to have to ask others to lean into uncomfortable situations,” said Procell, “So I can’t ask the community to lean into uncomfortability unless I take my two feet to be the most uncomfortable place on the face of this Earth, which is where Robert lost his life.”

Procell said there was much pressure on him to succeed and he admitted that he needed help and encouragement. He said others should also be honest about their struggles, adding that “transformation is never born in isolation – It rises from connections.” 

“It wasn’t punishment that changed me. It was the love and hope that I got when I came into this community that made a huge difference, and it changed me,” Procell said.

Hoy talks about changing the DOC culture

During his keynote speech, Hoy noted that in one of his early training sessions at the DOC, he participated in an exercise for recruits in which they were asked whether they perceived themselves as different from those they would be supervising or the same, and he perceived himself as the same.

“And that always stuck with me, because fundamentally I don’t see myself at all different than any people that are being sentenced to Wisconsin DOC,”  he said. 

Hoy said he was challenged by Procell to talk to those receiving services from the DOC to see how effective those services were.

Hoy said he told his staff that they would sit in a room with members of the community to listen.

“It’s just to hear how our policies, how our decisions, impact the lives of not only the people that we care for, provide services to, but their friends and family, and it’s probably been one of the best things that I’ve done since I started,” he said.

Hoy thought the forums would be opportunities to educate the public as well as providing feedback to the DOC.

“I think we are benefiting more by just being there and listening and understanding that the folks across the table and in those small groups are human beings just like us,” he said. “After the first forum, I sat at a table, after just about everybody left with a warden, and I won’t out him, but he was in tears and talked about how much his decisions impact not just people in our care, but their families and their systems. That is culture change.”

Hoy said recommendations are being generated to change the operation of the DOC, but what is more fundamentally important to him is the department’s culture.

“If we don’t make sure to address the culture and how we treat people, making sure that everything we do is treating people with dignity and respect, it’s not going to matter if we bring the overhead time from 35 days on average down to 20 or whatever it might be,” he said.

He noted that those working in maximum security prisons and restrictive housing settings often experience aggression by residents, including bodily fluids thrown at correctional officers.

“I get a lot of pushback when I say, not letting anybody off the hook for it, but what are the conditions that we are creating that make it OK for a human being to do that to another human being?” He said. “That’s the culture that we have to address, and it’s not everywhere. I’m not up here to completely bash DOC. I mean, I’ll tell it like it is, but there are pockets [needing change].”

Hoy also asked for understanding on the difficulty of making changes in an organization with 10,000 staff, 70,000 in community supervision and over 23,000 incarcerated.

“There’s going to be challenges; there’s going to be gaps,” he said of the DOC. But he asked for understanding for the thousands of people who  work for  DOC “who  “are trying to help change lives.”

National effort

The last keynote speaker of the evening was David Ayala, executive director of the national organization of The Formerly Incarcerated Convicted People and Families Movement, a network of over 60 organizations.

Ayala talked about the work of EXPO as part of a national movement that centers leadership by the people directly affected by the carceral system, narrative story-telling,  fighting for systemic change and creating infrastructure for reentry.

He stressed the importance of telling success stories like Carlson’s journey to obtaining his law degree.

“We need to lift up stories like that,” he said, “… there are many Davids across this country.”

Ayala encouraged EXPO to work across state lines with similar organizations.

“You’re not alone,” he told the group.  “You are part of a rich, resilient national web — a movement that believes freedom is not just a word, but a living horizon where every person returning home is met with care, dignity, and possibilities.”

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Jerome Dillard, executive director of Ex-Incarcerated People Organizing (EXPO) (left) holds book discussion with author and activist Bianca Tylek (right). (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

“We’re talking about a major, major industry in our society today,” activist and writer Bianca Tylek told a group of about 20 people who packed a room at Madison’s Lake City Books Monday night. At the Q&A and book signing event, hosted by Ex-Incarcerated People Organizing (EXPO), Tylek — described as a leading expert in the prison industry — discussed her new book The Prison Industry: How It Works and Who Profits, offering her insights into what she called a $80-90 billion industry in America. 

“This is just a massive industry of folks who are using the correctional system to essentially extract either wealth or resources either from public coffers, or from low-income … communities that are directly impacted by incarceration,” said Tylek, who also founded and leads the non-profit organization Worth Rises, which works to confront and reform the prison industry. Tylek’s book delves into multiple aspects of the prison industry from food distribution to telecommunications and examines privatization, who profits and the lives of the people who are directly affected. 

The discussion was moderated by Jerome Dillard, EXPO’s executive director, who sat beside Tylek asking  questions. Dillard called Tylek “my daughter in the movement,” and spoke of his admiration for her work and her spirit in fighting for change within the prison system. 

Dillard described attending an event in Appleton last week with Tylek where he was invited to receive an award, “not knowing what we were going into,” and realizing it was a Wisconsin Correctional Association conference. 

“I just couldn’t believe all the industries that were there with tables, and tabling the event with new devices and all this,” said Dillard. “I left there really broken and heavy. These conferences opened my eyes to how big this industry is … that individuals are capitalizing on human misery.” Conference tables displayed new kinds of spit masks and shock gloves to prospective correctional customers, some of whom made joking comments about using the devices on the job. “It just blew me away, you know, that she’s bragging about punishing and torturing people in their care,” said Dillard, recalling a woman who made such remarks. 

Tylek said that there are over 1,400 manufacturers of correctional and policing equipment nationwide. “Every single state has a correctional conference,” said Tylek. “Every single state has a sheriff’s association,” as well as conferences and associations dedicated to jails, parole and other aspects of the correctional system. Tylek recalled attending the American Correctional Association conference, one of the largest in the nation, where she saw an exhibit hall “with hundreds of corporations” with their own exhibit tables. 

“And not just tables,” Tylek told the crowd. “Probably the wildest thing I saw was one company drive a full bus into the convention center, where staff from correctional institutions could step onto the bus and play with all the equipment and trinkets that they were selling. And they gave out free raffle tickets and all these things, and probably the grossest thing that I experienced was all the tickets to private events. And I made my way up to a private event for Securus.” Tylek said that the company is one of the nation’s two largest prison telecommunication companies, and was one of the largest sponsors of the conference that year. “And they had a happy hour that involved a full open bar,” said Tylek, “a full swing dance performance, everyone just having the most joyous time of all. All while on the walls there were the kiosks, the tablets, the phone devices that you could go and speak to a Securus representative while you have your cocktail. And all of this built on about 2 million people who are sitting in a cage somewhere who will never see this, who don’t get to enjoy these luxuries in any of this. It’s heartbreaking, and it’s repulsive, I think, more than anything.”

Later, Tylek elaborated more on how companies use things like gifts and luxury vacations to grow their relationships with correctional and law enforcement leaders. “At conferences, you would get these private event tickets,” she said. At one such event, she recalled, attendees were given hand-rolled cigars. “That’s just the legal stuff that looks gross,” said Tylek. There are also “questionably legal” practices, such as offering “training cruises” in the Caribbean for prison and sheriff staff in brochures distributed during contract bidding processes. 

On the dark end of the spectrum is bribery, such as the case of a Mississippi prison commissioner who was involved in a bribery and kickback scheme with private prison companies. Tylek highlighted how in Mississippi, a prison commissioner went on to work for a private prison company as a lobbyist. Similar revolving doors exist between the prison industry, especially private prisons, Homeland Security and immigration agencies, said Tylek.

Tylek described the rise of  the prison industry as a relatively new phenomenon in America. Prior to the abolition of slavery, she said, the prison population was predominantly white, and only shifted to being predominantly Black in the decades after abolition — a move  to “re-confine and re-enslave” Black people. Prison populations continued to grow into the 1970s and 80s, leading into the War on Drugs. “Really around the 1980s is when you start to see industry recognize a potential opportunity,” said Tylek. 

That’s the  era during which most of the private prison companies featured in her book began to emerge. Private prison industry representatives helped craft some of the nation’s most punitive laws such as three-strikes laws, truth in sentencing and mandatory minimums, which helped grow the prison population. “Those three pieces of model legislation were drafted by the prison industry, and specifically by private prison executives,” said Tylek. 

The consequences have been devastating for individuals and families, and also ripple out into society. “The impact of the prison industry bleeds far beyond prison walls,” Tylek said. Among those ripple effects are the cost borne by families that put money on the books for incarcerated loved ones to have food and hygiene supplies or simply to communicate, incarcerated people who work long hours for 14 cents an hour on average, missed child support payments from incarcerated parents and victims who don’t receive restitution. In addition, many small towns which once saw prisons as economic saviors now see them as burdens. 

“In the end, all of us are impacted,” said Tylek. “When we exploit people who are incarcerated, or we have a system that wants to put more people behind bars and for longer because a few stand to benefit, then socially we are all harmed by that.” 

Yet a space ripe with so many problems also invites solutions. In several states, Tylek has been involved in movements to make phone calls to incarcerated people free and in more than one of those places, that effort succeeded. “Something that everyone can understand is what’s the importance of a phone call home,” Tylek told her bookstore audience. Families of incarcerated people often face significant financial challenges, including debt, income loss and unemployment. 

In 2017, Tylek began to focus on the prison telecommunications industry. “We led the first successful campaign to make communication completely free in a jail system,” said Tylek. That was in New York, and affected the infamous Rikers Island jail. From 2019 to 2023, Tylek’s organization Worth Rises pushed for free jail calls in San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles, Massachusetts, free prison calls in Connecticut, California, Colorado, Minnesota. Free prison calls were enshrined in the CARES Act as a result of that work. “We’ve been able to save families $600 million to date,” Tylek said, “and generate over 3 billion additional call minutes between people who are incarcerated and their loved ones.”

Dillard recalled celebrating some of those victories with Tylek, but the fight continues. “We’re in a dozen more states trying to fight for the exact same legislation to make communication free in our prisons and jails,” said Tylek. “The outcomes that we get are life-changing. In Connecticut we saw phone volume increase by over 120% overnight. In New York just recently, first data’s coming back and we are north of 40% increases in calling.” Some of that difference is also due to inconsistent call rates across different states, with incarcerated people being charged 2.8 cents per minute in New York versus people in Connecticut who were paying 32.5 cents per minute. 

“No matter where it happens, the change is substantial,” said Tylek. “These are real people with real lives. We have talked to families whose autistic child stopped speaking when her father went to prison. And when phone calls became free and he could call home again she started speaking again, her child development changed, she started engaging more in school, and now she’s flourishing, all off a simple phone call.”

Those kinds of victories can be replicated elsewhere. A campaign was launched earlier this year to make jail calls free in Racine County, and La Crosse became the first Wisconsin county to provide free jail calls earlier this year. 

“What I love about the examples in Wisconsin is that we had nothing to do with them,” Tylek said, drawing laughter from the audience in Madison. “My biggest goal has been for this movement to take itself.” 

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• The state’s prison population keeps growing — as does the share of older prisoners who have increasingly complex health care needs. 

• Increased use of compassionate release could help ease costs and crowding with minimal risks to public safety, prisoner advocates and legal experts say.

• Wisconsin courts approved just 53, or 11%, of 489 compassionate release petitions received between January 2019 and June 2025.

• California offers a different model for sick and dying prisoners, including by processing compassionate release applications more quickly, the result of a legislative overhaul.

It’s hard to find hope in a terminal illness. But for Darnell Price, the spread of a cancerous tumor opened the door for a new life. It was a chance to spend his remaining days outside of prison.

Two Wisconsin Department of Corrections doctors in 2023 projected Price would die within a year — one of several criteria by which prisoners may seek a shortened sentence due to an “extraordinary health condition,” a form of compassionate release.  

That was only the first step. A Corrections committee next had to vet his application. Its approval would send Price’s application to the court that convicted him for charges related to a 2015 bank robbery.

Victims of the crime did not oppose an early release, and a judge granted Price’s petition. That allowed him to walk free in August 2023 after an eight-year stint behind bars.

Price beat the odds in multiple ways. He’s still alive in his native Milwaukee and has authored a memoir about his journey. That his application succeeded is nearly as remarkable as his survival. 

Wisconsin grants few applicants compassionate release, leaving many severely ill inmates in short-staffed prisons that often struggle to meet health care needs. 

Wisconsin courts approved just 53, or 11%, of 489 compassionate release petitions they received between January 2019 and June 2025 — about eight petitions a year, Corrections data show. Courts approved just five of 63 petitions filed in all of 2024. 

That’s as the state’s adult prison population has swelled past 23,500, eclipsing the system’s built capacity. A growing share of those prisoners — 1 in 10 — are 60 or older with increasingly intense health care needs. 

Increased use of compassionate release could help ease costs and crowding with minimal risks to public safety, prisoner advocates and legal experts say, but it remains off limits to a significant share of the prison population in Wisconsin and elsewhere, including those posing little threat to the public.  

“The door is closed to so many people right at the very beginning,” said Mary Price, senior counsel for Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a nonprofit advocate for criminal justice reform. 

“There’s lots of good arguments why they ought to be released: They’re the most expensive people to incarcerate and the least likely to reoffend.”

Wisconsin’s aging prison population 

Wisconsin’s struggle to care for its graying prison population has long drawn concern.

By 2014, Corrections counted more than 900 inmates over the age of 60, or about 4% of the overall population. Citing that number, then-department medical director James Greer wondered in a WPR interview: 

“What’s that 900 (inmates) over 60 going to look like? It’s going to (be) 1,100? Is it going to be 1,200 in five years? And if so, how are (we) going to manage those in a correctional setting and keep them safe?”

Those projections undershot the trend. By the end of 2019, state prisons held more than 1,600 people older than 60. That number stood at 2,165 by the end of last year, nearly 10% of the population.

The state’s truth-in-sentencing law, which took effect in 2000, has helped drive that trend. It virtually eliminated parole for newly convicted offenders.

“Old law” prisoners sentenced before the change were eligible for release after serving 25% of their time. They were mandatorily released after serving two-thirds of their time. 

Truth-in-sentencing required prisoners to serve 100% of their sentences plus post-release “extended supervision” of at least 25% of the original sentence. Parole remains available only to those sentenced before 2000. 

The overhaul increased lockup time by nearly two years on average, said Michael O’Hear, a Marquette University Law School professor and expert on criminal punishment. That likely contributed to the aging trend. Lengthened post-release supervision played an even bigger role, if indirectly. 

“​​The longer a person serves on supervision, the greater the likelihood of revocation and return to prison,” O’Hear said.

Separately, harsher sentencing for drunken driving also sent more people to prison. 

Older prisoners need more health care 

As prisoners age, they develop more complicated medical needs. Research is finding that the conditions of incarceration —  overcrowding, lack of quality health care and psychological stress — accelerate those needs. Such conditions can shorten life expectancy by up to two years for every year behind bars, one study in New York state found.

“In Wisconsin overcrowding is a huge issue. Assigning more people to a room than they’re supposed to, which, of course, affects your sleep,” said Farah Kaiksow, associate professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, who has researched aging and care in prison. 

The state has recognized the growing needs of older prisoners. In 2023, for instance, it opened a $7 million addition to the minimum-security Oakhill Correctional Institution that includes dozens of assisted living beds. 

“Patients are helped with daily living tasks such as eating, dressing, hygiene, mobility, etc. Patients may be admitted for temporary rehab stays after injury or illness or longer-term stays due to age and frailty,” Corrections spokesperson Beth Hardtke said.

Hardtke also cited hospice programs at Dodge, Taycheedah and Oshkosh prisons. 

But the department has struggled to recruit and retain competent medical staff. A Wisconsin Watch/New York Times investigation last year found nearly a third of the 60 prison staff physicians employed over a decade faced previous censure by a state medical board for an error or breach of ethics. Many faced lawsuits from inmates accusing them of serious errors that caused suffering or death. 

That included a doctor whom Darnell Price sued for failing to order a biopsy on his growing tumor. She had surrendered her medical license in California after pleading guilty to a drug possession charge and no contest to a charge of prescription forgery. 

Meanwhile, two Waupun Correctional Institution nurses are facing felony charges relating to deaths of two prisoners in their custody. One prisoner, 62-year-old Donald Maier, died in February 2024 from malnutrition and dehydration.

Compassionate release seen as cost saver

Advocates say boosting compassionate release could save taxpayer money in a state that spends more than its neighbors on incarceration. Health care tends to cost more for older prisoners.  

Wisconsin lawmakers in the state’s most recent budget assumed that per prisoner health care costs will increase to $6,554 by 2026-27 — a fraction of the roughly $50,000 officials say it costs to incarcerate one person in Wisconsin. 

The corrections department did not provide information breaking down health care costs by age. But a study of North Carolina’s prison system found that it spent about four times as much on health care for prisoners older than 50 compared to others. A 2012 ACLU report found it cost twice as much to incarcerate older prisoners nationally.

Most states and the Federal Bureau of Prisons have some version of compassionate release, though they vary wildly. 

Wisconsin offers two main avenues: one based on medical condition and the other based on age and time served. Over the last seven years, Wisconsin has been more likely to grant petitions for early release based on medical reasons. 

State law bars compassionate release for old law prisoners convicted before 2000 — about 1,600 people today. Parole is their only option for early release, and the state parole commission has been releasing fewer people on parole in recent years.

That leaves out people like Carmen Cooper, 80, a wheelchair-bound inmate at Fox Lake Correctional Institution who struggles to breathe. He lives with Parkinson’s disease, recurrent cancer and other ongoing pain and says he doesn’t always receive proper medication. 

Convicted of murder and attempted murder in 1993, he is not eligible for parole for another 12 years. He has submitted two compassionate release applications with doctors’ affidavits, but the timing and nature of his convictions ban him from such relief; state law categorically excludes people convicted of Class A or Class B felonies, the most serious types of crime.

Cooper has little hope of dying outside of prison. 

His daughters Qumine Hunter and Carmen Cooper say the incarceration has left a wide gap. He has missed deaths of close family members and births of grandchildren and great-grandchildren he has not met. The sisters never stop looking for ways to bring him home.

“If we got five years, 10 years, two years, whatever years we got left with him, we want all of them,” Hunter said. 

Renagh O’Leary, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School, represents people in compassionate release hearings. She said several elements of the state’s process limit access, including that petitions first go to a Department of Corrections committee, which must include a social worker and can include health care representatives. 

Committee members might ask for a person’s plan for housing or to explain minor infractions from time in prison. The petition advances to a judge only if the committee unanimously approves. 

Sending petitions directly to the sentencing court would be fairer, O’Leary said. Those and other major changes to the process would require legislative action. 

“We’re talking about how long someone should serve in prison,” she added, “and I think those questions are best answered in a public courtroom, in a transparent process by a judge in the county that imposed the original prison sentence.” 

The courtroom is where crime victims can weigh in. Their opinions depend on individual circumstances, said Amy Brown, the longtime director of victim services at the Dane County District Attorney’s Office. 

“Victims don’t all fall into one category, just like offenders don’t all fall into one category,” she said. 

Another wrinkle in Wisconsin’s compassionate release system: Doctors must attest to prisoners having less than six to 12 months to live. Some doctors feel uncomfortable making such a prediction. 

“It’s really hard for a doctor to say, ‘Yeah, he’s going to be dead in six months,’” said Michele DiTomas, hospice medical director for the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, California. “You just don’t know. Some people will be dead in three months, some people will go on for 18 months.”

California a compassionate release model

California offers a different model for sick and dying prisoners. 

The 17-bed hospice unit DiTomas runs, the first of its kind in the U.S., offers dying men as much comfort as can be found within a prison: medications that ease pain, visits from family members, time outdoors and attention from other incarcerated men who have been trained to provide hospice care. That hasn’t stopped DiTomas from working to get people approved for compassionate release so they can finish their lives at home.  

California’s compassionate release process used to require a string of signatures — from the corrections secretary, the parole board, the governor and the original sentencing court — and often took longer than a person had left to live, she said. Similar barriers exist in many states.   

The state a decade ago approved about 10 applications on average each year, DiTomas said, with approvals taking four to six months. A legislative overhaul streamlined the process. The state now approves about 100 compassionate release applications a year, taking as little as four weeks each, DiTomas said. 

The changes resulted from leaders’ collaboration after recognizing that the previous system wasn’t working.

“We can give people their humanity and preserve public safety,” DiTomas said. “It’s not necessarily one or the other.” 

Housing shortage complicates release 

Price initially lacked a place to stay while applying for compassionate release in 2023. It was his job to fix that or risk dooming his application.

“They can deny you for not having a solid plan for housing, but it’s not something they help you with,” he said.  

He found a room in a transitional housing unit in Milwaukee through a faith-based organization. Had he required more intensive care, a nursing home may be a better option. But many nursing homes don’t accept someone fresh out of prison — a challenge described in a 2020 Legislative Audit Bureau report.  

Wisconsin faces a wide shortage of affordable senior care beds, let alone for people with a criminal record. 

That’s a problem nationwide, said Price, the Families Against Mandatory Minimums attorney. As more than 60,000 people aged 50 or older leave prison each year, housing demand continues to outpace supply. Her organization is creating a clearinghouse to help match prisoners who qualify for compassionate release with pro bono lawyers to help them find beds. 

O’Leary said that illustrates how expanding compassionate release in Wisconsin would require more post-prison housing options. 

Life on the outside

Price now lives in a modest efficiency apartment on Milwaukee’s north side. It doesn’t have much, he said, but it has everything he needs, including a laptop and smart TV to watch Packers highlights. On his wall hangs a framed version of the Wisconsin Watch/New York Times story that detailed his struggle to receive medical care in prison — a gift from his attorneys. The tumors still lurk in his body, though for now they do not seem to be growing. 

Price has faced some of his toughest challenges since leaving prison. 

The opioids doctors prescribed to ease his pain triggered a past cocaine addiction, Price said, and drug use cost him the first place he stayed.

But Price checked into a treatment facility in February 2024. He managed to stay sober in 24-hour increments. The days eventually turned into weeks.  

“At that time I didn’t have a plan. But in treatment, I started feeling better and better until finally, the lights started coming back,” he said. “Then there came a point that I even wanted to go back to that life.”  

Kyesha Felts, with whom Price shares a daughter, is also taking life one day at a time, enjoying the time she gets to spend with the man she has loved for 30 years. 

“I love it,” she said of Price being home. “I’m enjoying every minute of it. Because tomorrow’s promised to nobody.”

She said she admires his intelligence, the way he treats people and his strength and resilience. 

Price is now eight months sober, and he’s proud of the memoir he published, “The Ultimate Betrayal,” a chronicle of addiction, incarceration and redemption. He tells his story around the community. He doesn’t hold anything back, he said, because it’s all part of his testimony. 

Wisconsin rarely grants compassionate release as aging, ailing prisoners stress systems is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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If you avidly read Wisconsin Watch, you’ve learned plenty about prisons in Wisconsin. As our reporting has shown, they’re overcrowded, understaffed and particularly expensive to operate. In 2020, the state spent $220 per resident to lock up people — significantly higher than neighboring states. 

Wisconsin Watch has covered prison issues for more than a decade, but we’ve prioritized that coverage since reporter Mario Koran teamed up with The New York Times to expose a staffing crisis that resulted in extended lockdowns, substandard health care for prisoners and untenable working conditions for correctional officers. Our press corps colleagues joined us with months of sustained coverage, forcing lawmakers and the Department of Corrections to respond in some ways. 

We’re proud of that reporting. But as we continue exposing such problems, we’re doubling down on exploring solutions. For instance, Addie Costello and Joe Timmerman last month profiled Camp Reunite, a unique program that helps Wisconsin prisoners maintain relationships with their children — recognizing that family visits have been shown to reduce recidivism. 

But how might Wisconsin solve its biggest prison problems? We’re discussing that as a staff. The question is tricky because so many challenges outside of prison walls shape the problems within them, whether its barriers to housing, jobs or health care. That’s why we’re discussing coverage with beat reporters across the Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service newsrooms. 

In the coming months, expect more coverage that highlights more humane and cost-effective ways to protect public safety and rehabilitate people who do break the law. What can Wisconsin learn from other states that have reduced prison populations without jeopardizing safety? We’re asking. 

As with all of our stories, we’ll prioritize those with the potential for impact. Our journalism aims to help people navigate their lives, be seen and heard, hold power to account and come together in community and civic life.

Meantime, we want to hear from you. What topics or storylines do you hope to see us follow? What perspectives would you like to share? Feel free to email me at jmalewitz@wisconsinwatch.org.

How we’re reporting on Wisconsin prisons is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Click here to read highlights from the story

• Maintaining relationships between children and incarcerated parents helps mitigate the negative impacts of the separation. Family visits have been shown to reduce recidivism. 

• At Camp Reunite, children spend a week at a traditional summer camp, with access to outdoors activities and trauma-informed programming. Two days out of the week, campers spend an entire day with their incarcerated parents.

• The program is accessible only to children of those incarcerated at Taycheedah and Kettle Moraine prisons, but the camp is discussing an expansion to Racine Correctional Institution.  

• Stigma surrounding incarceration and transportation barriers have limited growth of the camp.

The thunk of a plastic bat followed each pitch and question Tasha H. lobbed toward her 14-year-old son. She cheered after each hit as she tracked down the whiffle ball and prepared her next throw. 

“Maybe baseball next year?” 

No, he responded before hitting the ball over his mom’s head. He plans to try out for varsity football instead.

“You’re getting a lot better than you give yourself credit for,” Tasha told him.

Standing in a patch of green grass in late June, working to extract more than one-word answers from her son, Tasha looked like a typical mom of a soon-to-be high schooler. But as the ball landed on the wrong side of a chain rope fence, it was clear they were not standing in a backyard or baseball field. 

“I can’t go get that,” she said. 

The fence stood only about 2 feet high. But Tasha could not cross it or the much taller, barbed fence bordering Taycheedah Correctional Institution in Fond du Lac — not for at least another year. 

The brief batting practice was part of Camp Reunite, a program for children with incarcerated parents. Before camp, Tasha had not seen her son in the year since she was arrested for crimes she committed related to a drug relapse.

WPR and Wisconsin Watch are withholding the last names of parents or kids included in the story at the request of Camp Reunite to protect the campers’ privacy.

One of the first things Tasha noticed about her son was that he’s taller than her now. 

“Then he spoke and it was like a man, and I was appalled,” Tasha said. “I know that sounds crazy, but I just want to be there as much as I can, even though I’m in here.”

They both needed the visit, she said. 

Maintaining relationships between children and incarcerated parents helps mitigate the negative impacts of the separation, experts say. Family visits have been shown to reduce recidivism. 

Camp Reunite allows children to spend a week at a traditional summer camp where they can hike, canoe and participate in trauma-informed programming like art therapy. Two days out of the week, campers get to spend an entire day with their incarcerated parents in a more relaxed setting than typical visits.

Despite the camp’s success for parents and their kids, it remains unique to Wisconsin and has operated in just two prisons this summer: the women’s prison at Taycheedah and Kettle Moraine, a nearby men’s facility.

Public opinion is the camp’s biggest obstacle, said Chloe Blish, the camp’s mental wellness director. Prison and camp staff described hearing and reading concerns over the perception that the program is a safety risk — and that it rewards incarcerated parents. 

Past media coverage of the camp has prompted online backlash against named parents — personal attacks that older campers can read and absorb, Blish said.

She wishes skeptics could experience a day at Camp Reunite, she said. “It’s electric.”

Tasha and her son started their reunion playing the board game Sorry!

“I miss you,” she said before moving her pawn 10 spaces and asking if he signed up to attend the winter camp. 

He nodded before knocking her piece back to the start, softly telling his mom “sorry.”

Between turns and debates about the rules, she asked about school, football, friends, food at camp and where he got his shoes. He reminded her that she bought them for him. She told him he needed to clean them with an old toothbrush, which led to a short lecture about how often he should replace his toothbrush. 

He asked her why she didn’t spend extra money to get Nikes with her prison uniform, a gray T-shirt and teal scrub pants. They joked about her all-white Reebok sneakers.

“I’m glad you came,” she said. “It’s been a long time, huh?”

Not like other camps

When Taycheedah social worker Rachel Fryda-Gehde heard officials were trying to host a camp at the prison, her first reaction was: “Nobody’s ever going to entertain such a crazy idea.”

This summer, she helped run the prison’s eighth season. 

She and other camp leaders plan to present on the program’s success at national conferences this fall, she said. They want to see the camp grow, but there are barriers, including public perception.

The nonprofit Hometown Heroes runs the camp in coordination with the Wisconsin Department of Corrections.

Camp Hometown Heroes started as a summer camp for children whose parents died after serving in the military. The camp paid to fly Blish and her sister from California to Wisconsin during summers when they were teenagers.

She still loves Hometown Heroes, but Camp Reunite has more impact, she said.

“There’s a lot of camps for gold star kids, that’s easy support,” Blish said. Things are different at Camp Reunite.

She and other camp leaders often work in the kitchen, filling in to wash dishes during Camp Reunite. During Hometown Heroes, that’s never necessary, because so many community members volunteer to help, she said. 

Hometown Heroes, an exponentially larger operation, also receives more individual donations because of people who have a passion for helping veterans and military families, wrote Liz Braatz, the camp’s director of development. 

She has heard the stigma around supporting people in prison, she wrote in an email. But discussing the camp as a way to help children affected by trauma “has made all the difference” in reshaping perceptions, she said. 

Outside of camp, the organization provides campers with new clothing, school supplies and hygiene products. 

“It does not matter who your God is or who you vote for, if your passion is helping these kids,” Braatz wrote. 

The camp is in conversation with Racine Correctional Institution and now has plans to expand its program next summer. 

The Wisconsin Department of Corrections would welcome Camp Reunite in additional facilities, spokesperson Beth Hardtke said. 

Barriers stifle attendance 

The camp faces additional obstacles in expanding its service. 

This summer’s camp at Taycheedah was far from capacity. There were enough camp staff for more than 100 kids, Blish said. But just over a dozen families showed up. 

“We started out with a lot more,” Fryda-Gehde said. 

There are two major requirements for moms to join the camp: no sex crime convictions and no major conduct issues in the six months leading up to camp. This year’s attendance shrank after women were placed into segregation cells after breaking prison rules.

Prison social workers spend months with the moms to prepare for camp. Moms create posters to decorate their campers’ bunk beds, while prison staff set up activity stations like a beauty parlor and photo booth in the visiting room.

But the biggest reason for lower attendance: getting some caregivers on board. 

Some kids might not be ready to visit with their incarcerated parents, Blish said. Other times, caretakers are hesitant to allow them in a prison or struggle to get them there. 

Women are more likely than men to be the primary caretakers for their children at the time of arrest. That often leads to major life disruptions for campers visiting the women’s prison who are more likely to live with foster placements or more distant relatives. 

Even caretakers comfortable with the camp might struggle to get there. Many families lack cars, Blish said. The camp tries to arrange rides for as many kids as possible, but it can’t always pick up kids who live farther away. 

‘You’re here to have fun’

Nyzaiah and his three younger siblings live with their grandparents in Milwaukee. Camp was the first time they’ve made the more than hourlong drive to visit their mom since she was incarcerated. 

“I was trying not to cry because I don’t like really showing my emotions to people, but I did drop a tear,” he said. “Me and my mom are really close.”

They talk on the phone around four times a week, but seeing her in person felt different, he said. 

Most of his classmates get picked up by their parents. Only his close friends know why his grandparents pick him up each day.

“At home, I’m big brother. I gotta do everything and make sure it’s good. I don’t like to bring a lot of stress on my grandma,” the 13-year-old said. 

But at camp, his brothers and sister are in separate cabins. 

“The counselors told me, ‘You’re here to have fun. Don’t worry about your siblings. We’ve got them,’” he said. 

Glitter, braids and tearful goodbyes 

Moms aren’t the only ones asking questions at camp. 

“You’ve got a TV?” asked Deloise L.’s 11-year-old son.

“Of course,” she answered. The morning before camp she woke up early from excitement and watched the morning news while she waited. 

Deloise’s children are staying with her sister who brings them for somewhat regular visits throughout the year. But camp is different.

“I love this,” she said. 

During a normal visit, her family is under the supervision of correctional officers, and her movement is more limited. At camp, most of the prison staff present are social workers. Moms walk from activity to activity without asking permission, including to the camp’s crowded “salon.”

Deloise clipped hot pink braids into her teenage daughter’s hair and applied glittery makeup over her eyes. Her son picked out a fake mustache.

As counselors warned that there were 10 minutes left until they would bus back to camp, kids scrambled to get close to their moms. Even the knowledge that they would be back later that week failed to stop the tears.

“When you got to separate from them, that’s when it gets bad,” Deloise said, wiping her eyes with a tissue. “It just gets bad when you want to be around your kids.”

This is her family’s second camp. They plan to attend one more summer camp before her release in 2026.

“I’m learning from my mistakes,” she said. “They won’t have to worry about this again.”

‘I did drop a tear’: Camp Reunite helps kids connect with their incarcerated parents 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.

Reading Time: 7 minutes

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• Boosting corrections officers’ pay initially helped address chronic staffing shortages in Wisconsin prisons, but vacancies have been rising again in recent months. 

• Corrections officers say the trend is predictable as new officers, attracted by competitive starting wages, discover the demands of the work. Improving training, safety and workplace culture would help, they say. 

• Some Democratic lawmakers, prisoner rights advocates and even correctional officers argue that reducing the prison population would improve conditions for inmates and staff.

Responding to staffing shortages that imperiled guards and staff, Wisconsin lawmakers in 2023 significantly increased pay for corrections officers — hoping to retain and attract more workers to the grueling job. 

It helped, at least initially. But following significant progress, staffing vacancies are again growing in many Wisconsin prisons. The data support a common complaint from correctional officers and their supporters: The Department of Corrections and the Legislature must do more to retain officers in the long run. Improving training, safety and workplace culture would help, they say. 

Meanwhile, some Democratic lawmakers, prisoner rights advocates and correctional officers argue that reducing the prison population would improve conditions for inmates and staff by reducing overcrowding and easing tensions. 

The two-year budget Gov. Tony Evers signed last week included a small boost in funding for programs geared at limiting recidivism and additional funding to plan the closure of one of Wisconsin’s oldest prisons. But Republicans removed broader Evers proposals that focused on rehabilitating prisoners, and a plan to close Green Bay’s 127-year-old prison includes few details.

“Reducing the number of people we incarcerate in Wisconsin is critical, both because of the harm that mass incarceration does to individuals and communities, and because of the resulting stress from overburdening prison staff,” Rep. Ryan Clancy, D-Milwaukee, told Wisconsin Watch. “Packing more people into our prisons leads to worse services and worse outcomes when incarcerated folks are released back into the community.” 

Wisconsin Watch and The New York Times last year detailed how Wisconsin officials for nearly a decade failed to take significant steps to slow a hemorrhaging of corrections officers that slowed basic operations to a crawl. During that period prisoners escaped, staff overtime pay soared and lockdowns kept prisoners from exercise, fresh air and educational programming, leading some to routinely threaten suicide.  

At Waupun Correctional Institution, staffing vacancies peaked at 56% in February 2024, leaving more positions open than filled.

As aging staff members retired, the state struggled to replace them, particularly after Act 10, a sweeping 2011 state law that gutted most public workers’ ability to collectively bargain for more attractive conditions. Vacancy rates steadily climbed to 43% in the state’s maximum-security prisons and 35% across all adult institutions before pay raises took effect in October 2023.

Following two years of partisan infighting, the Republican-led Legislature approved a compensation package that increased starting pay for corrections officers from $20.29 to $33 an hour, with a $5 add-on for staff at maximum-security prisons and facilities with vacancy rates above 40% for six months straight. 

Within a year, vacancy rates plunged as low as 15% at maximum-security prisons and 11% across all adult prisons.

Rep. Mark Born, a Beaver Dam Republican who co-chairs the Legislature’s budget-writing Joint Finance Committee, credited legislative action with greatly reducing staffing shortages.  

“As I’ve talked to the prisons in my district, they’re happy to see that the recruit classes are much larger and the vacancies are about half of what they were prior to the action in the last budget,” he told Wisconsin Watch. 

Vacancies rise following initial progress

It’s true that vacancies are nowhere near their previous crisis levels. Those include rates in Waupun and Green Bay, where officials previously locked down prisoners during severe staffing shortages. Green Bay now has just over half the vacancy rate it had during the height of the crisis. Waupun has recovered even more dramatically. After plunging much of last year, its vacancy rate has hovered near 20% in recent months.

But vacancies are increasing across much of the prison system, corrections data show. As of July 1, rates reached 26% at maximum-security prisons and more than 17% overall. The department has lost more than 260 full-time equivalent officer and sergeant positions over the past nine months. 

The vacancy rate at Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage, which has the most gaping staffing shortage, reached 41% on July 1, up from a low of 11% a year ago. 

Push to close Green Bay prison

The new state budget appropriated $15 million “to develop preliminary plans and specifications” to realign the Department of Corrections and eventually close the Green Bay prison, whose vacancy rate has grown from a low of 9% last October to nearly 25%.

Republicans proposed closing the prison by 2029, but Evers used his veto power to remove that date, saying he objected to setting a closure date “while providing virtually no real, meaningful, or concrete plan to do so.” 

How a future prison closure would shape long-term population trends may hinge on what replaces the prison. Evers earlier this year proposed a $500 million overhaul to, among other provisions, close the Green Bay prison; renovate the Waupun prison — adding a “vocational village” to expand workforce training; and convert the scandal-plagued Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake youth prison into an adult facility.

Republicans rejected that more ambitious proposal in crafting the bill that became law. 

Closing the Green Bay prison without replacing its capacity might reduce the prison population — and ease staffing shortages, Clancy argues. With less space to put those convicted of crimes, judges might issue shorter sentences, he said. 

“Every time I’ve spoken with a criminal judge, I’ve asked if they are aware of the number of beds available when they sentence someone. They always are,” Clancy said. “And I ask if that knowledge impacts their sentencing decisions. It always does.”

But for now, corrections employees are supervising a rising number of prisoners. The state’s total prison population is up about 7% since the compensation boost took effect. Wisconsin now houses more than 23,400 prisoners in facilities built for about 17,700, with the state budget estimating that number to rise over the next two years.

The Department of Corrections did not respond to multiple requests for comment on staffing trends.

‘How much of your soul can you afford to lose?’

Multiple corrections officers called rising vacancies predictable as new officers, attracted by competitive starting wages, discovered the demands of the work.

“It doesn’t surprise me one bit,” said a former officer who recently left a job in Waupun. He requested anonymity to avoid jeopardizing future employment in law enforcement. “They put a Band-Aid on the problem. They lured people in, thinking they were going to make more money. But the reality is the job hasn’t changed.” 

Even before the raises, it was not uncommon for officers to make upwards of $100,000 as they banked overtime pay while being forced to cover for open shifts. That pay came at a steep cost to work-life balance, said Rich Asleson, a correctional officer between 1997 and 2022, most at the former Supermax facility in Boscobel.

“It’s not a matter of needing more money. It’s a matter of how much of your soul can you afford to lose?” Asleson said. 

Additionally, officers say they feel added risks — whether reprimands, lawsuits or even criminal charges — as news media increasingly scrutinize their actions. Multiple deaths of Waupun prisoners, for instance, resulted in rare criminal charges against the warden and eight other staff members. Officers say they get little support, with a larger focus on penalties and firings than reforming conditions.  

More predictable hours, improved training practices and restored union protections would make the work more attractive, officers said.

“It’s one thing to do a job where you’re getting paid and you’re miserable,” the former Waupun officer said. “But can you imagine doing a job and feeling like you’re not even backed up by Madison? There’s people that are getting into trouble because the powers that be are scared, too. (Leaders) think if they’re ever called to the carpet, they can point to all the people they terminated.”

The officer said veterans, fearing reprisals, are increasingly choosing posts that separate themselves from prisoners and riskier work. They are less willing to train incoming officers due to turnover — seeing that time as wasted if new officers won’t stay long, he added. 

The Department of Corrections should improve training and retention by pairing veteran officers with rookies on shifts to show them the ropes — designating training specialists, he said. 

Waupun mayor: Prison guards go unappreciated

Waupun Mayor Rohn Bishop blames news media for recruiting and retention challenges, saying coverage disproportionately scrutinizes officers without recognizing their difficult jobs. 

“I’m the mayor of a town with three prisons within its city limits. Any time an inmate dies all the TV trucks show up and reporters put microphones in my face,” Bishop said. “But when an officer gets killed or hurt for just doing their job, almost no media pay attention. And I think there’s a burnout because of that.”  

Compared to other front-line workers, correctional officers often go unseen and unthanked, Bishop said. 

“You see firefighters. You see nurses. You see cops. You see these other front-line workers. You don’t see correctional officers because they walk on the other side of the wall. And I just think we don’t appreciate them,” Bishop said. 

Improving conditions for prisoners would simultaneously benefit correctional officers by boosting morale across prisons. That includes expanding the Earned Release Program, which offers pathways for early release to eligible prisoners with substance abuse issues who complete treatment and training — with the potential to ease overcrowding.  Evers’ initial budget proposal included provisions that would have expanded eligibility for the Earned Release Program. The final budget included about $2 million to support programs to reduce recidivism and ease reentry.  

“There needs to be a reimagining of what corrections are,” said the former Waupun officer. “It would make it easier for the inmates and the officers.”

Asleson agreed. “You can’t keep people locked away forever,” he said. “I think it’s about hope on both sides of the fence. If nobody has hope, it shows.” 

Wisconsin Watch reporter Sreejita Patra contributed reporting.

‘Band-Aid on the problem’: Past raises haven’t fully solved Wisconsin prison staffing problems 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.