On Friday, lawmakers in the Wisconsin Assembly voted in favor of a bill seeking Medicaid coverage for people in Wisconsin prisons and jails. Supporters hope it will help recently incarcerated people avoid addiction and overdoses. 

Rep. Shelia Stubbs (D-Madison) said her experience working for the Wisconsin Department of Corrections has given her firsthand knowledge about the impact AB 604 will have. She said it will improve access to treatment and case management and ease the financial burden on justice-involved Wisconsinites. 

The bill would give incarcerated people a greater chance of maintaining sobriety and preventing overdose after release from prison, Stubbs said. After a Minnesota study about the causes of death of recently incarcerated people, researcher Tyler Winkelman said that “substance use is clearly the main driver of death after release from both jail and prison.”

Medicaid is prohibited from paying for services provided during incarceration, barring some exceptions involving inpatient services or an eligible juvenile under 21 years old. The National Association of Counties published a toolkit critical of the “inmate exclusion policy,” arguing in part that it unfairly revokes federal health benefits from people who are being detained prior to trial and have not been found guilty.  

The bill would pursue a path offered by the federal government that allows for a partial waiver of the policy. 

The proposal directs the Department of Health Services to request a waiver to conduct a demonstration project; 19 states have approved waivers and nine states including Washington D.C. have pending waivers, as of November 21. 

A waiver would allow for prerelease health care coverage under the Medical Assistance program, which provides health services to people with limited finances, for up to 90 days before release of an eligible incarcerated person. Coverage would be provided for case management services, medication-assisted treatment for all types of substance use disorders and a 30-day supply of prescription medications. 

The bill garnered support from lawmakers from both parties and from WISDOM and EX-Incarcerated People Organizing, groups that advocate for incarcerated people. 

The Assembly’s vote to seek the coverage for incarcerated people comes on the heels of its vote to accept a federal expansion of Medicaid coverage for women for one year after they give birth. 

For the waiver, if the state seeks federal Medicaid coverage for services that are currently funded with state or local dollars, the state has to reinvest any savings in state or local funds. Savings would be invested in programs to increase access to or improve the quality of health care for incarcerated people. 

In the Department of Corrections fiscal estimate, the DOC said that in fiscal year 2025, the agency spent $500,000 on the 30-day medication supply dispensed for incarcerated people pre-release, $300,000 on pre-release medication assisted treatment medications and $3.9 million on the Opening Avenues to Reentry Success (OARS) program. The OARS program supports the transition from prison to the community of incarcerated people living with a severe and persistent mental illness who are at medium-to-high risk of reoffending. 

The agency estimated it may have over $750,000 in potential cost savings if the waiver is approved and implemented. 

Because not all incarcerated people will qualify, the estimate assumes that half of the medication supply and medication assisted treatment medications costs will be reimbursed, as well as 10% of the OARS program costs. There may be other costs DOC can have reimbursed.

AB 604 would require the Department of Health Services to submit the waiver request no later than Jan. 1, 2027. 

The bill now goes to the state Senate. Supporters of the bill include the Wisconsin Medical Society, the National Alliance on Mental Illness Wisconsin, the Medical College of Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Counties Association. 

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Dant'e Cottingham , who was formerly incarcerated, brings his perspective on the criminal justice system to students in a UW Law School class. | Photo courtesy UW Law School

A new class at the University of Wisconsin Law School aims to teach students about the perspectives of different people who are part of the criminal justice system, including those who are incarcerated. 

Dant’e Cottingham, one of the course instructors, was himself once locked up inside Wisconsin’s prison system. He said that according to stigma, he’s not supposed to be in the classroom.

“So I’m aware of that, and I carry that,” Cottingham said. “That’s important to me, because I want to make sure that the city, the state, the country knows that we are a lot more than our worst mistake.”

Instructing the class along with Cottingham is Adam Stevenson, a clinical professor and director of the Frank J. Remington Center, which houses the law school’s prison-based clinics as well as the public defender and prosecution externships. While Cottingham has the experience of being incarcerated in the prison system, Stevenson brings to the course the legal expertise of a law professor, and one who has worked with a program focused on legal assistance to incarcerated people. 

The Wednesday class, which has 19 students enrolled this semester,  counts for two credits. It’s titled “Criminal Justice System: A Lived Experience Perspective.” The class, examining how theory, policy and practice line up with reality — or diverge from it, according to the syllabus, may continue in the future depending on how this semester goes. 

In 1996, Cottingham was convicted of being party to a crime for first-degree intentional homicide for an offense that occurred when he was 17. While incarcerated, Cottingham applied to UW Madison’s program for legal assistance for incarcerated people and was assigned two law students who worked to help him win his release, he said. He was paroled in 2022. 

Cottingham served as interim associate director of the group Ex-Incarcerated People Organizing, and spoke publicly about Green Bay Correctional Institution, where he spent some of his imprisonment, and which has been the subject of criticism for inhumane conditions and calls to close the facility. Now 47, Cottingham is the reentry and outreach support specialist for the Remington Center. He said he helps men and women who are transitioning from incarceration.  

“I sit with people, build a rapport, get some insight and understanding to what their needs are,” Cottingham said. A person’s needs might involve housing, employment or medical care. 

Cottingham said that when he gave presentations in classes in the past,  students engaged with his description of his own experience, and he saw a need for the course he’s teaching now.

The experience of re-entering society after prison is one topic on the course schedule Cottingham shared with the Examiner. The arrest process, the trial process, sentencing, systemic inequality in criminal justice, and incarceration, and advocacy for reform and future directions are among the other course topics.

Guest speakers in the class range from Wisconsin Department of Corrections Secretary Jared Hoy, to Wood County District Attorney Jonathan Barnett, to Sharmain Harris, whose book “Rising Above the Odds: My Journey from Pain and Prison to Power and Purpose” is one of the required materials for the course. Requirements include book reports that analyze autobiographies of people who have experienced incarceration. 

Jini Jasti, a spokesperson for University of Wisconsin Law School, said UW Law’s motto is “Law in Action.” She said the school does not only teach the law on the books but also encourages students to see how it works from different perspectives, such as those of prosecutors, defense attorneys, victims, defendants and prisoners.  

“This unique class complements our other offerings, allowing students to hear about our trial, appellate and prison systems from someone who’s lived it,” Jasti said in a statement. 

State Public Defender Jennifer Bias and Robert Taliaferro, who was formerly incarcerated, visited the class on Wednesday. 

Bringing in these different perspectives helps  “tease out topics that we should be discussing when we’re talking about what the law is, how the law should operate etc.,” Stevenson said in a Jan. 16 interview with the Wisconsin Examiner. “One person’s perspective is definitely great in doing that, but having multiple perspectives and the potential disagreement, or the clash, if you will, can also give rise to some really rich conversation.”  

Stevenson said students will be graduating and working with clients as attorneys, and understanding the perspectives of people in the criminal justice system is important. 

Lara Hendrix, a third year law student, is planning to be a public defender after graduation. She said she thought the class would be valuable for her future career. 

Hendrix hopes that eventually people who don’t plan to practice criminal law take the class. 

“These are real people with families, and people that love them, and other people that are affected,” Hendrix said, “and that needs so much more attention than it gets.”

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The price of making phone calls from prisons and jails was set to drop under a 2024 FCC rule, but a 2025 rule revision is driving costs back up | Getty Images

For many, the recent holiday season was a time to connect with family. For some, family includes someone incarcerated in one of Wisconsin’s prisons or jails. 

Juli Bliefnick told the Wisconsin Examiner she was incarcerated in county jail and state prison from January 2012 to June 2016. She said that many people would save up precious telephone time to call their families for the holidays. 

“People that came from more disadvantaged backgrounds would not call their families as often,” Bliefnick said.

She remembers the cost of calls putting strain on her relationship with her parents while she was incarcerated. 

While incarcerated, Ventae Parrow said he had to choose whether to spend his money on additional food items and hygiene, or on talking with family on the phone. Parrow left prison in 2020 and is an organizer for the advocacy network WISDOM. He told the Examiner that how often he talked to his family depended on how much money he had.

Nationally, jail and prison phone call rates have declined over the years, according to a report covering 2008-2021 from the Prison Policy Initiative. And in 2024, the Federal Communications Commission voted for new rules to lower how much calls could cost.

The agency announced that for the overwhelming majority of people, the upper limit on the per-minute cost of calls would drop by over half. New per-minute caps ranged from 6 cents per minute for prisons to 12 cents per minute for very small jails.

However, the agency postponed aspects of the new rules in June, including the 2024 caps, until April 2027. Then the FCC voted in the fall of last year to partially roll back the 2024 change with new caps. The commission voted to increase the caps on the cost of a minute on the phone partway back to the caps that preceded the 2024 rules. The new caps range from 11 cents per minute for prisons to 19 cents per minute for extremely small jails. The FCC called them interim caps, and said it was seeking comment on how to establish permanent caps.

The FCC decision includes a ban on site commissions — payments from service providers to correctional facilities that the Prison Policy Initiative said had had the effect of inflating the final costs families paid. The ban will take effect on April 6. Wanda Bertram of the Prison Policy Initiative said that sheriffs’ desire for commissions “was an important factor in driving up phone rates in the past, but it’s hard to say how that is going to change the setting of rates going forward with the new rules,” and that companies may or may not choose to jack rates up to the maximum now allowed by the FCC.

Worth Rises, a group advocating for lower rates, said the 2025 revised caps will deliver substantially less financial relief to families affected by incarceration. They will take effect April 6 barring further action.

In northeastern Wisconsin, people incarcerated in the Brown County Jail currently pay a per-minute rate of 15 cents for phone calls, Captain Heidi Michel told the Examiner. They receive two free phone calls and two free messages per week.

Michel said the jail’s average daily population for 2025 was 661 people, which meets the FCC’s definition of a medium-sized jail. The 2025 caps will require jails of this size to have rates of 12 cents per minute or less. Under the 2024 rules, medium-sized jails would have to abide by a lower rate — 7 cents per minute or less — and therefore charge incarcerated people and their families less money.

The 2025 caps also allow for people to be charged higher rates for video calls than the 2024 rules. Michel said people incarcerated in the Brown County Jail can have video visitation for 18 cents per minute. A medium-sized jail can have this rate under the 2025 caps for video calls. However, the 2024 caps would have required a rate of 12 cents per minute or less.

Michel didn’t immediately respond to a question from the Examiner on Friday about whether the county currently receives a portion of the revenue from the phone calls that incarcerated people in their jail and their families make.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said rules the commission adopted in 2024 resulted in “serious, unintended consequences.” He said that limiting how facilities could recover safety and security costs through phone call charges caused some correctional facilities to scale back or even stop offering calling services.

The Baxter County Sheriff’s Office in Arkansas announced that the phone system used at the Baxter County Detention Counter would soon no longer be available due to the regulations. Two companies claimed to the FCC in April that its 2024 order was forcing correctional facilities to end or reduce access to services, and that the two companies were forced to end service to a few facilities.

Commissioner Anna Gomez, who dissented in the rollback of the 2024 rule change, said the commission took “narrow and speculative” concerns and granted a waiver of the entire 2024 decision. She also raised the idea that the commission could have considered an individual waiver of the 2024 caps for facilities that showed that having less revenue led to communication services being unavailable.

Gomez called the FCC’s order indefensible, saying it would implement “an egregious transfer of wealth from families in incredibly vulnerable situations to monopoly companies that seek to squeeze every penny out of them.”

Wanda Bertram of the Prison Policy Initiative told the Examiner that according to the FCC, the caps were calculated to offset the cost of companies offering certain features to jails and prisons, such as call monitoring. In an interview, Bertram argued that call monitoring technology should not be funded by fees charged to incarcerated people and their families. 

Call costs for Wisconsin jails and prisons

The cost of a phone call varies across facilities. In the Eau Claire County Jail in western Wisconsin, incarcerated people pay 9 cents per minute on the phone and receive two free phone calls a week, Security Services Captain Chad Dachel told the Examiner. For the Polk County Jail, the rate is $0.19 per minute, and incarcerated people are allowed two free calls per week, according to Sheriff Brent Waak.

As of late 2021, the average cost of a 15-minute call from a local jail in Wisconsin was $3.00, according to a Prison Policy Initiative report.

In a statement to the Examiner, Mark Rice of WISDOM called for making prison and jail phone calls free for all. The effects of this would include reducing the financial challenge for families and improving the mental wellbeing of affected people, he wrote. The Prison Policy Initiative has argued that family contact also reduces recidivism.

In November, lawmakers and organizers announced a package of bills aimed at improving conditions in prisons and jails, including the affordability of communication, the Examiner reported.

ICSolutions, telephone service provider for the Wisconsin Department of Corrections (DOC), charges 6 cents per minute for calls at the department’s adult facilities, DOC communications director Beth Hardtke told the Examiner, as of late December. ICSolutions charges 1 cent per minute for calls made at juvenile facilities and continues to charge $2.50 for a 25-minute video visit or $5 for a 50-minute visit, according to Hardtke.  According to reporting from the Examiner in 2024, a family member of a man incarcerated at Fox Lake Correctional Institution said people receive two free calls every Sunday. Three free weekly messages are provided, according to the department’s website.

People incarcerated in jails and their families have tended to experience higher phone rates than those in prison, according to the Prison Policy Initiative report covering 2008-2021. Under the caps the FCC passed in 2024, the DOC’s 6-cent rate would still have been allowed; that’s a 15-minute rate of 90 cents In 2021, the average 15-minute rate for a jail phone call was roughly $3.

However, ICSolutions is required to pay the department a commission of 4 cents per minute for all calls at adult institutions. The FCC decision includes a ban on site commissions, which critics say inflate call costs. The ban will take effect on April 6. 

Will the commission ban affect state prisons?

Under state law, two-thirds of the phone commission from the contract must go to the Department of Administration, according to Hardtke. One-third goes to DOC and must be spent on services that “directly benefit” incarcerated people.

In September 2024, Hardtke told the Examiner that ICSolutions paid nearly $6.3 million in commission in fiscal year 2024. The Department of Corrections’ share was nearly $2.1 million. 

Hardtke said that “the commissions received allow DOC to purchase the following in support of the persons in our care,” and provided a list of items ranging from mail processing services to re-entry portfolios to art supplies. 

It’s unclear whether the FCC’s commission ban will affect prisoners’ ability to access items and services currently funded by  the commission money, or if other funding will sustain those items and services. However, $2.1 million is a tiny fraction of the Department of Corrections budget, and the commission money may not account for all of the funding supporting each item or service Hardtke listed. Hardtke said the Department of Corrections is continuing to evaluate how to best continue services to the Wisconsin prison population.

Bertram of the Prison Policy Initiative said that charging people higher phone rates shouldn’t be the source of money for things like free video calls that benefit incarcerated people.

The decision leaves some room for authorities to receive money from phone calls. Within the new FCC caps, a portion of up to 2 cents per minute exists “to account for the costs correctional facilities incur in allowing access to (communication services).” 

Bertram told the Examiner that an example of this would be time spent by a correctional officer to escort people to a phone bay. The FCC said this was an interim measure while it sought comment for a permanent version. 

Hardtke’s full list of items that receive funding from the commission was: “mail processing services, driver education simulation equipment, recreation equipment, exercise equipment, library resources, TVs, cable TV, art supplies, re-entry portfolios, puzzles, yarn, activity books, CD/DVD players, movies, dayroom microwaves, incentive prizes, visiting room toys/activities, media credits, dayroom newspapers, magazine subscriptions, modern technology improvements and services, bus tickets for release, dayroom ice machines, personal laundry washing machines and repairs, barber services, religious and chapel supplies and services, legal loans, lanyards, burial/cremation for unclaimed bodies, dayroom game tables, dayroom board and card games, graduation ceremonies expenses, and more.”

Before the rollback in October, the FCC postponed its rate cap rules in June. In a November interview, Bertram said she’d already heard from families about the cost of connection going up in the wake of the loss of the 2024 caps. 

“This is going to come as a shock to a lot of families who had gotten a lot of relief from the 2024 rules,” Bertram said. 

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Wrongly convicted people in Wisconsin can wait months to have their cases reviewed and receive compensation that does not meet their needs, advocates say. A bipartisan bill in the state Legislature aims to address those problems. | Photo by Caspar Benson/Getty Images

On Dec. 3, a committee of Wisconsin lawmakers heard from Gabriel Lugo about his time in prison before his conviction was overturned. 

Lugo testified through a statement read by attorney Rex Anderegg in a hearing of the Assembly Committee on State Affairs. He said he experienced constant lockdowns that severely restricted his movement and some correctional officers treating him as less than human. 

Lugo, 36, was convicted of first-degree reckless homicide in 2009 and spent the majority of his incarceration in Waupun Correctional Institution, the state’s oldest prison, which has received scrutiny for prison deaths and living conditions. After Lugo’s conviction was overturned, he was released from jail in June 2023.

According to Christopher Lau of the Wisconsin Innocence Project, the project has helped exonerate more than 30 people. Clients leave prison with medical ailments and emotional trauma, without familial support, employment, savings, and often, with nowhere to call home, his testimony stated. Many struggle to re-enter society. 

Exonerees often have to wait months to get on the agenda for the claims board’s meetings, Lau stated. If they qualify, the law doesn’t provide enough to ensure stable housing, he said, “to say nothing of the costs of social services like counseling, vocational assistance and access to health insurance.” 

The Wisconsin Claims Board can award up to $25,000 in compensation, at a rate not greater than $5,000 per year for the imprisonment, and has also awarded attorney fees. It can recommend that the state Legislature issue additional compensation. 

In February 2016, the Assembly unanimously approved a bill that aimed to increase state support for wrongly convicted people, including enabling the claims board to issue higher payouts. It did not become law. 

AB 583, a bill currently in the Legislature, also aims to provide more aid more quickly to wrongly convicted people. Under the bill, a wrongly convicted person would receive compensation at a yearly rate of $50,000, prorated daily, for the imprisonment; the total would not exceed $1 million. The claims board would adjust the rate yearly to account for the cost of living, and it would be able to award compensation in an annuity payable over time. 

The bill addresses when people who received compensation for wrongful imprisonment in the past can petition for more under the new law, potentially allowing some to receive more compensation. 

The bill lays out when wrongly convicted people could have health care coverage under plans offered by the Group Insurance Board to state employees. 

Under the bill, if a person is released from imprisonment on the basis of a claim of innocence, they could petition for a court order directing the Department of Corrections to create a transition-to-release plan. They could also petition for a financial assistance award of up to 133% of the federal poverty level for up to 14 months, or while compensation proceedings are pending, whichever is shorter. 

State legislators who introduced the bill included Republican and Democratic lawmakers. Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine), chair of the Senate Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety, submitted testimony in support of the bill. 

The bill bars some people from filing a petition with the claims board for compensation for wrongful imprisonment, such as a person who is convicted of a violent crime after being released. 

Records-sealing language

Also under the bill, a person released from imprisonment on the basis of a claim of innocence could petition the court for the sealing of all records related to the case. For Lugo, it took about two years to get a response from job applications because his case was still visible online, his statement said. 

A similar provision in the bill that the Assembly passed in 2016 drew pushback from the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, which argued that it would “dramatically compromise the ability of media and the public to examine what went wrong in cases in which things are known to have gone terribly wrong.”

On Dec. 22, the Wisconsin Examiner reached out to the office of Rep. Jessie Rodriguez (R-Oak Creek), one of the lawmakers who introduced the bill, about the provision and the council’s concern in 2016. 

“Thank you for bringing this information to our attention as we were not aware of this when we introduced the bill this session,” Rodriguez said in an emailed comment. “The organization has not reached out to us with any concerns at this time.”

Lawsuits

Wrongly convicted people may also attempt to obtain a monetary award through lawsuits. The bill addresses the possibility of a person receiving a settlement, judgement or award for damages in a federal or state action related to their wrongful imprisonment. 

Under one of these parts of the bill, if the person obtains a settlement before the claims board awards them compensation, the claims board would subtract the amount from the board’s compensation. 

Changing the process

Under current law, the claims board is responsible for finding whether the evidence of the person’s innocence is “clear and convincing.” 

The claims board members come from the Department of Justice, the Department of Administration, the Office of the Governor, the Wisconsin Senate and the Wisconsin Assembly. The Senate and Assembly members are Sen. Eric Wimberger (R-Oconto) and Rep. Alex Dallman (R-Markesan).

Under the bill, when the claims board receives a petition for compensation for an innocent convict, it would be referred to the Division of Hearings and Appeals in the Department of Administration. The division would find whether the evidence is clear and convincing that the petitioner was innocent of the crime they were imprisoned for. 

If the evidence is clear and convincing for innocence, the division would transmit its findings to the claims board, which would decide what amount of compensation would be equitable. 

Individual bills

In a decision dated Jan. 30 of this year, the claims board awarded $25,000 to Gabriel Lugo, plus approximately $77,000 in attorney fees, and recommended that the Legislature award him an additional $750,000.

According to Rodriguez, the Legislature has only passed individual appropriation bills awarding additional compensation three times. 

Rodriguez’s testimony stated that it’s estimated that around 72 people have been exonerated in Wisconsin since 1990, and that seven received recommendations for compensation above the cap. She stated in a press release that “the Legislature should not have to play judge and jury again” when there is already a process at the claims board. 

“Without these reforms, exonerees would continue to need individual appropriation bills to receive an adequate amount of compensation,”  Rodriguez stated in a press release. “These bills have rarely been acted upon, and even more rarely are signed into law.”

The board has also recommended that the Legislature issue additional compensation for Robert and David Bintz, who were released from prison in the fall of last year.

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