According to Wisconsin Department of Corrections statistics, the state’s prison population hit a new record high last week. As of Aug. 28, there were 23,854 people housed across adult prisons in Wisconsin. The figure surpasses the last record, set  in 2019, and raises questions about whether and how the state will take steps to address its chronically overcrowded prison problem. 

The record high was first reported by Wisconsin Watch, which noted that the prison system was designed to hold nearly 6,000 fewer people than it currently does. In some prisons, such as the three prisons housing women in Wisconsin, gyms and office spaces have been  converted into dorm space. Meanwhile, the DOC struggles with staffing shortages among correctional officers, medical and psych workers. 

Wisconsin is an outlier, with some of the highest rates of imprisonment for Black and brown people in the country. The state has also struggled to finally close the troubled Lincoln Hills juvenile prison, despite bipartisan agreement that it needs to shut down what has been one of the largest facilities of its kind in America.

Shannon Ross, a member of Justice Forward Wisconsin has watched the prison population rising again after dropping after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. “It’s been going up steadily every year,” Ross told the Wisconsin Examiner. “And it’s a confluence of the fact that we have too many ways for a person to get sent to prison — we just have a lot of crimes …  we have a lot of high penalties for crimes, and we have a lack of ways for people to come home early.” 

Emily Curtis, a member of the group Ladies of SCI, told the Examiner  Wisconsin “continues to rely heavily on incarceration without putting enough emphasis on what actually reduces incarceration over the long term.” 

While excessive sentences keep people in prison for as long as possible, Curtis added that “there are still not enough meaningful rehabilitation opportunities within the prison system that are accessible to everyone who could benefit from them.” She stressed that “education, job training, treatment, reentry preparation, and other programs need to provide people with real tools and realistic avenues for success when they return to their communities. If we want to reduce recidivism, rehabilitation cannot simply exist on paper. It has to create an actual path toward successful reentry.” 

The DOC says incarcerated people have access to various programs aimed at rehabilitation and education. Earlier this year, for example, the University of Wisconsin college system graduated its first incarcerated bachelors degree students in over 50 years. The students graduated as a result of a partnership program between the DOC and UW. 

The state agency has also pushed back against criticisms of the rising prison population, stating that it has limited authority to grant early release and that it’s up to the state Legislature to craft laws dealing with the pressing challenges faced by many DOC facilities. Although Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers has proposed reforms in multiple state budget drafts, including closing aging prisons and establishing greater oversight, these ideas were rejected by the Republican-controlled Legislature.

Meanwhile controversy has grown around exceptionally old prisons including in Waupun and Green Bay, where reports of deaths due to negligent medical care, violence, alleged drug smuggling by staff, extensive lockdowns restricting access to programming, and use of solitary confinement (what the DOC calls restrictive housing), and other problems have surfaced. Lawsuits and investigations targeted prison leaders for these problems. The population at Waupun plummeted from over 1,000 people to as low as 694 people in July 2024, which brought the population within the prison’s designed capacity, according to data compiled by Wisconsin Watch. As of Aug. 21, however, the population had risen to nearly 1,000 people. 

Ross, of the advocacy coalition Justice Forward, a formerly incarcerated person himself, said that in Wisconsin “the criminal justice system is used as a political football, and neither side is really moving what they know clearly in front of them should happen, because they don’t want to fully give up on the tough-on-crime claim that they can make.” The politics of crime and punishment, he says, results in elected leaders either not doing enough to institute reforms, or doubling down on a culture of punishment. “That creates this dynamic where everyone is trying to be seen as protecting society, meanwhile no one’s actually protecting society because it doesn’t make us healthier as a society having a large prison system.”

Curtis added that it’s important to “broaden the conversation about what rehabilitation actually means.” 

“Programs are important, but so is the environment a person lives in every single day. The daily interactions incarcerated people have with correctional staff can either reinforce rehabilitation or work directly against it. When the culture focuses primarily on catching mistakes, writing conduct reports, handing out punishment, or viewing positive behavior and accomplishments with suspicion, it becomes extremely difficult to create an environment where genuine change is encouraged.”

What drives the prison population to climb is a complicated formula. Part of it, many advocates say, is the system of revoking parole, probation and other forms of community release and sending people back to prison. Missing an appointment with a probation officer or a baseless accusation without thorough investigation can send someone on release back to prison. 

That’s what happened to Dennis Simmons, who was nearly sent back to prison in 2025 due to false accusations, and a probation agent who tried to revoke Simmons despite having evidence that the accusations against him were false. Simmons was housed in the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility while the case played out. He described the facility as overcrowded and short staffed. Simmons eventually beat the accusations, but said that the episode crushed his hopes of change after being in and out of the system most of his life. Simmons was later arrested in a different case, and the DOC recommended he be sent back to prison. Over 8,100 people were sent back to prison in 2025. 

Talking to people who’ve worked on the prosecution-side of the criminal justice system, Ross said he learned of many cases where people were sent  back to prison because prosecutors decided it was  a simpler, quicker, more cost-effective route than filing new charges against the person. Yet, at the root of the overpopulation issue is the lack of ways for people to come home early, Ross said.

Right now, there are people who’ve been incarcerated for decades who are going before the state’s commutations board to ask the governor to shorten their sentence. In April, Gov. Evers signed executive orders to revive the board, changing a pattern lasting decades of Wisconsin governors choosing to not use their power to alter prison sentences. The commutation process has been a target of attack for right-wing pundits, who frame efforts to shorten sentences as being soft on crime and releasing droves of criminals. The attacks are similar to those against probation, parole, and the bail system.

Marianne Oleson, co-executive director of Ex-Incarcerated People Organizing (EXPO) said in an emailed statement that the revival of the commutations board is “an important and long-overdue step.” Oleson cautioned, however, that “commutations alone cannot resolve a crisis of this magnitude,” adding, “Wisconsin needs broader sentencing and supervision reform, expanded opportunities for earned release and ‘second look’ review, greater use of alternatives to incarceration, and substantial investment in housing, treatment, employment and community-based reentry support.”

“Wisconsin cannot incarcerate its way out of every social problem,” she said.

Ross told the Examiner that he understands why people might be skeptical of incarcerated people’s assurances that they’ve genuinely changed and deserve to be released. 

“I’m sympathetic to that because those things do happen, but they happen in life, period,” said Ross. Still, in his view, prison is one place where it’s hard to disguise bad character traits. “Those of us that have done time, we know that the fish bowl of prison is place that, if you can genuinely be changed and show people you’re changed there, then you very clearly are not who you were at one point.” 

Ross said people who apply for and meet the standards for commutation are demonstrating not only that they’ve done the bare minimum of educating themselves and getting therapy, but that more importantly, they are making connections with other people. “You can see folks that have built up support networks,” said Ross. “You see folks that have reference letters and have people in their corner. You can see folks in the way that they carry themselves, in the way they talk, it’s very humble. It’s very aware and accountable to the things that they’ve done.”

He added that “people show you who they are if you’re paying attention, and if you know how to look.” Ross said that he wants the state to get to a point where people are able to see through sensationalism about the criminal justice system, and understand the nuances of the issue and  people’s individual stories.

Curtis said something similar. “I would like to see state leadership take a comprehensive look at sentencing practices, revocation policies, rehabilitation, institutional culture, and reentry rather than treating the record prison population simply as a capacity problem,” she wrote. “Building or expanding facilities may address where people are housed, but it does not address why the population continues to grow or why people return.”

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Wisconsin’s prison population hit a record high this week, a new milestone for a system that has for decades held thousands more people than it was designed for. 

According to figures released Friday, the state’s Department of Corrections held 23,854 people in custody. That’s 28 above the record set in 2019 and nearly 6,000 beyond the prisons’ intended capacity. 

Wisconsin’s prisons have been severely over capacity for at least 20 years, prompting officials to add bunk beds and increase the number of people per cell. The three prisons that house only women are particularly overcrowded. There, staff have converted offices to dorms and, at times, set up beds in gyms.

Sarah Buckingham, who is incarcerated at Robert E. Ellsworth Correctional Center in Racine, told Wisconsin Watch in May that prison officials “just cram us in wherever they can.” That minimum-security women’s prison was designed to house 230 people. As of Friday, it held 495, more than twice its design capacity. The state’s other minimum-security women’s prison, the Milwaukee Women’s Center, was designed for 42 but now holds 104, making it Wisconsin’s  most crowded prison.

Contacted for comment, Department of Corrections spokesperson Kevin Hoffman said the department has “extremely limited statutory authority on its own to reduce the prison population.”

The new record comes years after Gov. Tony Evers vowed to ease prison crowding in a state that stands out nationally for disproportionately incarcerating Black residents. In a 2018 Democratic gubernatorial debate, Evers — who has spoken of “second chances” and “redemption” — called a goal by activists to cut Wisconsin’s prison population by half  “worth accomplishing.”

But the Republican-led Legislature has stymied such efforts, spokesperson Britt Cudaback said, pointing to the governor’s “eight years of budget requests to reform our state’s justice system.” 

The governor doesn’t choose who goes to prison or for how long, Cudaback added. In 1998, Wisconsin legislators adopted one of the country’s most punitive “truth-in-sentencing” laws, requiring most prisoners to spend their full sentence behind bars, without the possibility of parole. Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson signed the bipartisan legislation into law.

Policy changes such as reducing sentences or diverting more people to treatment would require action by judges or the Legislature, though the governor’s administration can singlehandedly address revocations, a common way people end up in prison. 

People on court-ordered supervision can end up back in prison if they allegedly violate the rules of their release, even without committing a new crime. In 2021, the Department of Corrections raised the threshold for revocations in certain circumstances, which corresponded with an initial dip in technical revocations.

Evers recently took another unilateral step that could reduce the prison population, though likely modestly. In April, he signed executive orders allowing eligible Wisconsin prisoners to apply to have their sentences shortened for the first time in 25 years. 

It’s unclear how many people might receive commutations or how much their sentences might be shortened. The Commutation Advisory Board heard testimony from a dozen applicants at its inaugural hearing on Aug. 21. A second hearing, featuring another dozen applicants, is scheduled for Sept. 18.

Not just tight quarters

Overcrowding stresses prisons in a variety of ways, increasing dangers and reducing quality of life for both prisoners and correctional officers. A higher prison population requires more officers, who can be tough to recruit and retain. In 2023, officials locked down Waupun Correctional Institution — canceling programs and confining prisoners to their cells for months — because they didn’t have enough officers to operate normally, Wisconsin Watch reporting revealed.

Today, the state’s adult prison system is short about 658 full-time correctional officers and sergeants, the latest DOC figures show. The system has 35 fewer people in those positions than it did in May, even as the prison population grew by about 250.

A higher prison population can increase competition for limited spots in treatment, education and work programs designed to prepare prisoners for release. 

Already, many prisoners wait months or years for those opportunities, and advocates say increased crowding could keep people in prison longer or contribute to their return — a cycle that could further pack prisons.

A prisoner at Taycheedah Correctional Institution in Fond du Lac told Wisconsin Watch that crowded conditions make it harder to offer a key type of counseling. Since 2019, the maximum-security women’s prison has allowed prisoners to meet with certified peer support specialists, fellow prisoners trained and paid by the Department of Corrections to share their own experiences and support others navigating challenges behind bars. 

Converting more spaces into dorms leaves fewer places for peer specialists to hold one-on-one meetings, said Natalie Murphy, who has worked as a peer specialist for seven years. Fewer than 10 peer specialists serve the 1,074-person facility, Murphy said. 

“There’s a huge waitlist, and we are trying to accommodate all of the people, because we want to help people,” Murphy said. “But one of the biggest problems is that we can’t hire anybody because we do not have physical space to work in.”

Solutions elusive

Policymakers and prisoner advocates disagree about how to ease crowding. In the major revamp he proposed last year, Evers called for, among other things:

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

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

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

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

“The governor’s corrections proposal would have paved the way for much-needed facilities upgrades and expanded programming to address many of the challenges we face today,” DOC spokesperson Hoffman said. “Unfortunately, the Legislature did not fully fund the plan and only provided $15 million for planning.”

Wisconsin spends about $1.06 billion a year on its prisons, or 5% of the state budget. State officials estimate it costs roughly $50,000 to incarcerate one person for a year in Wisconsin. By comparison, the state spends around $15,000 a year per student in the public K-12 school system. 

Meanwhile, some states have significantly reduced their prison populations in recent decades. New York has cut the number of people behind bars by half since 2008 as a result of various factors, including ending incarceration for most technical violations of supervision rules. Republican-led Texas has closed several prisons as a result of bipartisan criminal justice reforms, including a greater focus on substance abuse treatment and diversion. 

Brittany Carloni contributed reporting.

Wisconsin prisons hit record population as crowding strains staffing and programs 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.

While consultants have recommended reforms to how Wisconsin addresses mental health in prison, the Wisconsin Department of Corrections reports obstacles in the way of many of the reforms, according to a document obtained by the Examiner. In Wisconsin’s adult prisons, nearly half of incarcerated people have a mental health diagnosis. 

“We are seeing that more and more individuals that come into our facilities are sicker than many of their peers in the community,” Jared Hoy, secretary of the Department of Corrections, said at a webinar in March. 

Hoy said he believes this is the result of a lack of affordable healthcare and mental health resources in the community. He said that people coming into the system may not have had consistent mental healthcare, meaning that clinicians are often trying to solve more advanced problems. 

“And we kind of become this safety net, to meet those needs that maybe have not been met in the community,” Hoy said. 

In November, the DOC released a report with recommendations for change to the prison system as part of its partnership with the consulting firm Falcon Correctional and Community Services, Inc. One recommendation involves keeping incarcerated people with a serious mental illness from ending up in restrictive housing — also known as solitary confinement — by instead sending them to alternative units if they commit a violation. 

The DOC reports that it is facing hurdles to implementing this proposal and some of the other recommendations for change to the prison system’s response to mental illness, according to a slideshow document received by the Examiner. 

Mental Health Director Kevin Kallas and Psychology Director Marlena Larson of the DOC presented the slideshow to a committee of the Wisconsin Mental Health Action Partnership, according to a member of MHAP who shared the document with the Examiner. The Department of Corrections did not respond to an inquiry about whether the agency produced the document. 

For some of the recommendations, the department indicated in the slideshow that it would need at least one of the following: additional staffing, material resources, new construction or remodeling, technology upgrades or significant changes to current policies or operations. Among the recommendations DOC said it needs more resources to address is sending people with a serious mental illness to a mental health unit instead of restrictive housing.

Falcon’s 137-page report stated that the majority of its recommendations will require funding, and often budget approval. 

It’s unclear whether the DOC’s understanding of what’s needed to implement the report’s recommendations has changed since agency officials presented the slideshow in March. A department spokesperson said Kallas was not available for an interview and did not respond to further requests for comment. 

It’s also unclear how much progress the DOC has made so far on putting Falcon’s ideas into action. In November, DOC communications director Beth Hardtke told the Examiner that after receiving the recommendations in the report, the DOC immediately began implementing many of the changes.

The Examiner reported last month on the process of implementing reforms laid out in the contract between the DOC and Falcon, which the Examiner obtained in mid-May. 

Susan Franzen of the prison reform advocacy group Ladies of SCI questioned the DOC slideshow’s representation that it does not have the resources to implement a proposal about providing meaningful out-of-cell time and programming to people on clinical observation. Franzen argued the agency can make change with the resources it has. Incarcerated people can be placed on clinical observation for a deteriorating mental illness or a risk of physical harm to self or others. 

“Because that seems to be a go-to all the time — of, if we have to get them out of their cell, we need more staff, we need more ‘this,’” Franzen said. “No, you need to be more creative in your scheduling and think outside the box.”

The Wisconsin DOC and many other corrections departments use  suicide-resistant cells for at-risk patients without regard for the specific causes of the individual patient’s problems, the Falcon report says. The report says that these cells are designed to minimize self-harm, but they don’t guarantee safety or provide what’s needed to reduce the patient’s risk of self-harm and help them become more resilient. 

The report promotes providing these incarcerated people with meaningful time out of their cells, as well as personalized re-assessment, treatment and programming.

Focusing on the most severe needs

Nearly half of people incarcerated in adult prisons are identified as needing mental health services, as of May 2025 — a “much higher” rate than other state correctional departments, according to the Falcon report. 

In the slideshow, DOC indicated its intent to focus more on patients with “acute needs or recurrent problematic behavior.”

An “unsustainable” number of incarcerated people have to be seen by psychological services every six months, and this interferes with the more intensive care needed for patients with higher needs, according to discussions with prison staff about mental health that were cited in the Falcon report. The report advises that the agency remove people who no longer need the infrequent appointments from the caseload.

While the report doesn’t delve into the impact of unfilled psychologist positions in the prison system,, the DOC is facing a vacancy rate of about 30% for psychological services staff.

Tom Denk was released from prison in 2022 and is now co-president of 

ESTHER, an advocacy group in northeast Wisconsin that works on criminal justice issues. He said there are more people with mental and physical illnesses in prison than outside it, and that most people in prison need some sort of care. 

“And out here, there’s a shortage of providers, so we can imagine how much more of a shortage there is when basically almost everyone really needs that kind of thing,” Denk said. 

Suicide watch 

The Falcon report includes recommendations for protocols when an incarcerated person is under observation due to a deteriorating mental illness or a risk of physical harm to self or others. In the slideshow, the DOC indicated the agency could implement a proposal to replace small sleeping mats with suicide-resistant mattresses.

The agency labeled the following recommendations in red, indicating there are obstacles to implementing them:  

• Moving clinical observation rooms out of restrictive housing and into more appropriate environments 
• Providing meaningful out-of-cell time and programming
• Reducing restraint use through increased use of one-on-one observation by staff
• Analyzing why someone ends up in suicide observation and developing targeted interventions 

At one of Wisconsin’s oldest prisons, Green Bay Correctional Institution, almost three quarters of incarcerated people have a mental illness diagnosis, as of a fiscal year 2025 report. 

Former GBCI officer Jeff Hoffman told the Examiner that he was the assigned sergeant in the restrictive housing unit, and saw these issues “up close and personal.”

“Staff working on these units aren’t properly trained to understand and deal with these individuals,” said Hoffman, who left the prison in early 2023 after almost 23 years. “We were trained in the security aspect. Not mental health.” 

Hoffman added that staffing levels are a concern, with staff either being too few in number or too tired from extra hours of work, and that mental health is an issue for staff and healthcare workers as well as incarcerated people. 

DOC policy states that adult prisons must provide at least six hours of mental health training to security staff at the start of their employment, including for suicide prevention, symptoms of mental illness and proper response to incarcerated people with mental health problems. Adult prisons are required to provide training to new employees on preventing staff suicide.

Adult prison staff who have contact with incarcerated people take an annual update training in suicide prevention, and prisons are required to conduct quarterly drills simulating staff members’ response to a suicide attempt by an incarcerated person. 

Green Bay Correctional saw “a large number” of episodes of self-harming and/or disruptive behavior, according to GBCI’s annual report for fiscal year 2025. The report attributes this to the “unique features” of the incarcerated population there, which reportedly includes a high number of young men, many of whom have “poor coping skills with lengthy prison sentences.” 

Suicide attempts, self-harm behaviors and threats of self harm have historically led to a high number of placements of incarcerated people on observation at the prison, the GBCI report said. There was a “drastic upward trend” in these placements in fiscal year 2025, with 900 observation placements to date, the GBCI report said. 

Hoffman said that staff frequently have to move incarcerated people to suicide observation for making false claims that they are going to commit suicide. According to psychologist and jail suicide expert Lisa Boesky, incarcerated people might resort to this as an attempt to be moved out of a chaotic housing unit or away from a cellmate, for example. Meanwhile, the rise in suicide threats within the prison puts additional pressure on the system. 

Solitary confinement 

In the slideshow, a few proposals for reform of restrictive housing — also called solitary confinement — were labeled green, meaning that the department could significantly implement those ideas. 

The Examiner reported last year on how the Department of Corrections employs incarcerated peer specialists to mentor their fellow prisoners. The department said it could review how certified peer specialists are used in restrictive housing units and expand their role. The agency also indicated it could continue efforts to limit the amount of time incarcerated people spend in solitary.

Denk said he didn’t hear about peer support when he was in prison, but that it’s a great help to staff and incarcerated people.

“I wish there was even more of that, because when it comes to clinical staff, there’s only so many of them,” Denk said. 

The following solitary confinement proposals were labeled red, meaning there are obstacles to implementing them:

• Providing each incarcerated person with at least two hours of time outside their cell each day. 
• Tracking how much time incarcerated people spend outside their cells in real time, and tracking their participation in programming. 
• Staff from different disciplines reviewing the “status, programming and needs” of people in solitary each week, instead of every 30 days. Under current policy, if a person has a solitary sentence of 60 days or more and a serious mental illness — such as schizophrenia or clinical depression — reviews must take place at least every other week.

Under another proposal marked red, the department would have a method to understand the root causes behind why an incarcerated person is repeatedly being placed in solitary confinement. Prison staff would develop individualized plans for these people to try to break the cycle. 

For example, if a person keeps ending up in solitary because they have received threats and fear the area of the prison where the general population of incarcerated people live, staff could work with the person to identify specific areas where they would feel safe, the Falcon report suggests.

Over two-thirds of people sent to restrictive housing for over 120 days were on the department’s lists of people identified to be receiving mental health services, the report found; 17% of people sent for over 120 days met the definition of having a “serious mental illness,” such as schizophrenia or clinical depression.

Incarcerated people can be placed in solitary due to safety concerns about them staying in the general population, but most placements are punishment for a violation. 

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By a traditional count, the Wisconsin Department of Corrections accounts for about 28.5% of state employees, according to the 2025-27 state budget.

The total number of full-time-equivalent positions in state government is 74,426.

But that includes 38,239 Universities of Wisconsin positions. 

UW employees, who are funded largely by federal funding, tuition and other revenue, typically are excluded from such counts.

Excluding UW employees, the state FTE total is 36,187.

Corrections’ 10,328 positions account for 28.5% of that.

The next-largest departments are Health Services (6,741 positions) and Transportation (3,258).

Wisconsin Watch reported in May that Wisconsin’s prison population is heading toward a record high, with women’s prisons 78% over capacity and men’s facilities 30% over capacity.

Wisconsin Watch’s prison tracker shows that as of May 1, the adult prison population was 23,577. The record of 23,826 was set in 2019.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

• Legislative Fiscal Bureau: Comparative Summary of Provisions: 2025 Wisconsin Act 15
• Wisconsin Watch: Wisconsin’s prison population is heading toward a record high. Track the trend here.
• Wisconsin Watch: Wisconsin prison population tracker

Do more than a quarter of Wisconsin state employees work for the Corrections Department? 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Women’s prisons are the most crowded

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

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

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

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

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

Since then, the facility has added nearly 170 women. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Overcrowding limits education, training 

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

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

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

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

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

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

How we got here

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What’s the solution?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Watch reporter Addie Costello contributed to this report.

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