Hundreds of police officers from across the state packed into Elmbrook Church in Brookfield to pay their respects to Milwaukee Police Officer Kendall Corder.
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A state board heard directly on Friday from two Wisconsin brothers who served more than two decades in prison for a murder they didn't commit. David and Robert Bintz are asking for over $2 million each as compensation for their wrongful convictions.
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On “Wisconsin Today,” Evers discussed the next steps for closing the Green Bay Correctional Institution, education funding and reelection plans.
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Immigrant families lacking permanent legal status will no longer qualify for federally funded preschool through the Head Start program, the Trump administration announced this week.
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The younger inhabitants of the hotel find ways to let their hair down; Cecil and Jack shake on a shady deal for the sale of the Ainsworth family heirloom.
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Transylvania goulash; heirloom beans; shredded Swiss chard salad; escarole; beans and greens.
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Roger teaches how to care for orchids; Tom fixes a window that was not hung properly and is now letting air in; Mark demonstrates how to clean brick with acid; […]
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Child care provider Corrine Hendrickson addresses a rally in front of the state Capitol Friday demanding a re-do on the state budget to increase child care funding. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
While Gov. Tony Evers has touted the new state budget’s child care funds as a compromise victory, some providers say they’re deeply disappointed.
“This was not a win,” said Bloomer child care provider Caitlin Mitchell at a rally outside the Capitol Friday morning organized by Wisconsin Early Childhood Action Needed (WECAN). “It was a temporary fix with long-term consequences.”
A press release from Evers’ office after he signed the budget early on July 3 said the document contains “Over $360 million to support Wisconsin’s child care industry and help lower child care costs for working families, a third of which is in direct payments to providers.”
A majority of Democratic lawmakers voted against the budget, citing shortcomings in funding for public schools as well as for child care. Assembly and Senate Democrats who voted in favor of the plan described it as a compromise.
“I really really wish that the governor and the Democrats had just admitted that this was the best that they could do and that it’s still not good,” Corrine Hendrickson, a child care provider and WECAN co-founder, told reporters at the Friday morning rally.
“Everything we’re being told about the budget absolutely does not help children in our state at all,” said WECAN’s other co-founder, Brooke Legler. “The only compromise was the children’s safety. And this isn’t OK.”
WECAN members say that the budget’s child care funding is well short of what they need, and that regulatory changes are bad for providers, families and children.
A pilot program increases Wisconsin Shares payments by up to $200 a month if providers agree to higher ratios of four children to one teacher for children 18 months or younger, and seven children to one teacher for children 18 months to 2½ years old. Wisconsin Shares subsidizes child care for low-income families.
According to Hendrickson, the ratio increase lowers the quality of care, and tying it to the subsidy program treats the poorer children differently than the rest of the children in care.
“Those children deserve to have more time and attention,” she said in her address to the rally. “Their parents are loving, their parents are caring, but their parents are stressed because they’re in poverty and that affects those kids.”
Child care providers should refuse to participate in that pilot, she said.
Another provision lowers the minimum age for an assistant child care teacher to 16 from 18, while retaining the education requirements for the position.
“Sixteen-year-olds are wonderful human beings but they are not teachers of young children,” said Hendrickson.
“Those exact same policies were presented two years ago through the normal process of creating a bill. And we as a state overwhelmingly said no,” said Legler. “It did not even make it out of committee.”
In addition to $110 million in direct payments to providers, the child care total’s other big ticket items include $123 million to increase reimbursements that providers get for children in the Wisconsin Shares subsidy program and $65 million for providers who participate in a new “school readiness” program similar to 4-year-old kindergarten.
The $110 million direct payments, which would end after the budget’s first year, amount to about one-fourth of the $480 million that Evers originally sought. His budget proposal aimed to continue the state’s Child Care Counts program, funded by federal pandemic relief money.
At its height, Child Care Counts paid out $20 million a month and was credited with helping providers boost wages for child care teachers without raising tuition for parents. Two years ago the Evers administration dialed the program back to $10 million a month to stretch out its payments. The federal funds have now run out.
So, no, tuition prices will not be lowering; in fact, they will be going up next month to cover this loss, or providers will be closing their doors, especially in rural areas.
– Letter from child care providers group WECAN to Gov. Tony Evers, criticizing the state budget's child care funding.
In a survey of child care providers earlier this year the University of Wisconsin Institute for Research on Poverty reported that about one in four said they could close without continued payments. Evers cited the survey during the spring while campaigning for his original $480 million child care proposal.
WECAN leaders sent Evers a statement Friday, calling on him to order a special session of the Legislature and seek the full amount of child care support that he originally submitted for the 2025-27 state budget.
“We’re asking Gov. Evers to finish what’s been started,” Mitchell said in her rally speech. “Temporary funding and weakened standards are not enough. We need a comprehensive long-term investment in child care.”
After the 2023-25 budget was enacted without the child care investment that Evers sought, the governor called a special session and introduced a bill that included funding for child care, education and other priorities. The Legislature’s Republican majority rewrote the bill, replacing his provisions with tax cut measures that Evers vetoed.
Hendrickson acknowledged the outcome of the special session call two years ago, but said in an interview that Evers should pursue effort anyway.
“This is the only thing that we can do to keep this in front of everybody, to keep it top of mind,” she said.
“The $110 million over the next 11 months is around 20% less than we are currently receiving,” WECAN’s letter to the governor states. “So, no, tuition prices will not be lowering; in fact, they will be going up next month to cover this loss, or providers will be closing their doors, especially in rural areas.”
The WECAN statement tells Evers that his public assertion that the child care provisions will lower costs “creates confusion and parents will blame us; disrupting our important relationship due to the distrust your words have sown.”
Legler told the Wisconsin Examiner later Friday that when the WECAN group delivered the letter and spoke with Evers’ communications director, Britt Cudaback, the conversation didn’t go well from her perspective.
“We felt very minimized, unheard and condescended to,” Legler said.
Evers’ office has not responded to requests for comment.
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The Waupun prison sits in the middle of a residential neighborhood (Photo | Wisconsin Examiner)
Most of those speaking at the Wisconsin Department of Corrections (DOC) online public hearing on community supervision – parole, probation and extended supervision – said the system is too rigid. Instead of helping people successfully integrate back into society, they said, the system creates a tripwire of rules that can easily be broken and result in too many people being ordered back to prison when supervision is revoked.
The public hearing on July 8 took up proposed rules to amend the DOC’s Administrative Code because of a law passed in April 2014, Act 196, that directs the creation of a system of appropriate short-term sanctions for violation of conditions of supervision. The law sets out eight criteria, including minimizing the impact on the offender’s employment and family, and offers rewards for those complying with conditions of supervision.
Of the 18 members of the public who spoke at the hearing, most addressed the need for implementing the spirit of the 2014 law to create a less burdensome system of community supervision and reduce the number of revocations that in 2023 represented over 30% of those entering prison and in 2024 reached nearly 60%.
Several people who had been on community supervision or were still serving on supervision also spoke and asked that the DOC do more than just provide accountability and make the system less oppressive and also offer resources, such as help obtaining housing.
One of the first to speak was Tom Gilbert, an advocate for WISDOM, a statewide network working on reform of the prison and criminal justice systems and other social justice issues. Gilbert, whose son has twice had supervision revoked, has been pushing since 2019 for the DOC to implement Act 196.
“Act 196 is a good law passed with broad bipartisan support, and it calls for a cultural shift in how the Department of Corrections administers its supervision programs,” he said.
“For many years, WISDOM has called on the department to implement the law and thereby provide a solid alternative to thousands of revocations each year,” he added.
However, Gilbert said, when he read DOC’s proposed rules for implementing the law he was upset that the DOC only stated the eight criteria without creating or describing a system for “new and revised policies and practices.”
Gilbert accused the DOC of not wanting to fulfill the intent of the law.
“This cannot be an oversight. It is a conscious omission,” he said. “To me, it signals that the DOC is not committed to creating a system of short-term sanctions, that it is not serious about shifting the community corrections program from an operation that sabotages the successful reentry of people into their communities to an operation that is focused on healing individuals, families and communities by providing the treatments and supports needed to accomplish that goal.”
People on supervision are trying to live. We're parenting, working, healing and giving back, but we live in fear that one misstep will erase years of progress. You have a chance to change that, to lead with justice instead of fear.
– Marianne Oleson, operations director for Ex Incarcerated People Organizing (EXPO)
Gilbert challenged the DOC’s current protocol of calling 90 days of jail a short-term sanction because, he said, even 60, 30, 21, or 14 days in jail has a negative impact on employment and family.
He also challenged the DOC’s perspective that the rules revision would only impact those on community supervision, vendors and DOC staff.
“The decisions you and your agents make every day regarding people under your supervision widely affect families, employers, health care providers, social service providers, schools — in other words, whole communities and this whole state,” Gilbert said. “The proposed rules should be revised by adding back the language from Act 196 that explains its whole purpose — creating a system of short-term sanctions.”
Sean Wilson, senior director of organizing and partnership of Dream.Org, a national non-profit working on social justice issues, was also critical of the proposed rule for offering no description for short-term sanctions.
“There’s no real short-term sanctions framework,” Wilson said. “Instead of building a system that redirects people before they spiral back into incarceration, this proposal simply restates the existing law; meanwhile, revocations without new convictions in Wisconsin still account for 40% of our prison admissions.” (The rate rose from 40% early in 2024 to nearly 60% at the end of the year)
“Here in this state, there are no guardrails to prevent over-punishment,” Wilson added. “The proposal leaves full revocation on the table for things like substance abuse, missed check-ins, minor violations that are far too often treated as major. There’s no real focus on rehabilitation. There’s no clear investment in helping people reintegrate successfully, and no mention of support, supportive services, trauma-informed care, or reentry pathways.”
He said the rules are “vague about how sanctions will be applied, who will review them, and how racial disparities, which are deeply embedded in our system, will be addressed.”
He also raised concerns about private contractors offering supervision, creating a “financial incentive that undermines fairness and accountability.”
Carol Rubin, a former administrative judge, also encouraged the implementation of Act 196 and was also critical of the proposed rules not fleshing out the intent of the 2014 law.
“I want to express my dismay that DOC has delayed issuing formal rules for Act 196 for 11 years, despite being ordered to issue rules in 2014 by the Wisconsin Legislature,” she said. “In the meantime, thousands of individuals have been denied the benefit of a real, short-term sanction system with trained agents that could have stabilized their new lives in the community.”
Rubin said the DOC should provide examples of how short-term sanctions should be employed to minimize the impact on employment.
“For a low violation, consider imposing a short-term sanction that does not restrict the hours that a client could be available for employment, such as a verbal or written reprimand,” she said. “For a medium or high violation, consider a brief house arrest or weekend jail sanction of two days or less that will not interfere with the client’s current or future hours of employment; if appropriate, a weekend home arrest could be repeated.”
Liz Monroe noted that the DOC’s manual for Evidence Based Response to Violations (EBRV) has two mentions of using rewards, including stating that rewards are “more effective than only using sanctions” and that incentives and rewards are “helpful for compliance and positive behaviour and that there should be at least four rewards for every sanction.”
As a reward for compliance, she encouraged reducing the supervision time, such as 30 days of compliance resulting in 30 fewer days on supervision.
Barbie Jackson, vice president of MOSES, an affiliate of WISDOM, asked for a description that “clearly defines short-term sanctions to assure that they focus on helping people avoid harmful behaviors and fulfill societal obligations, minimize disruption of the impacted person’s employment, minimize the effect on the impacted person’s family and establish incentives and rewards for compliance and positive behavior.”
Jeremy Dings, who said he had been originally sentenced to five years in prison but ended up serving 12 because of two revocations, talked about how he was unable to help his family during a health crisis after he broke a rule and was revoked. He was allso not allowed to attend his mother’s funeral.
“People on supervision have families, too, just like all of you,” he said. “Revocation for rule violation ends the person’s employment and their ability to support their family and themselves.”
Marianne Oleson, operations director for Ex Incarcerated People Organizing (EXPO), noted she had been on supervision for eight years and still had 18 more years to serve.
“I’ve rebuilt my life. Started over with nothing, and dedicated myself to helping others,” she said, “but despite everything I’ve done, I wake up every day with 18 more years of supervision ahead of me, not because I’ve reoffended, not because I’m a danger, but because the system has failed to evolve with science.”
She contended that recent research on community supervision says the ideal period is three to five years.
Oleson noted that her clients include many who have been revoked and sent back to prison for a technical rule violation.
She said the present system often does not have the goal of rehabilitation but “surveillance disguised as support.”
“People on supervision are trying to live,” said Oleson. “We’re parenting, working, healing and giving back, but we live in fear that one misstep will erase years of progress. You have a chance to change that, to lead with justice instead of fear. Please rewrite this to reflect what the courts, the research and those of us directly impacted are telling you. Our futures matter. Please treat us like they do and we do.”
JenAnn Bauer of West Bend who had been in prison and on supervision said that “excessive supervision” creates challenges for rebuilding a life.
“Every job, every lease, every new agent and every step forward comes with extra scrutiny and extra risk,” she said. “I have done everything the system has asked of me. I pay taxes, I’ve reintegrated, I’ve contributed. These things don’t just affect the formerly incarcerated. They affect our families, our children and future generations. When a parent is stuck under financial pressure or the constant threat of being sent back for a technical violation, it creates instability that reaches far beyond one individual, it holds entire families hostage and in survival mode, and that affects the health, safety and future of whole communities and our entire state.”
Robert Thibault, vice president of Prison Action in Milwaukee, said he had been on supervision for 15 years and had experienced a “huge inconsistency” in how supervision was administered depending on the parole or probation officer (PO), adding the attitude of a PO over the interpretation of “arbitrary rules” could result in a revocation.
Meah Flowers of Madison talked of having family members going in and out of prison and the disruption that revocation causes. She encouraged implementing Act 196 to help families.
Eric Howland said there is an expectation that those coming into community supervision obtain employment, housing and a positive social network, but a 90- or 60-day jail sentence for a supervision violation negatively impacts those goals.
Why 11 years?
The DOC has not yet responded to questions from the Examiner on why it has taken 11 years to implement Act 196.
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Wisconsin Fair Maps Coalition signs on a table outside the Capitol meeting room where the coalition took testimony opposing a Republican redistricting proposal. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)
A new lawsuit filed this week in Dane County Circuit Court seeks to have Wisconsin’s congressional maps declared an unconstitutional, anti-competitive gerrymander and thrown out.
The suit, filed Tuesday, is another attempt by Democrats and their allies to have new maps drawn before the 2026 midterm elections. Just a few weeks ago, the Wisconsin Supreme Court declined to hear two challenges to the current congressional districts.
Republicans currently hold six of the state’s eight congressional districts. Democrats have focused on southern Wisconsin’s First District, currently held by Rep. Bryan Steil, and western Wisconsin’s Third District, currently held by Rep. Derrick Van Orden, as possible targets.
The current maps were drawn by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and selected by the state Supreme Court, which was at the time controlled by conservatives. In that case, the Court had ruled that any proposed maps must follow a “least change” standard and adhere as closely as possible to the maps installed by Republicans in 2011.
The new lawsuit was filed at the local level, rather than directly with the Supreme Court as an original action, a slower process but perhaps more likely to be taken up by the Court — which has declined to hear challenges to the congressional maps a handful of times in the last few years, despite the Court’s liberal wing gaining majority control after the 2023 Supreme Court election.
The new suit was filed by attorneys from voting rights focused Law Forward on behalf of the bipartisan business group Wisconsin Business Leaders for Democracy Coalition, arguing that the current maps are unconstitutional because they’re anti-competitive. Previous challenges to the maps argued the districts were rigged to benefit the Republican party and violated equal protection laws.
“Wisconsin’s current congressional plan presents a textbook example of an anti-competitive gerrymander,” the lawsuit states. “Anti-competitive gerrymanders are every bit as noxious to democracy as partisan gerrymanders and racial gerrymanders.”
The lawsuit adds that Wisconsin’s maps are an “anti-competitive gerrymander that artificially suppresses electoral competition.” The suit argues that when the congressional maps were drawn in 2011, the lines were drawn to protect incumbents of both parties. When those maps were largely kept intact by the Supreme Court’s “least change” standard in 2021, the decision to insulate incumbents was carried over.
“After the Wisconsin Legislature adopted the 2011 congressional map, congressional races over the ensuing decade were, as intended, highly uncompetitive,” the lawsuit states, noting that only one congressional election under those maps was decided by less than 10 percentage points. “The Court’s adoption … of the ‘least change’ congressional map necessarily perpetuated the essential features — and the primary flaws — of the 2011 congressional map, including the 2011 congressional map’s intentional and effective effort to suppress competition.”
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Nichole Robarge, right, describes the challenges faced by people with disabilities she assists when enrolling in Medicaid. With her is Kathleen Cummings, who provides similar assistance to people 60 and older. Both said impending changes to the program are likely to increase those challenges. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
With the Congressional mega-bill that cuts $1 trillion from Medicaid now law, people who have relied for their health care on the state-federal insurance plan and their advocates are scrambling to figure out how and when it will hit home.
The timing of many of the law’s changes is still uncertain.
“This bill was written very hastily,” said Tami Jackson, policy analyst for the Wisconsin Board for People with Development Disabilities (BPDD), at a discussion of the law Thursday morning in the Wisconsin Capitol.
“There are implementation dates for various pieces of Medicaid that are not all in alignment,” Jackson said. “So, you’re going to get this in waves.”
Janet Zander of the Greater Wisconsin Agency on Aging Resources paraphrased promises from members of Congress who publicly defended the bill.
“It’s really easy to listen to what we’re hearing about — ‘This isn’t going to harm us here in Wisconsin. We’re not doing anything that’s going to hurt older adults, people with disabilities, low-income families,’” Zander said. “Those of us who are working in these programs know that’s not the case at all.”
The new law imposes requirements for Medicaid participants to work or be preparing for work — although a majority already are working — or else be approved as exempt from having to meet the requirement.
That provision’s implementation date of Jan. 1, 2027 is less than 18 months away, Jackson said. And it could be up to a year before the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) produces an administrative rule to direct states on how they manage the requirement.
That doesn’t allow for much time to work out “20 or 30 unanswered questions” about how to require people to demonstrate they’re working, qualify for an exemption or prove that they’re exempt, Jackson said.
The added requirements will also impose new demands on agencies in charge of implementing the Medicaid changes in each state, as well as county agencies that help people navigate the program.
“If you are ramping up the workload and how much people have to do, and ramping up the staffing it takes to do that, that’s a lot more that counties are going to be doing locally, or will have to do,” Jackson said. “That’s going to exacerbate how many people lose coverage.”
Other items have no implementation date — which is usually interpreted as taking effect with the bill’s signing, said William Parke-Sutherland, government affairs director at Kids Forward.
“This bill, which is being kind of talked about as a tax and spending bill, is really a health care redesign bill, and it makes the most substantive changes to the health care system that we’ve seen since the Affordable Care Act,” Parke-Sutherland said.
That national health care law had four years to be implemented. With the new Medicaid changes, “we have no time in comparison.”
But the probable long-term impact remains dire, advocates said — making it harder for people to get coverage and keep coverage.
Taking together the projected loss of Medicaid coverage as well as the projected loss of Affordable Care Act coverage for low-income people who lose subsidies for their premiums that expire at the end of this year, as many as 17 million people in the U.S. could lose health care and long-term care coverage, Zander said.
The state Department of Health Services estimated in April that at least 52,000 Wisconsin residents could lose Medicaid coverage. Changes the Senate made in the bill will likely increase those estimates, however, according to advocates.
As ultimately passed by the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives and signed into law by President Donald Trump, the legislation has thrown new barriers in front of the nation’s safety-net programs, including Medicaid as well as the federal food aid program, SNAP.
Existing barriers were already very high, advocates said.
Kathleen Cummings works for the Columbia County Aging and Disability Resource Center assisting people who are 60 or older applying for Medicaid and other benefit programs. Based on their annual income and total assets, some people on Medicare also qualify for Medicaid to cover their out-of-pocket Medicare costs.
Cummings recounted the experience of a woman who had qualified for Medicaid but recently contacted her because she was getting bills for her health care. The woman accidentally failed to renew her Medicaid coverage when the renewal form she received got buried in a flurry of other Medicaid-related mail, Cummings said.
Under current law the client can get coverage retroactively for bills incurred in the last three months. But with the new law, “that will be changing to 30 days, so we will not, in the future, be able to request that backdated coverage for bills under the situation that she is in,” Cummings said.
Another client has had extensive treatment for lung cancer, she said. The man “is just barely, barely over the federal poverty level” — about $1,300 a month.
“A lot of my clients are very proud and do what they can with what they have,” Cummings said. “But when something like lung cancer comes along, he’s suddenly faced with all these bills that he only had limited coverage [for].”
She’s helping the man apply for Medicaid coverage backdated three months to cover those bills, she said. “Once he shows proof that he qualified, which he will, [he can] get some of these bills paid.”
Nichole Robarge also works for the Columbia County ARDC, helping people from ages 16 to 59 who qualify for federal Supplemental Security Income (SSI) disability benefits and other programs.
Robarge said that currently the disability application takes 12 to 18 months for a decision. As many as 85% of applications are denied at first, she said, and about 20% get overturned on appeal, which takes another 18 to 24 months. A second appeal, with a hearing before an administrative law judge, can take another two years.
In Wisconsin, approval for SSI automatically qualifies a person for Medicaid coverage. Until the SSI decision is resolved, however, the applicant has to apply for Medicaid separately, Robarge said — something that a disability can make much more difficult.
She pulled out the Medicaid application, which currently must be completed annually — a 41-page document that is a half-inch thick.
“Can you imagine getting one of these in the mail and having a cognitive disability or a physical disability, or maybe you had a stroke?…Or maybe you can’t read at all,” Robarge said.
“I bought a house and had less paperwork. I’ve bought a car and I’ve had less paperwork than what it takes to fill one of these out,” she added. “It’s tedious and it’s treacherous … This first barrier is huge, and this is even without getting the documents that you need to provide the proof that they’re asking for.”
The new law is poised to make those delays worse, advocates argue — blocking people from Medicaid coverage even though they meet the program’s qualifications.
“Medicaid is a wildly complicated program,” said Lisa Hassenstab, public policy manager for Disability Rights Wisconsin. “What we’ve seen in this bill is that all of these little changes [and] the unintended consequences, because people don’t understand what the program is. They don’t understand what it is, and so they don’t understand what the impact of these changes is really going to be.”
One thing the law won’t do, advocates said, is protect taxpayers.
“It won’t protect me,” said Tyler Engel, whose Medicaid coverage enables him to live more independently in the community with coverage for his caregivers.
“This bill saves money by making it so that, for somebody who is now currently eligible for health care, the provider who provides that care is not going to get paid,” Parke-Sutherland said. “This saves money by people who are currently eligible for health insurance” with federal help “not getting health insurance or having to pay more for it. That’s the only way that this bill saves money.”
Two-thirds of Medicaid participants are working, and therefore they are taxpayers, too, Jackson said.
“It’s a cost shift to the taxpayers,” said Jackson, because when people aren’t covered by Medicaid, “somebody else picks that up — whether it’s uncompensated care, whether it’s a medical bankruptcy, whether it’s your private insurance or your group premium going up.”
“If you stop paying for care, people’s care needs don’t go away,” Parke-Sutherland said. “You still pay. So this isn’t a boon to the taxpayers.”
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Wisconsin will receive an estimated $1 billion more annually in federal funds for Medicaid because the state budget includes a change that pre-empts a provision in President Donald Trump’s big bill.
Trump’s bill would have prevented Wisconsin from raising its hospital tax.
But days before Trump signed it, the Republican-led Legislature and Democratic Gov. Tony Evers approved a 2025-27 state budget that raises Wisconsin’s hospital tax from 1.8% to 6%.
The increase will raise some $1 billion more annually in federal matching funds that the state can use to pay hospitals for care they provide Medicaid patients.
Wisconsin’s largest Medicaid program is BadgerCare Plus, which provides health insurance to about 1 million low-income people age 64 and under.
Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, who represents western Wisconsin, claimed that Trump’s bill “secured” the $1 billion.
The bill cuts roughly $1 trillion over 10 years from Medicaid, which costs nearly $900 billion annually.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Does Donald Trump’s big bill provide an additional $1 billion annually for Wisconsin’s Medicaid program? 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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‘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.
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