However, William Sulton, SDC’s attorney, said that staff doing new work is precisely how former employees are going to get paid.
“I would say … the way that those folks are going to get paid is by the organization reopening and submitting the required reporting documentation to get paid on grants,” Sulton said.
Who does SDC owe?
As of last week, 45 people have unresolved claims concerning pay from SDC, according to a spokesperson for the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, the state agency that handles employment and labor-related disputes.
Sulton also said that among these 45 employees are highly paid employees like George Hinton, SDC’s former CEO who resigned at the request of SDC’s Board of Commissioners.
The Department of Workforce Development did not provide a clear timeline for when it will make a decision about people’s claims, but the investigator assigned to these claims is actively working on them, the department’s spokesperson said.
Sulton said he believes there is a path for how former employees will be paid: new, or rehired, employees providing services.
If SDC hadn’t brought in employees to do new work, grant money couldn’t be accessed to resolve Department of Workforce Development claims, Sulton said.
The quasi-governmental community action agency provides a variety of programs and services to meet the needs of low-income residents in Milwaukee County.
Case-by-case basis
But making a claim with the Department of Workforce Development does not guarantee that person will get the full amount they say they’re owed.
Each claim is being evaluated individually, and there are some disputes, Sulton said.
“For example, there’s one employee whose time we’re unable to confirm. There’s one employee who claims that she had a conversation with their supervisor and the former supervisor promised her an increase in pay,” Sulton said.
A common theme among claims is about getting paid out for unused paid time off, Sulton said.
Department of Workforce Development staff are assisting former employees with supplying the right documentation, which can include pay stubs, records they kept or other communications, according to the spokesperson.
Woods thought ahead in this regard.
“On the last day, I just was taking screenshots and printing whatever I needed and emailing to myself,” she said.
Some progress
Since the April layoffs, SDC has paid $51,000 toward what it owes people, Sulton said.
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Wisconsin budgets nearly $463,000 a year to incarcerate each child at the state’s beleaguered Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake schools, a figure that has ballooned over a decade as enrollment has plummeted.
A new Department of Corrections budget request would nearly double that figure to about $862,000 a year — 58 times what taxpayers spend on the average K-12 public school student.
Experts attribute the enrollment trends and costs to demographic changes, a paradigm shift from large youth prisons to smaller regional facilities and scandals on the campus that made judges hesitant to send teens to Lincoln Hills.
Wisconsin budgets nearly $463,000 a year to incarcerate each child at the state’s beleaguered juvenile prison complex in the North Woods, a figure that has ballooned over a decade as enrollment has plummeted.
A new Department of Corrections budget request would nearly double that figure to about $862,000 a year — 58 times what taxpayers spend on the average K-12 public school student.
It comes as efforts to close the Lincoln County complex — home to Lincoln Hills School for boys and Copper Lake School for girls — and build a new youth prison in Milwaukee have slowed to a crawl.
Six years after the Legislature approved the closure plan, Republican lawmakers and Democratic Gov. Tony Evers are blaming each other during funding and policy disagreements that have delayed the closure.
A 2018 legal settlement restricted how guards could discipline youth. That followed a series of scandals involving allegations of inhumane conditions, such as frequent use of pepper spray, strip searches and mechanical restraints and solitary confinement.
Republicans earlier this year pushed to lift pepper spray restrictions after a 16-year-old incarcerated at Lincoln Hills struck a counselor in the face, resulting in his death. A judge denied requests to alter the settlement in a dispute that has added to closure delays, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
A memorial to Corey Proulx, a Lincoln Hills School counselor who died in June 2024 following an assault by a 16-year-old prisoner, is shown on Nov. 1, 2024, in Irma, Wis. Proulx’s death prompted calls from Republican lawmakers to lift restrictions on pepper spray use at the youth prison. (Drake White-Bergey for Wisconsin Watch)
Meanwhile, the facility’s population is dwindling. As of late November, it served just 41 boys and 18 girls on a campus designed for more than 500 youth.
Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service spoke to judges, lawmakers, former prison staff and researchers about the eye-popping price tag to incarcerate fewer young people. They attributed the trends to demographic changes, a paradigm shift from large youth prisons to smaller regional facilities and scandals on the campus that made judges hesitant to send teens to Lincoln Hills.
“No judge wants to send a kid to Lincoln Hills,” said Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Laura Crivello, who has presided over juvenile cases. “You feel like you’re damning the kid. And if you look at the recidivism rates that come out of Lincoln Hills, you pretty much are damning a kid.”
Here’s a closer look at the numbers.
Who sets budgets for youth prisons?
Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake schools are the state’s only youth prisons, but they are among four main state facilities for young people convicted of serious juvenile offenses. The others are Mendota Mental Health Institute, a psychiatric hospital in Madison that treats youth involved in the juvenile justice system, and Grow Academy, a residential incarceration-alternative program outside of Madison.
The Legislature sets uniform daily rates that counties pay to send youth to any of the locations — spreading costs across all facilities.
In 2015, lawmakers approved a daily rate of $284 per juvenile across all four facilities, or nearly $104,000 a year. This year’s rate is $1,268 a day, or nearly $463,000 annually.
The annual per-student rate would jump to about $841,000 in 2025 and nearly $862,000 in 2026 if the Legislature approves the latest Department of Corrections funding request.
By contrast, Wisconsin spent an annual average of $14,882 per student in K-12 public schools in 2023, according to the Wisconsin Policy Forum.
Why have costs ballooned?
A campus built for more than 500 is mostly underused as enrollment declines, but taxpayers must still pay to maintain the same large space. It affects county budgets since they pay for youth they send to state juvenile correctional facilities.
Fixed infrastructure and staffing costs account for the largest share of expenses, said department spokesperson Beth Hardtke. Spreading the costs among fewer juveniles inflates the per capita price tag.
But taxpayers haven’t seen overall savings from the steep drop in enrollment either. The state in 2015 budgeted about $25.9 million for the Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake complex. That number climbed to about $31.3 million by 2023 with the addition of staff — a cost increase nearly in line with inflation during that period.
Driving requests to further hike rates: The Department of Corrections seeks $19.4 million in 2026 and $19.8 million in 2027 to expand Mendota Mental Health Institute’s capacity from 29 beds for boys to 93 beds serving girls or boys — an expansion required by state law.
The expansion requires adding 123 positions at the facility. Such additions affect calculations for the rates of all state facilities for incarcerated juveniles, including Lincoln Hills.
Why are there fewer incarcerated students?
The trends driving high costs at Lincoln Hills started more than 20 years ago, said Jason Stein, president of the Wisconsin Policy Forum.
First, Wisconsin is home to increasingly fewer young people.
The state’s population of youth under 18 has been shrinking. The state saw a 3.2% dip between 2012 and 2021 — from 1,317,004 juveniles to 1,274,605 juveniles, according to a Legislative Fiscal Bureau report.
Juvenile arrests in Wisconsin dropped by 66% during the same period.
Meanwhile, judges became reluctant to sentence juveniles to Lincoln Hills — even before abuse allegations escalated and prompted authorities to raid the campus in 2015.
“I was the presiding judge at Children’s Court, when we blew open the fact that kids weren’t getting an education and they were having their arms broken,” said Mary Triggiano, an adjunct professor at Marquette University Law School and former District 1 Circuit Court chief judge.
“But we knew before that there were problems with Lincoln Hills because we watched the recidivism rates. We would bring in DOC and say: ‘Tell me what kind of services you’re going to give. Tell me why they’re not in school. Tell me why you’re keeping them in segregation for hours and hours and hours’ — when we know that’s awful for kids who experience trauma.”
This aerial view shows the Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake schools, the state’s youth prison in Irma in northern Wisconsin. (Google Earth)
Enrollment dropped and costs increased, but outcomes didn’t improve.
More than 61% of the 131 boys who left Lincoln Hills in 2018 committed a new offense within three years, while about 47% of the 15 girls who left Copper Lake reoffended. The recidivism rate for boys during that period was roughly the same as it was for those released in 2014. The rate for girls was worse than the nearly 42% it was four years earlier.
Stein compared Lincoln Hills to a restaurant that tries to compensate for lost customers by raising meal prices. If prices keep rising, customers will look for a different restaurant, he said.
“That, in a nutshell, is how you get into this spiral where you’re seeing fewer residents, higher rates, and greater costs for counties,” Stein said. “Then it’s just rinse and repeat.”
How much do other states spend to incarcerate youth?
Wisconsin is not the only state spending hundreds of thousands of dollars per juvenile it incarcerates.
A 2020 Justice Policy Institute report showed Wisconsin spent less than the national average in 2020. But Wisconsin’s per-juvenile costs have since more than tripled as Lincoln Hills remains open and incarcerates fewer young people.
Incarcerating juveniles is generally more expensive than it is for adults, said Ryan King, director of research and policy at Justice Policy Institute. Rehabilitation plays a bigger role in juvenile corrections, and those programs cost more. Incarcerated children typically access more counseling, education and case management programs.
States nationwide are rethinking their approach to youth incarceration as crime rates fall and more research shows how prison damages children, King said.
“There was an acknowledgement that locking kids up was not only failing to make communities safer, but it was making kids worse, and really just putting them in a position where they were more likely to end up in the adult system,” he said.
How is Wisconsin trying to reshape juvenile justice?
In 2018, then-Gov. Scott Walker signed Act 185, designed to restructure the state’s juvenile justice system. The law kicked off plans for a new state youth prison in Milwaukee and authorized counties to build their own secure, residential care centers.
Milwaukee and Racine counties are moving forward on such plans to build these centers. The centers function similarly to county jails: County officials operate them under Department of Corrections oversight. Officials hope keeping youth closer to home will help them maintain family connections.
“We have always pushed smaller is better. You can’t warehouse young people like you do adults,” said Sharlen Moore, a Milwaukee alderwoman and co-founder of Youth Justice Milwaukee. “Their brain just doesn’t comprehend things in that way.”
The law aimed to close troubled Lincoln Hills and give judges more options at sentencing while balancing the needs of juvenile offenders and the public. But those options have yet to fully develop.
Today’s alternative programs typically have limited space and extensive waitlists. That won’t be fixed until more regional facilities go online.
How else could Wisconsin spend on troubled youth?
Triggiano, now director of the Marquette Law School’s Andrew Center for Restorative Justice, was astounded to learn youth incarceration costs could nearly double next year.
“You just want to drop to your knees because if I had that money, we had that money, what could we do differently?” she said.
She quickly offered ideas: programs that recognize how traumatic experiences shape behavior, violence prevention outreach in schools, community mentorship programs — evidence-based practices shown to help children and teens. Milwaukee County had worked to create some of those programs before funding was pulled, Triggiano said.
“It all got blown up in a variety of ways at every juncture,” she said. “Now there’s going to be an attachment to the secure detention facility because that’s all people could muster up after being slammed down every time we tried to do something that we thought was going to work.”
“The cost of sending one young person to Lincoln Hills would be enough to pay several young people working jobs over summer or the span of the school year,” says Rep. Darrin Madison, D-Milwaukee. He is shown here speaking during a press conference on Sept. 10, 2024, at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
State Rep. Darrin Madison, D-Milwaukee, echoed Triggiano and offered additional spending suggestions, such as housing resources, mental health support and summer jobs programs.
“The cost of sending one young person to Lincoln Hills would be enough to pay several young people working jobs over summer or the span of the school year,” Madison said.
Wisconsin’s disproportionate spending on incarcerating its young people runs counter to the Wisconsin Idea, its historical commitment to education, he added.
“We’re so committed to incarcerating people that we’re willing to eat the cost of doing so, as opposed to making investments in deterrence and getting at the root cause of the problems.”
Share your Lincoln Hills story
If you or someone you know has spent time in Lincoln Hills or Copper Lake schools — whether as an incarcerated juvenile or a staff member — we want to hear from you. Your perspectives could inform our follow-up coverage of these issues. Email reporter Mario Koran at mkoran@wisconsinwatch.org to get in touch.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Transfr, a New York company, seeks to put virtual reality technology in the hands of people who are incarcerated in Wisconsin, hoping they can overcome barriers to employment once released.
“It’s life-changing for an individual to be able to come out of incarceration with actual career pathways,” said Ruben Gaona, executive director of My Way Out, an organization that supports people who are leaving reincarceration and one of Transfr’s local collaborators.
“They’d be able to go out into the community and say, ‘OK, you know what: I’m not only here to get a job, I’m out here to get a career.’”
Avoiding reincarceration
Research has found that a criminal record leads to a 50% reduction in callbacks and job offers.
The Wisconsin Department of Corrections, among others, reports that the more likely someone with a criminal record is employed, the less likely the person is to return to incarceration.
According to the department’s 2022 report, people who “completed vocational programming had lower rearrest, reconviction and reincarceration rates … compared to their peers who were identified as having a vocational programming need but who did not receive programming.”
“From a personal and professional standpoint, I can tell you that a good-paying, career-supporting job is very essential to someone staying out and keeping that recidivism rate down,” said Andre Brown, employment specialist with Project RETURN, a reentry nonprofit established nearly 50 years ago.
For all the talk about pipelines into prison, Brown and his colleagues are trying to create a pipeline out of prison.
“If one can support themselves, pay their bills, take care of their family and have some fulfillment, one has no time to think of crime,” Brown said.
Inside and outside
My Way Out provides six weeks of training and education to people inside Milwaukee County Community Reintegration Center, a county-run correctional facility. This support is designed to help people with job searches, including résumé writing and interviewing skills.
With Transfr, Gaona and his team see an opportunity to expand their support by adding four weeks of virtual reality training for in-demand vocations, in fields such as construction, manufacturing, hospitality and health care.
My Way Out staff also want to bring these resources to state prisons overseen by the Department of Corrections.
“People will be able to come out (of incarceration) and take apprenticeship tests, so they’d start getting placement in apprenticeship programs and secure living-wage jobs,” said Gaona.
Funding obstacle
Funding is the main obstacle to getting this technology into the hands of people who are incarcerated.
The Department of Corrections does not have a budget for this type of technology but suggested that Transfr reach out to Wisconsin Workforce Development Boards, which partner with the department in reentry work, Beth Hardtke, director of communications for the Department of Corrections, said in an email.
Ryan Leonhardt, state workforce manager for Transfr, said the company has had conversations with these boards but, for the most part, has heard that funding is not currently available from them as well.
My Way Out applied for a grant that would help provide funding to work with Transfr, but its request was denied.
Opportunities
Transfr offers more than 350 trainings, all 12 to 20 minutes, which teach foundational skills within various fields, Leonhardt said.
“If somebody is learning how to use calipers, they pick up calipers in the virtual environment. They set the calipers using the controls. They actually do the measurements,” said Leonhardt, explaining how Transfr users learn about this measurement tool common in engineering, metalworking and woodworking. “And then the final thing is they get step-by-step instruction from a digital coach, who then turns around and gives them an assessment.”
Transfr also provides career explorations. Like the trainings, these are hands-on and guided by a coach but are five- to eight-minute experiences of a day in the life of a job “so people can get an idea of what it’s like,” Leonhardt said.
Better trained workers are beneficial not just for the people getting trained but for the wider economy as well because of nationwide workforce shortages, Leonhardt said.
“Right now, the labor markets are such a way that if someone can come in and they have foundational skills … they’re going to have better chances for employment because they’re going to be able to meet their (employers’) needs right away,” he said.
Marshall Jones and his wife, Jessica, have an expression they use when worries about the future threaten to overwhelm them.
“Here is holy,” they tell each other.
“We have to continue to be mindful of the steps that we have to take to build this life today,” Marshall Jones said.
As Marshall Jones, who grew up on Milwaukee’s North Side, serves two consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole, the way he and his wife build their today centers around faith in God and family.
‘A bond started to be built’
In 2019, Marshall was incarcerated at New Lisbon Correctional Institution in Dodge County, about 15 years into his sentence, when he met Jessica Christensen, the prison’s new recreational leader.
He was assigned to be one of her workers.
“Then, being a normal human being, I stuck my hand out to shake his hand … and he threw his hands up and said, ‘I can’t touch you,’” Jessica said.
Initially offended, she learned that he was looking out for her.
Had they touched, she would’ve been written up for inappropriate contact, which the Wisconsin Department of Corrections explicitly regulates.
“I just saw in that moment that a narrative can be painted about a simple handshake … ,” Marshall said. “From that point, a bond started to be built.”
From acquaintance to fellowship
At New Lisbon, Jessica oversaw recreation, including exercise programs and athletic tournaments.
“I did anything that was active to get them off their sedentary lifestyle,” Jessica said.
The effects on the men were not merely physical, she said.
“You’re in there and you’re constantly thinking, ‘What did I do? I’m worthless, and there’s nothing good about me,’” Jessica said. “But you know, these guys started to feel better about themselves. ”
Eventually, Marshall began working more directly within recreational programming.
“I noticed he was a leader,” Jessica said. “He was all about helping the men around him.”
The professional relationship had an extra element.
“We learned we were brother and sister in Christ. So, there was a different level of conversation that we would have,” Jessica said. “It wasn’t crossing boundaries, it was sharing what we were learning about our faith.”
After New Lisbon
After six months, Jessica was let go from New Lisbon for, she was told, not meeting probationary standards.
“I loved impacting the men that were incarcerated and humanizing them,” she said. “And I knew I couldn’t do that anymore.”
But something unexpected happened as she was leaving the prison.
“I remember walking away from the institution, and I audibly heard in my ear, ‘Write to him.’ And I believe with all my heart that it was the Holy Spirit telling me to write Marshall Jones,” Jessica said.
That same day, they began corresponding.
Jessica and Marshall Jones on their wedding day, Nov. 1, 2022. (Courtesy of Jessica Jones)
“And it just developed into this beautiful relationship,” Jessica said. “ It’s amazing because we’ve gotten to experience every level of relationship with each other – a professional relationship and then a friendship and then a relationship and, now, a marriage.”
Marshall said he was not expecting this transformation.
“I didn’t want to be in a relationship, to be honest with you,” he said. “I got crashed and burned so many times that I didn’t want no part of it.”
They cannot pinpoint a specific moment things changed because it all happened organically, said Jessica.
Marshall proposed three times – by letter, phone and, finally, in person.
Her family supports the marriage, she said, and her kids see Marshall as their stepfather.
“My mom has completely changed in this relationship,” said Falicia Jones, Jessica’s daughter.
“Marshall really knows how to just settle her down and bring a calmness over her life in a way that I’ve never seen,” she said.
‘The unseen of believing’
Marshall and Jessica married on Nov. 1, 2022, in commemoration of Hebrews 11:1, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
“That truly is our marriage,” Jessica said. “You know, the unseen of believing that my husband is going to come home and that I’m going to share a life with him.”
“Based on his circumstances, his attitude and frame of mind are pretty amazing,” added Andrew Reavis, Jessica’s brother. “Just knowing that he may never get out, and just the positivity he has and the moving forward and the faith he has that he is going to get out despite what the state says.”
Marshall and Jessica still put their faith at the center of their thinking regarding a release date.
“God doesn’t make mistakes, and he doesn’t put people together for no reason whatsoever,” Marshall said.
“We’ve entrusted our faith to God that he’s going to absolutely free me from this. But no matter where we go, and what problems we address, we still deal with today,” he said.
What Gawaine Edwards would like to do with his remaining 12 years in prison and what he is able to do are worlds apart.
“I’m being forced to stay in a place that has absolutely nothing for me. It’s not teaching me anything,” Edwards said.
Edwards points to the elimination of parole, which took place in Wisconsin more than 20 years ago, as the central reason for his predicament.
As some legislators propose reforms, Edwards said, his time, and the time of many others, is being wasted.
He’s not being as productive as he wants, not learning what he wants and, in his opinion, not being effectively rehabilitated.
“I’m stuck here doing all this dead time,” Edwards said.
Edwards has served time in various prisons in the state and is currently at New Lisbon Correctional Institution, located in Juneau County, the central region of the state.
Edwards’ backstory
Gawaine Edwards poses with his wife at New Lisbon Correctional Institution. Edwards has been incarcerated for more than 20 years and wants more opportunities to
use his time productively. (Photo courtesy of Gawaine Edwards)
Edwards, who grew up on Milwaukee’s North Side, was charged with felony murder/armed robbery and first-degree reckless injury in November 2000.
He was found guilty on both charges and, at the age of 22, sentenced to a total of 35 years in prison and 15 years of extended supervision.
As it stands, Edwards will be released from prison in April 2036, at the age of 57.
But he believes that his debt to society has already been paid in full.
He wants to get out and help his wife more – she’s a small business owner who also has had health issues recently.
He also has adult children he would like to spend more time with.
“I never got a chance to be a dad because I got locked up,” Edwards said.
What is truth in sentencing?
Edwards cannot be released for another 12 years because he committed his crime after the enactment of 1997 Wisconsin Act 283, more commonly known as the truth-in-sentencing law.
This law changed prison sentences from indeterminate to determinate, which means that the amount of time a person must serve is determined by the judge at time of sentencing and cannot be reduced later with parole.
Wisconsin’s truth-in-sentencing law was part of a national trend of states adopting such laws – with the main goal of eliminating what was seen as the troubling gap between a person’s sentence and the amount of time they actually served.
“The politics were pretty similar surrounding all of these laws. They were adopted in the 1990s when ‘tough on crime’ politics were at their height,” said Michael O’Hear, law professor at Marquette University Law School and an expert on criminal punishment.
While there have been some adjustments to the original truth-in-sentencing law, “the basic architecture” remains the same, O’Hear said.
“The (Wisconsin) Parole Commission is completely out of the business of doing anything at all with respect to crimes that were committed on or after Dec. 31, 1999,” he said.
Because of the nature of his offenses, Edwards also is unlikely to benefit from other avenues of securing an earlier release.
Those convicted of a violent offense are generally ineligible for sentence adjustment provisions and earned release programs, said Jillian Slaight, managing legislative analyst at the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau.
Quantity vs. quality
However, Edwards still cares how he spends his time.
Much of his time currently is spent at his job inside New Lisbon. He earns about 17 cents an hour pushing people in their wheelchairs to health appointments.
Edwards said he wants to go to a different prison where he can “do something that’s beneficial to me, to where, if I did get out, I can make money.”
After more than 20 years of incarceration, he feels he deserves a shot at a work-release program, which allows incarcerated individuals to work outside the prison while still serving their sentences.
Work-release programs are designed to develop people’s future employability and simply help them earn more money. These programs are available within the Wisconsin Department of Corrections but to those at minimum-security prisons.
New Lisbon is a medium-security prison.
The Department of Corrections’ policy explicitly outlines how a person’s sentence length factors into a person’s custody classification, which, in turn, determines programming eligibility.
Rock and a hard place
Another factor to consider is that what is theoretically available in prisons is not what is always actually available.
Two of the vocational programs that have been offered in the past at New Lisbon – bakery and cabinetry – are currently shut down.
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and the Department of Corrections have pointed to chronic staffing shortages as a reason why typical programming and resources are not always available.
With many of the educational and treatment programs, demand is higher than capacity, said Kevin Hoffman, deputy director of communications at the Department of Corrections.
“Gov. Evers and our leadership have consistently supported funding for new programming initiatives,” Hoffman said.
While there have been salary increases for security staff, these raises do not apply to teachers and health care professionals.
As the department looks to recruit staff to resume cabinetry and baking at New Lisbon, it does have a framing course and customer service training running, Hoffman said.
Current reform efforts
“Certainly those of us on the left know that it (truth-in-sentencing) has been a disaster,” said Rep. Ryan Clancy, D-Milwaukee.
Clancy, along with others, argues that truth-in-sentencing laws do not help people who are incarcerated nor do they contribute to public safety.
“I’ve heard from many current and former correctional officers and people who are or were incarcerated that truth-in-sentencing does not encourage rehabilitation because there is no incentive for good behavior,” said Rep. Darrin Madison, D-Milwaukee. “Instead, it can cause individuals to lose hope, knowing nothing will change their sentence and only ‘dead time’ awaits.”
Both Clancy and Madison are members of the state’s Assembly Committee on Corrections, which reviews and amends legislation relating to the correctional system.
The Department of Corrections provides a similar analysis as Clancy and Madison do.
The department also maintains that prisons are made more dangerous for both staff and those incarcerated without effective programming and rehabilitation, Hoffman said.
Encouraging better choices
Rep. Jerry O’Connor, R-Fond du Lac, also on the corrections committee, said in an email that he does not believe rehabilitation was the intent of truth-in-sentencing.
“Truth-in-sentencing was created to affect choices and behavior with the goal of discouraging individuals from crossing specific criminal lines,” he said. “In talking with many inmates over time, truth-in-sentencing is something they are aware of and attempt to avoid.”
“To this extent, there is a measure of benefit to the offenders by encouraging them to make better choices,” O’Connor added.
While O’Connor said that he would like incarcerated individuals to have earlier access to programming, he said it’s also important to “step back and address the balance of who has lost opportunities.”
“How does this victim of sex trafficking ever find normal,” he said. “The murder victim and their families have lost all opportunities for the future.”
Clancy, Madison and other Democratic colleagues proposed a package of 17 bills – called the “Conditions of Confinement” package – to, among other things, improve access to programming and other recreational activities for those who are incarcerated.
The package included 2023 Assembly Bill 771, which would guarantee at least three to five hours per day of programming per individual and lead to “a dramatic difference in the quality of life for individuals currently incarcerated,” Madison said.
This bill failed to pass in April.
“People need to take this issue seriously because there are some of us who actually want to do better and are trying to do better, but we’re stuck in a system where we can’t,” Edwards said.
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