Editor’s note, May 27, 2025: The Access Corrections website was back online on May 26. Multiple people told WPR and Wisconsin Watch they could transfer funds to Wisconsin prisoners following the restoration.

The online system Wisconsin prisoners rely on to receive money from loved ones recently crashed, leaving them unable to pay for items like extra food and hygiene products. 

The Wisconsin Department of Corrections contracts a private company, Access Corrections, to allow people outside of prison to transfer funds to those inside. Those transfers occur through the company’s app, website, phone system, mail and in-person options. But multiple people told WPR and Wisconsin Watch they could not make deposits beginning this week. 

The Access Corrections website and app display nothing more than a white screen and the message: “Sorry, the service you’re looking for is currently unavailable.”

Those who dial an Access Corrections phone number hear a recorded message saying the company can’t take deposits online or over the phone and that it is working to resolve the issue. 

In-person deposits at locations throughout Wisconsin are also unavailable, according to an affiliate’s website. It is unclear whether physical mail deposits still work. 

Access Corrections operates deposit systems nationwide, the Wisconsin Department of Corrections says on its website. The company is part of Keefe Group, a conglomerate that includes ICSolutions, which runs a glitchy prison phone system that has left Wisconsin families disconnected in recent months. 

A Department of Corrections spokesperson said she was working on a response, which did not arrive by this story’s deadline. 

The Keefe Group did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 

Robin Guenterberg typically sends his daughter at Taycheedah Correctional Institution $300 a month, with Access Corrections collecting a fee. 

His daughter, who he requested not be publicly named, uses most of that money to buy items  from the prison’s commissary. She has a chronic health condition and relies on commissary chicken and tuna packets to supplement regularly provided meals, Guenterberg said. 

The daughter has lost more than 20 pounds since entering prison late last year, Guenterberg said, adding that he and his wife purchase vending machine items during visits and make additional deposits to help their daughter maintain a healthy weight. 

If Access Corrections fails to quickly restart deposits, she may lack funds to place a commissary order for next week, Guenterberg said.

Sarah Liebzeit successfully added funds to her incarcerated son’s account late Monday night. But issues with his prison-provided electronic tablet have prevented him from spending it at Stanley Correctional Institution, she said.

“This is now another issue because the tablets have been just horrible,” Liebzeit said. 

Some incarcerated people work low-wage jobs inside their prison. Their pay falls short of covering phone calls, extra food, hygiene products and medical co-pays without outside deposits, multiple family members told WPR and Wisconsin Watch. 

Nicole Johnson said her incarcerated boyfriend earns $20 every two weeks at his Dodge Correctional Institution job. Wisconsin’s typical copay charge of $7.50 per face-to-face medical visit is among the highest in the country — more than half of his weekly earnings. 

Johnson said she tries to add $50 to her boyfriend’s account twice a month so he can purchase rice and beans to supplement regularly provided meals. 

“It’s just how I take care of him right now,” she said.

The Access Corrections crash, she added, “makes me sad because I don’t want him to be hungry all freaking week.”

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Vendor failure means Wisconsin prisoners can’t buy food or other items 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.

Wisconsin prisoners have struggled to connect with loved ones for weeks and even months as a state contractor fails to keep up with increasing demand for its call and messaging services. 

The Department of Corrections last year began working with Texas-based ICSolutions, the prison system’s phone provider, to make electronic tablets free for every state prisoner. The state allocated $2.5 million to cover some of the cost. The program aims to boost quality of life behind bars by making it easier for incarcerated people to connect with their loved ones and access resources.

Intermittent problems began after some prisons began distributing the tablets in March 2024. The issues worsened this spring, prisoners and their family members say, spreading across institutions that imprison more than 23,000. 

WPR and Wisconsin Watch heard from more than 25 people experiencing connection difficulties at multiple prisons. Incarcerated people described dialing a number multiple times before getting through and waiting more than an hour for calls to connect. Family members described hearing their phones ring but receiving no option to connect with the caller; some calls have dropped mid-conversation. 

Family members are airing frustrations in a nearly 300-member Facebook forum launched specifically to discuss the phone problems.

Brenda McIntyre, incarcerated at Robert E. Ellsworth Correctional Center, traditionally calls her grandchildren every weekend. But the overwhelmed system blocked a recent check-in.

“‘Grandma, why didn’t you call me? You said you’re going to call me,’” McIntyre recalled one  grandchild asking when they finally connected. 

Phone services somewhat improved late last week, McIntyre said. But she worries about missing updates about her sister’s cancer treatment.

“It’s been a living hell,” she said.

Neither ICSolutions nor its parent company responded to requests for comment. But in an undated statement on its website, the company promised improvements in the “coming weeks,” with “significant optimization coming this summer.” The statement recommended shifting calls to “off-peak hours” — before 5 p.m. or after 9 p.m. But family members say they are not always available at such hours. 

Corrections spokesperson Beth Hardtke squarely blamed ICSolutions, saying state-run infrastructure and Wi-Fi access played no role in the issue.

“To be very clear, the quality of service that ICSolutions is providing is not acceptable to the department. If reliability and customer service do not improve, the department will be forced to reevaluate our contract,” Hardtke wrote in an email.

The statement from ICSolutions blamed “unexpected challenges” from increased demand for calls. But Hardtke said the company previously assured the department it could handle higher call volume during the rollout.

Prisoners in nine of Wisconsin’s 36 adult institutions — including all three women’s facilities — still lack tablets. The glitches affect them, too, because ICSolutions services the entire phone system, not just tablets.

The corrections department is pausing tablet distribution while trying to fix the reliability problems, Hardtke said. 

Tablets mean more calls 

Emily Curtis said she was cautiously excited when her incarcerated fiance gained access to a tablet at Stanley Correctional Institution.

He previously could call only from the prison’s landlines and during limited hours. The tablet enabled calls most anytime, even during lockdowns. For about two months, the two talked daily — right before Curtis fell asleep and right after she woke up.

“It was great,” Curtis said. “Until everything kind of hit the fan.”

Wisconsin is not the only state prison system that has issued tablets. 

Unlike some states, however, Wisconsin allows people to make calls from their cells and doesn’t limit the number of calls they can make, Hartdke said via email. That policy, which the department communicated to ICSolutions during contract negotiations, naturally increased call volume, she added. 

Calls from Green Bay Correctional Institution, for instance, increased by nearly 200% after the tablet rollout, Hardtke wrote.

Curtis now hears from her fiance just once daily, usually very early in the morning. Their 14-year-old son has gone weeks without talking to his dad, Curtis said, because the phone lines are too jammed once he’s home from school.

Prison phone calls: costly for families, profitable for providers

ICSolutions and the prison system make millions each year from phone calls. The company charges six cents a minute and shares revenue with the state, adding nearly $4 million to its general fund in recent years. 

Curtis said she spends roughly $250 a month on calls.

Tablets present new revenue opportunities for prison contractors. An ICSolutions affiliate sold them to incarcerated Wisconsinites before the state made them free. And even with free tablets, prisoners pay for calls, messaging and other applications.

The high cost of phone calls has long burdened the incarcerated and their families. The Federal Communications Commission last year responded by capping fees. Apps for TV and music aren’t subject to the same regulations. That makes tablets a safer investment for prison telecommunication companies, said Wanda Bertram, a spokesperson for the nonprofit Prison Policy Initiative, which focuses on solutions to mass incarceration.

Incarcerated people often greet the rollout of tablets with excitement, Bertram said. But the attempt to improve virtual communication comes as Wisconsin, like other states, has restricted other communication — like physical mail. 

In December 2021, the corrections department began rerouting all prisoner-bound mail to Maryland, where a company called TextBehind scans each piece of mail and sends a digital copy to those incarcerated. The controversial effort aims to reduce the flow of drugs into prisons.

The change delays access to mail and boosts reliance on tablets. As a result, technology glitches have bigger consequences, Betram said.

‘We’re helpless’: Blocked calls mean lonely holidays

Charles Gill is incarcerated at Oshkosh Correctional Institution. His fiance lives in New York, and his adult son lives in New Jersey, too far to visit in person. Gill relies largely on his tablet for communication. But online texts have been delayed by two to three days, Gill said. 

“We’re helpless,” Gill said.“To be a father, not knowing what’s going on with your child, to be in a relationship with someone and not knowing what’s going on with them. God forbid something happens and somebody goes to the hospital, somebody gets hurt. We don’t know about it, and we can’t reach out to nobody and talk about it.”

Gill felt particularly helpless on Easter weekend, the anniversary of his brother’s death. He couldn’t reach any family members.

“The phones were just destroyed on (Easter) weekend, ” he said. “You could really feel the tension in the air because people weren’t able to call their families.”

He worries about a repeat around Mother’s Day.

“Having that ability to speak to someone who still sees you as a human being and not a number is vital,” said Marianne Oleson, the operations director for Ex-Incarcerated People Organizing of Wisconsin.

That’s especially the case for mothers who are incarcerated. The majority of women in prisons nationally have children under the age of 18, according to a 2016 U.S. Department of Justice report. Phone calls offer incarcerated women their only chance to act as parent, wife or daughter — ensuring their loved ones are safe, Oleson said.

The faulty phone system leaves incarcerated people with tough choices. 

“We even have to choose to try the phone over going to meals,” Christa Williams, who is incarcerated at Ellsworth prison, wrote in an email.

Shawnda Schultz said phone failures have left her incarcerated mother in tears during recent calls.

“It bothers me because their phone calls are the one thing that (prisoners) have to keep them going in there, and it keeps us going too, because that’s our mother,” Schultz said.

Schultz’s sister recently delivered her first baby. If the phones don’t improve, she worries her mother will miss hearing updates, like when her grandchild says his first word.

“I found myself actually in tears because I’m just like, ‘what if something happens to my mom?’” Schultz said.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.

‘It’s been a living hell’: Wisconsin prison phone failures leave families disconnected 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.

Chewbacca, Yoda and Princess Leia watched over Joe Mannchen and colleagues as they worked on their Yahara House computers, some designing birthday cards for fellow clubhouse members. 

Taped above each desktop, the “Star Wars” cutouts distinguished the computers from others — a more lively equipment tracking method than four-digit codes, Mannchen explained.   

“We’re not numbers,” the 15-year clubhouse veteran joked. “Why should our computers just be numbers in the system?”

The cutouts accented colorful decor inside Yahara House, which overlooks Lake Mendota on Madison’s isthmus. A pride flag, bulletin boards and photos covered bright blue walls of a mansion built in 1902 and once occupied by Adolph Kayser, a former mayor. Hanging beside century-old stained glass: a “Pets of Yaharans” photo display of cats Pumpkin Boy, B.B. King Cat, Mookie, Spock and Purr. Photos of human Yaharans hung elsewhere.

Yahara House, part of the nonprofit Journey Mental Health Center, is a community mental health program focused on building relationships and job opportunities. The clubhouse model reduces hospitalizations and boosts employment in adults with serious mental illnesses, experts and advocates say. 

Mannchen, who once edited videos professionally, uses those skills to help create updates for members. He and others are considering starting a podcast to promote Yahara House to the community. 

“At the risk of being a little saccharine, it brings me joy,” he said.

Other members work in the Yahara House offices, reception desk or its kitchen, the Catfish Cafe. Still others fill temporary jobs at local shops, restaurants and the State Capitol. A bulletin board celebrates three dozen members with permanent jobs.

Wisconsin has few places like this. Yahara House is one of seven clubhouses in the state and just three with international accreditation, according to Clubhouse International’s latest count. Neighboring Michigan has 37 accredited clubhouses. Advocates want Wisconsin to learn from Michigan to expand clubhouses statewide. 

Medicaid cuts could jeopardize services

Reimbursement from Medicaid, the joint state and federal program to help low-income residents afford care, funds nearly all of the Yahara House budget, said director Brad Schlough.

But budget cuts in Washington may threaten that funding. Seeking to pay for tax cuts and some mandatory spending increases, the Republican-led U.S. House has proposed cutting up to $880 billion in spending over the next decade from the committee that oversees programs including Medicare and Medicaid. For a variety of reasons, including the large size of the program, Medicaid is a likely target for significant cuts. 

“I’m not sleeping well at night worrying about the human costs the proposed funding cuts will inevitably bring,” Schlough said. 

The Trump administration has already made cuts to COVID-era mental health funding and eliminated an office focused on helping older adults and people with disabilities live independently.

More than one in three U.S. adult Medicaid enrollees have a mental illness. Most in Yahara House rely on Medicaid for services within and outside of the clubhouse.

The clubhouse already struggles financially to serve members waiting to enroll or ineligible for Medicaid support services.

“Clubhouses are intended to be open to anyone in the community with a mental illness. The problem is that the funding doesn’t always follow that,” Schlough said.

When members do join the right Medicaid programs, Wisconsin requires hours of recordkeeping for clubhouses to get paid. That contrasts with Michigan, which streamlines payments for clubhouses. 

Yahara House members pride themselves on finding solutions. The community is celebrating 25 years of international accreditation this year and has served adults with mental illness for much longer.

Its longest-tenured member is Michael Larscheid at 47 years. His photo hangs on a bulletin celebrating continuing education. He recently started swimming classes.

While many of his friends have moved or lost touch over the years, Yahara House remains a constant. 

“This is my family here,” he said.

An ‘antidote for loneliness’ 

Larscheid works weekdays in the Catfish Cafe, calling out lunch orders that cost around $1 each.

Mark Benson, a 40-year clubhouse member, joins him, preparing food for about 30 people. Benson researches recipes for twice-weekly desserts that cost 50 cents. In February, he debuted a diabetic-friendly pecan pie. 

Benson is retired from outside work. But when he first joined, Yahara House connected him with a job at an upscale furniture store.

“I was vacuuming around these like three $30,000 consoles and glass tables,” he recalled. “I had to be very careful where I went. It was a good job.”

People with mental illness can often find jobs on their own, but some struggle in workplaces that lack flexibility for mental health days, Schlough said. They might also face transportation barriers. Yahara House keeps a list of more flexible Madison-area employers. The clubhouse trains staff for each job, allowing them to fill in when a club member can’t make a shift. 

Yahara House also provides safe spaces during the day and on holidays and fosters community through weekly events like karaoke. 

Schlough calls clubhouses an “antidote for loneliness.”

Few Wisconsin clubhouses

Despite the advantages, Wisconsin has seen limited clubhouse expansion.

That surprised Sita Diehl, public policy and advocacy director for the National Alliance on Mental Illness Wisconsin chapter. She sees the model as underutilized.

Wisconsin prioritizes other types of services. 

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ latest budget proposal does not include specific funding for clubhouses, state Department of Health Services spokesperson Jennifer Miller confirmed in an email to WPR and Wisconsin Watch.

Still, Evers’ budget would expand the state’s behavioral health system, fund suicide prevention and improve crisis response, Miller wrote, adding: “Supporting people with mental health concerns is a top priority” and that the administration worries that federal Medicaid cuts would harm Wisconsin residents. 

Substantial funding changes for clubhouses would require legislative and state health department approval. There are no current plans to seek a new clubhouse waiver, Miller said but added that expanding Medicaid like other states would boost resources for many services. 

Yahara House’s Medicaid reimbursements flow through the state’s Comprehensive Community Services waiver for people with mental health or substance use issues that could lead to hospitalization. That program best accommodates easier-to-document treatments like psychotherapy, which unfold in hourlong blocks of time, Schlough said.

Yahara House serves members more sporadically throughout the day, leaving staff to spend as many as six hours daily logging time spent serving members — necessary for reimbursement, Schlough said. The exercise conflicts with a clubhouse spirit that encourages staff to treat members more as peers than patients.  

The clubhouse doesn’t pepper new members with questions about diagnoses and limitations. 

“We say, ‘We’re glad to see you,’” Schlough said. “What do you like to do? What are your interests?’” 

‘We want to be a right door’

As a lifelong Madisonian, Rick Petzke probably drove past Yahara House thousands of times. He didn’t know it could help him until his tour almost five years ago.

He joined and received a temporary job at Hy-Vee.

“They liked me so well, they hired me permanently,” Petzke said.

He regrets not learning earlier about a clubhouse members call “Madison’s best kept secret” — like a fancy restaurant on a hidden street. 

Joining requires little more than having a mental illness and not being a harm to yourself or others. But it can take members up to four months to properly enroll with the county in the right  Medicaid program, and a few don’t qualify, Schlough said. 

When members aren’t enrolled? Yahara House eats the cost.

“There are too many wrong doors in this system, and we want to be a right door,” Schlough said.

The clubhouse has few funds for non-reimbursed services, particularly after Dane County cut part of that budget this year, Schlough said. Proposals for the state to allocate a $50,000 matching grant to each Wisconsin clubhouse failed in consecutive legislative sessions. 

The Wisconsin Mental Health Action Partnership wants state lawmakers to appropriate those funds, streamline Medicaid reporting requirements and adopt a clubhouse-specific Medicaid waiver.

The possibility of federal Medicaid cuts could only harm that cause, leaving Wisconsin with fewer dollars to spread around, Diehl said.

Investing in clubhouses could save governments money over time, experts say. Compared to others living with severe mental illness, clubhouse members are less likely to be incarcerated, more likely to pay taxes and less likely to take costly trips to the emergency room.

‘I need to go back to my house’

Jennifer Wunrow left Yahara House for a decade following more than 10 years as a member. During her years away she felt herself “going down” and slipping toward a crisis. 

“I need to go back to my house,” Wunrow recalled thinking.

Members greeted Wunrow upon her return, asking where she’d been. 

When she secured her own two-bedroom apartment with Yahara House help, members and staff helped her move. 

A year later, Wunrow calls herself “the biggest mouth in the house” and helps situate new members. 

“I take a lot of pride in this house,” she said. “I love it here.”

‘Madison’s best kept secret’: People living with mental illness find work, care and community at a clubhouse built for them 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.

Two women incarcerated at Taycheedah Correctional Institution have died following hospital stays that began Feb. 22. The Wisconsin Department of Corrections has shared limited information about their deaths, frustrating family members and those locked up at the maximum- and medium-security women’s prison. 

Shawnee Reed, 36, died Feb. 23, a day after arriving at an area hospital. Brittany Doescher, 33, died Thursday after spending nearly two weeks on life support, according to an online corrections database and family members. 

Both women were mothers, family members said. 

Two prisoners at Taycheedah told Wisconsin Watch and WPR that a third incarcerated woman was hospitalized around the same time as Reed and Doescher. The online corrections  database shows the woman they identified was “out to facility” on Feb. 23. She returned to Taycheedah in the same week.

Reed and Doescher’s official causes of death are pending, said Dr. Adam Covach, Fond du Lac County’s chief medical examiner. Family members of both women say hospital staff linked the deaths to pneumonia. Reed and Doescher’s relatives asked not to be identified to avoid drawing more attention to their families. 

Doescher’s relative said she learned of Doescher’s hospitalization two days after it began. She arrived to find Doescher chained to a bed with blisters around her ankles. 

Following discussions with doctors, Doescher’s family member believes earlier treatment could have prevented the death, particularly because she was so young. 

Asked about the deaths, department spokesperson Beth Hardtke wrote in an email to WPR and Wisconsin Watch: “The federal Centers for Disease Control is seeing ‘high’ numbers of respiratory illness cases in Wisconsin, and the Department of Corrections (DOC) is taking a number of steps to prevent the spread of respiratory illnesses to staff and persons in our care.”

People incarcerated at Wisconsin prisons, including Taycheedah, were recently tested and treated for Influenza A, Hardtke added.

Relatives said both women started mentioning health issues over the phone around a month ago.

Questions about the illnesses are swirling within the prison. Three incarcerated women told WPR and Wisconsin Watch they learned Reed had died but heard different versions of the cause. 

Corrections officials locked down part of Taycheedah — limiting prisoner movement — on Feb. 28. That was due to an increase in respiratory illnesses, according to an internal memo from Warden Michael Gierach. The department lifted the lockdown Thursday. 

Wisconsin typically charges prisoners a $7.50 copay for each face-to-face medical visit, among the highest in the country. Citing the surge of respiratory visits, the department lifted copays for visits beginning Feb. 28, five days after Reed died.

“DOC health care staff recently reminded employees and those in our care of ways to protect themselves as influenza, COVID-19, pneumonia and RSV continue to circulate,” Hardtke wrote.  

The prisons are providing vaccines, masks and soap for regular hand washing, Hardtke added. Anyone who tests positive for a respiratory illness is quarantined for at least seven days.

While women at Taycheedah did receive information about respiratory illness precautions, the department shared no details about the hospitalizations and deaths, said Kady Mehaffey, who is incarcerated.

“Which is kind of maddening because of the amount of people that are filling in the blanks about what happened,” Mehaffey said.

The department did not publicly announce the women’s deaths, which WPR and Wisconsin Watch learned about from women incarcerated at the facility.  

Online records showed the women had died but little other information. The department has since provided basic information, including the women’s names, ages, death dates, and that they died in an “area hospital.”

States including Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska publicly announce prisoner deaths, sharing the person’s name, prison, where they died, and in some cases, details related to their cause of death. 

Wisconsin is not the only state to limit the release of such details, but doing so is problematic, said Michele Deitch, director of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at the University of Texas at Austin.

“There’s no greater responsibility that prisons have than keeping the people inside safe and alive and when there’s a failure to do that the public has a right to know,” Deitch said.

Hardtke wrote that her department follows best practices to protect the privacy of people who are incarcerated and their families. What’s more, it’s up to county coroners or medical examiners to investigate causes of deaths.

The Department of Corrections does confirm deaths and release names after family is notified, but the department can’t release other details, including cause of death, because of privacy laws, Hardtke said.

Deitch said prison systems often interpret privacy laws broadly and then point to such protections to justify withholding information. 

While the department updates its online database to note prisoner deaths, someone seeking information about a death would first need to know the prisoner’s name. That database was used to confirm the March 4 death of a prisoner at Waupun Correctional Institution — Damien Evans, the seventh Waupun prisoner to die in custody since June 2023. 

Fourteen prisoners residing at Wisconsin’s adult institutions have died this year, Hardtke wrote. The prisons saw 61 deaths in all of 2024 and 54 deaths in 2023.  

Reed and Doescher both participated in a program to help with substance abuse and facilitate an early release, according to relatives and court documents. Doescher expected her release within months, her relative said.

“She was hoping to come home and start her own business,” the relative said. “She wanted to counsel other girls in situations like her.”

Both Reed and Doescher enjoyed jewelry making while at Taycheedah.

“I don’t know how (Reed) did it, but she would get like thread and threaded around like a plastic piece or something like that and she could make these really cool designs,” Mehaffey said. “She was good with the small intricate things.”

Both women have children.

“We’re going to miss her and I certainly hope the prison system can be reformed because there’s no call for this,” Doescher’s family member said. “I feel for any other parent that has to go through this.”

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.

Families seek answers after deaths of two women incarcerated at Taycheedah prison 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.