Advocates, Gov. Tony Evers and Republican lawmakers have conflicting views about the Department of Corrections funding in the 2025-27 state budget. (Photo by Caspar Benson/Getty Images)

For criminal justice advocates in Wisconsin, the new state budget leaves much to be desired. Although the $111 billion two-year budget signed by Gov. Tony Evers earlier this month will help eventually close the beleaguered Lincoln Hills juvenile prison, some feel that it missed opportunities to reform the state’s justice system. 

“Wisconsin’s elected officials, including Gov. Evers and state legislators, have once again failed to take meaningful action to overhaul the state’s broken and inhumane carceral system,” Mark Rice, statewide coordinator for WISDOM’s Transformative Justice Campaign, wrote in a statement released July 11. “The recently passed state budget ignores the deep harm caused by mass incarceration and falls far short of what is needed to address the humanitarian crisis unfolding inside Wisconsin’s prisons.”

Evers’ original budget proposal released in February contained a number of proposals that were removed or reduced by the Legislature’s Republican-led Joint Finance Committee, including $8.9 million to support alternatives to revocation. Another pitch by Evers for $4 million to fund community reentry centers was cut in half by Joint Finance. His proposed $3.19 million in supportive housing service beds for people under DOC supervision was removed. Over $1 million in funding for six positions on the DOC’s Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance team was also removed by JFC. 

Evers proposed a total increase of $519 million to the  Department of Corrections budget over the next two years.  The final budget deal instead increased the DOC budget by $461 million over the two-year period. 

The budget’s capital projects plan, passed by the Legislature and signed by Evers, allocated $225 million to the Department of Corrections (DOC), as well as another $15 million towards construction planning for facilities, with the goal of closing the Green Bay Correctional Institution by 2029. 

Evers used his partial veto to strike the 2029 deadline for closing Green Bay. “We need more compromise on that,” said Evers, who added that he supports closing the prison, one of Wisconsin’s oldest, but called the timeline unrealistic: “Saying we’re going to do Green Bay by ‘29 doesn’t mean a damn thing.” In his veto message, Evers said that he objected to the Legislature “assigning a date” to close the Green Bay prison “while providing virtually no real, meaningful, or concrete plan to do so.” 

“I support closing Green Bay Correctional Institution,” Evers wrote. “Indeed, my administration spent years working on a comprehensive corrections reform plan to be able to close Green Bay Correctional Institution quickly, safely, and cost efficiently, which was included in the biennial budget I introduced months ago. I proposed a ‘domino’ series of facility changes, improvements, and modernization efforts across Wisconsin’s correctional institutions while improving public safety by expanding workforce training opportunities to reduce the likelihood that people might reoffend after they are released. Under that plan, Green Bay Correctional Institution would be closed in 2029. Instead, the Legislature sent this budget with the same deadline and no plan of which to speak.”

The fight to close old and blighted prisons

Lincoln Hills, Wisconsin’s notoriously troubled juvenile prison, which still houses 79 boys according to the DOC’s most recent population report, blew years past its own closure deadline. Now, the budget provides $130.7 million to build a new Type 1 juvenile facility in Dane County to help facilitate the closure of Lincoln Hills. Plans for a second Type 1 facility in Milwaukee County ran into roadblocks from local resistance and political disagreements in the Capitol, though the facility’s completion is still planned. 

Green Bay’s prison was originally built in 1898. Plaques embedded in its outer wall commemorate that the wall was “erected by inmates” in 1921. Over 1,100 people are incarcerated in the prison, which is designed to hold only 749, according to the DOC’s most recent weekly population report. In late June, prison reform advocates from JOSHUA, a local affiliate of WISDOM, held a monthly vigil and prayer service outside the prison, where people are held in “disciplinary separation” for the longest periods in any of DOC’s adult facilities. Protesters  included people whose loved ones have died inside the prison, some by suicide due to a lack of mental health support. In late August, 19-year-old Michah Laureano died in the prison after he was attacked by his cell mate. 

Although the budget aims to close Green Bay, how that will be accomplished remains hazy. Rice wrote that the budget “includes no plan” to close the prison, “despite overwhelming evidence that the facility is beyond repair.” Instead, Rice wrote in a statement that “some legislators continue to push for more studies and planning tactics that will only delay justice while people continue to suffer and die behind bars. This is unacceptable.”

That sentiment was echoed by the Ladies of SCI, an advocacy group formed by women with loved ones at the Stanley Correctional Institution. Although the group appreciated that closing Green Bay was part of the budget discussion, “we also agree that does not mean much without funding an actual plan,” the group wrote in an email to Wisconsin Examiner. “The [Joint Finance Committee] committed that the plan presented by [DOC] Secretary [Jared] Hoy’s team in the Governor’s initial budget was ‘just an idea’ and yet, the JFC also just put an ‘idea’ in the budget. Yes, they put in dollars for a plan to be developed, but this has already been done several times over.” 

Studies for closing Green Bay, Waupun, and other old and blighted facilities have been recommended as far back as 1965, Ladies of SCI wrote in the statement. “Here we are, 60 years later, STILL discussing it. The most recent study was done in 2020 and called out almost $1 billion in projects to increase capacity across our facilities to just handle that population level…We are well above that population level today.”

The group asks, “Is $15 million actually enough to finally get tangible actions to deal with our Corrections crisis? We’d like to know what the magic combination of dollars and opinions are needed to finally address issues that have been identified over and over.” Ladies of SCI said “setting aside money for yet another study and plan development is rinse and repeat of history…The bottom line is our state’s prison population is too big for what we currently have.”

Rice concurred, writing in his own statement that prisons like Green Bay, Waupun (the state’s oldest prison where multiple deaths have occurred in recent years), and the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility (MSDF) “are notorious for inhumane conditions and should have been shut down years ago.” Rice added that “there is no justification for continuing to pour hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into maintaining or expanding a failed prison system.” 

Instead, he believes that the state should commit to reducing the prison population by expanding treatment alternatives to incarceration, commuting “excessive and unjust sentences,” granting “fair access to parole and early release,” and stopping the practice of locking people up for “technical or convictionless revocations.” 

When Evers wrote his message vetoing the deadline for closing Green Bay, there were 362 people working at the prison and more than 1,100 incarcerated adults. “As of this writing, Wisconsin has the capacity to house 17,638 individuals at its correctional institutions but there are 23,275 people living in [DOC] institutions across Wisconsin;” Evers wrote, “the Legislature provides no steps whatsoever to stabilize the state’s skyrocketing prison population.” 

Referring to the saga of Lincoln Hills, Evers added, “Wisconsin already has about a decade’s worth of painful experience learning how well it works in practice to set unrealistic, artificial timelines and due dates for closing prison facilities without a complete and thorough plan for implementation. It would be foolish and dangerous to attempt to take a similar approach with a maximum-security institution like Green Bay Correctional Institution.”

Alternatives to incarceration 

Just over one-third of the 2,727 new prison admissions statewide between January and April were people sent back to prison for issues like violating the rules of community supervision, and without a new crime committed or sentence issued, according to the DOC’s dashboard. Over the same period of time, there were more than 63,435 people on community supervision, probation, or parole.

Sean Wilson, senior director of organizing and partnerships at Dream.org, criticized the cuts to proposals to expand alternatives to incarceration, “clean-slate” legislation and expungement reforms that were left out of the final budget deal. “I think that there continues to be a lack of re-entry investments, which should be pretty high on the list,” Wilson told Wisconsin Examiner. For years, criminal justice advocates have pushed for support for housing, access to mental health care and jobs, “those things were not included in the budget.” 

With less than 3,000 people housed between Green Bay, Waupun, and MSDF, Rice feels that “these prisons could be emptied and closed within months” and that “doing so would not only alleviate human suffering but it would also free up critical resources” which “must be reinvested in the communities most harmed by incarceration.” From providing living-wage jobs and stable housing to creating educational opportunities and violence prevention, Rice wrote in his statement, “that is how we build true public safety.”

Wilson declared that “the biggest elephant in the room” was that “there’s no real movement on closing outdated prisons or reducing the DOC’s footprint.” He stressed that “we are beyond design capacity…with 5,000 additional bodies [beyond the number] this system was designed for.” Without a concrete roadmap and deadline, he says the budget commitment to closing the Green Bay prison doesn’t mean much.  

Over 20 years ago, Wilson spent time in the Green Bay prison, which he remembers as “a dilapidated hellhole…It was a trauma pressure cooker in my opinion.” 

“But the fact that they’re talking about just studying it, that really made me livid as someone who spent time in that facility, and is currently in communication with many individuals who are still housed there today,” he added.

Wilson said he doesn’t see focused funding to reduce racial disparities in incarceration, nor is there funding to support people who have been directly impacted by the criminal justice system and are trying to lead a reform effort. “I think if you look at the movement at large for the last 20 years, it’s been led by directly impacted leadership,” said Wilson. “Because we believe in the words of Glenn Martin that those closest to the problem are closest to the solution.” People with personal experience need to be brought to the table to offer both critiques and solutions, he said. 

Ladies of SCI called the building plans in the budget “just one of the steps our lawmakers must take to address things,” and pointed to separate legislation introduced by Republican Senator Andre Jacque (R-DePere) and Rep. Paul Tittl (R-Manitowoc), which the group believed would have put needed investments into rehabilitation “instead of warehousing people in our crumbling facilities.”

Evers said the budget was an exercise of compromise and cooperation. “We need to work together,” he said after signing the budget less than an hour after the Assembly passed it.  “Compare that to what’s going on in Washington, D.C., and it’s significantly different, so I’m very proud to sign it,” Evers said of the bipartisan compromise. In order to retain $1 billion per year in federal Medicaid matching funds, legislators on both sides of the aisle worked to finalize the bill before the federal reconciliation bill was signed by President Donald Trump.

Another one of Evers’ partial vetoes stirred discussion around juvenile incarceration. The Senate version of  the budget specified that state juvenile correctional facilities would operate at a rate of $912,000 in 2025-26 per kid, per year, before increasing to over $1 million per kid per year for 2026-27. Evers’ partial vetoes lowered the rates to $182,865 per kid in 2025-26, and $275,670 per kid in the following years.

Over the last decade the cost of housing for each young person in youth corrections in Wisconsin has quadrupled from $303 per day in 2014 to $1,268 per day in 2024, largely due to a lower population of incarcerated youth and higher staffing needs. In his veto message, Evers objected to the Legislature’s plan to continue expanding the costs of the existing youth incarceration system during a time of “uncertainty,” and delays in closing youth prisons.  

Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine) criticized Evers for using a veto to cut housing expenditures for juvenile offenders. “Evers’ veto of this provision is unsustainable and he knows it,” said Wanggaard. “The statutory daily rate is not a number that we come up with out of thin air. It’s simple math – the total cost to operate our juvenile facilities divided by the average population.” 

Wanggaard added that “up until now, a county sending a juvenile to a state facility paid for those costs…Governor Evers just decided unilaterally to turn it on its head and have the state pick up the vast majority of costs. It flips the entire funding of juvenile corrections without debate or discussion. It’s irresponsible.” Wanggaard also said that Evers’ refusal to utilize the expansion of the Mendota Juvenile Treatment Center to house more youth offenders is driving costs higher. Children can only be placed in Mendota when it’s clinically appropriate, however. The facility was never intended to replace Lincoln Hills, or augment bed space for incarcerated kids. 

In his veto message, Evers explained why he shifted the cost burden from local communities to the state, writing that he objected “to establishing a daily rate that is unaffordable to counties.” He continued that, “I have heard loud and clear from counties that the current daily rate is burdensome and will detrimentally impact public safety. Unbelievably, despite that clear message from the counties, the Legislature has chosen to increase that rate by over $1,000 per day. This increase and funding model is untenable, and counties have expressed that this unaffordable increase will have serious and detrimental effects on other county services.” Evers urged the Legislature to “revisit this issue in separate legislation and appropriate those additional GPR funds to the department.”

Criminal justice advocates around the state say viable solutions must go beyond incarceration. Lincoln Hills continues to be under a court-ordered monitor due to a successful lawsuit that brought attention to the harms done to both incarcerated youth and reports of abuse within the facility. Waupun’s prison has yet to recover from a string of deaths which ultimately led to charges against the prison’s warden and several staff. Green Bay is also notorious for inhumane conditions and deaths behind bars. 

“We don’t need more studies, we need action,” said Wilson. 

When he was incarcerated at Green Bay between the years 2000 and 2005, he added, “I watched people get battered by each other. I saw individuals get beaten by staff. I see the paint peeling, the walls are sweating. The prison cells are outdated. You’re talking about a facility that was built in the 1800’s…And you’re putting people in this facility in 2025 and you are expecting them to come home sane. You are expecting them to navigate this space in a rational way. You expect them to interact with one another in a humane way when you are housing them, or caging them, as if they were animals. Wisconsin should stop wasting taxpayer money by keeping people in cages that should’ve been shuttered decades ago!” 

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