Credit: Richard Theis/EyeEm/Getty

In Wisconsin, the last time there was a commutation — a reduction of a criminal sentence by the governor’s authority to grant clemency — it was during Republican Tommy Thompson’s administration (1987-2001). Thompson issued seven commutations in addition to 202 pardons.

Subsequently, with the exception of  former  Republican Gov. Scott Walker, who served from 2011 to 2019, governors have offered hundreds of pardons.

Gov. Tony Evers set a record for the number of pardons he’s offered during his seven years in office at 1,640.

However, like his fellow Democratic Gov. James Doyle, who issued 326 pardons, Evers has not issued any commutations.

Members of WISDOM, a non-profit faith-based organization that works to end mass incarceration, say Evers told them in 2023  that he would begin issuing commutations.

However, Evers has never made an official statement on his position concerning commutations. He did not respond to a request for a comment on the matter from the Wisconsin Examiner.

Evers ran for office promising to reduce Wisconsin’s prison population. After a dip during the COVID-19 pandemic, the prison population is experiencing an upswing. There were 23,495 people in prison in Wisconsin as of Sept. 26, compared with 23,292 when Evers took office on Jan. 7, 2019. Nearly every prison in the state reports a population exceeding the facility’s official capacity.

Criminal justice advocacy groups like WISDOM and Ex-incarcerated People Organizing (EXPO) of Wisconsin have noted that one way Evers could address the prison population is by offering commutations, especially for those who have served long sentences and have proven to be low risks to return to society.

In 2023, Beverly Walker of WISDOM led a team that included legal scholars to study how commutations were conducted in neighboring states and prepared a proposal for how Wisconsin could begin implementing commutations again.

“We wanted to offer [Evers’] legal team something that could be advanced and not be a hindrance that they could move forward with and be implemented,” said Walker.

Walker said the proposal had two components:

1.     The commutation would make the resident eligible for parole, with a parole board considering the application and making a recommendation.
2.     The governor could issue a direct commutation resulting in a shortened sentence, including possible release from prison.

“We said if you are uncomfortable releasing people from prison, we ask that you just make them eligible for parole,” said Walker.  “Allow them to go before the parole board, and the parole board make the decision on their eligibility based on what they see.”

“A lot of these people will never see the light of day without a commutation,” she said. “But a lot of these people have done college, gotten degrees, have been doing amazing work inside prison, and some have even been allowed to work outside of the fence and are just doing great, exhibiting great behaviour. They have transformative stories, and they have proved that they have put in the work.”

Walker’s team is asking Evers to consider commuting the sentences of people serving long-term sentences in prison whom the group identified for their good behavior and good prospects for release. In anticipation of release, Walker’s team also researched the availability of work opportunities, housing and even resources such as food pantries.

Commutation candidates

In response to a request from the  Examiner for  information on the candidates, Walker said her team decided not to release their names for fear of damaging their chances. WISDOM’s Sherry Reames, a retired University of Wisconsin-Madison English professor and volunteer on the commutations committee, offered a general description of all the present candidates for commutation. 

According to Reames, the candidates were all convicted of a serious crime, mostly first-degree intentional homicide (either alone as party to a crime) in the 1990s when they were young men, between 20 and 22.

All the candidates were sentenced to decades in prison and will not be eligible for parole until the 2040s.

“Historically a life sentence in Wisconsin had allowed for the possibility of parole after about 15 years, a length of time which the Sentencing Project and other authorities have determined is about long enough to punish most crimes, especially by young offenders,” said Reames, “but it was the ‘tough on crime’ 1990s when our commutation candidates were convicted.”

Walker also said the candidates have used their years in prison to change their lives.

“Some of them initially had a hard time adjusting to the prison rules, but they have matured into model citizens, who lead and train other workers and earn positive reviews from staff,” said Reames. “Some have been continuously employed by Badger State Industries (now BSE) for a decade or more at a time, while others have rotated through the whole gamut of prison jobs (kitchen, laundry, custodial, library, clerk, maintenance, tier tender, etc., etc.). What they all have in common, however, are their obvious work ethic and self-discipline.”

Reames also said some candidates have obtained their high school degrees in prison and then certification as electricians, barbers, carpenters, bakers or building-service managers. 

Some have also earned college credits from four-year universities, she said.

“Several have completed Trinity International University’s whole four-year degree program in Biblical studies with a minor in psychology, laying the foundation for careers as pastors and counselors,” said Reames, “and others have completed the necessary training to assist younger prisoners as certified peer mentors and tutors.”

Some also participated in Restorative Justice and Victim Impact programs.

Post announcement

When Evers announced this summer that he wasn’t going to run for another term, advocates expressed renewed interest in pressing him for commutations before he leaves office.

Walker told the Wisconsin Examiner that her group is engaged in an ongoing dialogue with the governor’s legal staff. In September, while acknowledging gratitude for all the pardons Evers has issued, Walker also expressed frustration over the lack of action on commutations.

“I am challenging him (Evers) to uphold these things that he has said,” said Walker. “He made these campaign promises that he was going to reduce the prison population, that he was going to do all these things as it pertains to people incarcerated and that included commutations, and it has been over two years and I don’t want to be disappointed, and at what point will I be able to be proud of this man that I elected?”

At the end of October, however, Walker was more upbeat about the possibility of a commutation: “It does look promising,” she said.

Marianne Oleson, operations director for EXPO, said her advocacy group also sees a window of opportunity in Evers’ last year in office and has also discussed commutations with the governor’s office and with legislators and their aides.

“Whenever we have the opportunity, we put out eblast constantly; we put out social media, “ said Oleson.

“We have individuals who are currently incarcerated, who have been incarcerated for decades, who have zero infractions (disciplinary reports generated within prisons) that have gone over and beyond, done everything that has been asked of them to do,” she added. “ … they’re caught in this loop because of Truth in Sentencing. If they’re not going to be paroled, give them a commutation. And then there’s individuals who have life sentences that were really, quite frankly, only due to being party to a crime where these individuals were very young at the time, and their situations deserve at least to be considered and looked at.”

Truth in Sentencing is a tough-on-crime policy from the 1990s that, in  Wisconsin, requires a mandatory period of prison time be served before release, with no discretion given to a parole board that in previous years had the authority to review the status of prisoners and could authorize early release.

The reality today for those sentenced after Dec. 31, 1999, when Truth in Sentencing  took effect, is that the possibility of early release has become very remote. 

A commutation by the governor would be one legal way to shorten the confinement and extended supervision for both those sentenced before and after Truth in Sentencing was implemented.

However, in Wisconsin, there is currently no process for applying for a commutation.

There is a process to apply for a pardon through the Governor’s Pardon Advisory Board, but it requires that the sentence of confinement and extended supervision have been fulfilled, followed by a five-year period of a clear record. If one meets the condition for a pardon in Wisconsin, there is no need for a commutation because the sentence has been fully served.

“When I have approached the governor’s office to even discuss commutations, I’m automatically referred to the pardon application,” said Oleson. “You are comparing apples to oranges. A pardon eliminates the conviction, a blank slate; a commutation maintains the conviction, maintains the accountability, but says you’ve served enough time. You no longer should be serving decades or years longer. You have proven you have served enough time. You still hold the conviction, but you are not chained to the DOC.”

Other voices for commutation

The ACLU of Wisconsin is encouraging Evers to exercise his authority to offer commutations in Wisconsin.

“For decades, commutations have been vastly underutilized at the state level,” said David Gwidt, deputy communication director. “Commuting sentences has gone from a relatively routine practice historically to an exceedingly rare one since the rise of mass incarceration, as governors on both sides of the aisle are reluctant to commute sentences out of fear they will be labeled as ‘soft on crime’ for doing so. But that’s starting to change in other states.”

Governors in New Jersey, Oregon, California, Alabama, and Oklahoma, have all used their commutation authority in recent years, Gwidt added.  “Commutation is a tool that can help decarcerate our overpopulated prisons, rectify unjust, wrongful or excessively long sentences, and offer incarcerated people a pathway to redemption,” he said. “We hope Gov. Evers uses his remaining time in office as an opportunity to grant commutation and clemency to those who earn a chance at freedom.” 

Speaking as a member of a panel discussion on solitary confinement and conditions inside Wisconsin prisons,  on Sunday, Oct. 12 in Madison, state Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison), a  candidate for governor, said commutations should be used for those who have been incarcerated for decades and are no longer a threat to society.

“Just in general, I think the clemency powers have been very underutilized in Wisconsin,” she said. “We have people who have been incarcerated for decades and decades. People age out of crime… and now you have people, some of whom have terminal and chronic illnesses. They are in their 60s, their 70s, their 80s, and they could easily and very safely live back with their loved ones after many decades of incarceration. And yet they are being denied this and then state taxpayers are being asked to essentially fund their incarceration and their health care.”

National discussion

In a July 13, 2025 op-ed in the New York Times, “Governors, Use Your Clemency Power,” CUNY law professor Steven Zeidman wrote:  

“President Trump is making shameless use of his constitutional clemency power, rewarding insurrectionists, cronies, campaign contributors and sundry others. But this is not the only problem. Mr. Trump’s acts of commission are paralleled by American governors’ acts of omission. Even though they control the bulk of the country’s prison population and typically have the power to grant clemency, many governors have consistently failed to exercise the power of forgiveness, to all of our detriment.”

Zeidman notes that of the two million people currently in confinement in the United States, most are in state prisons, under the authority of governors.

Zeidman, who has pursued over 100 commutations in New York and won 21, talked to the Wisconsin Examiner about the reluctance he sees in governors to exercise their constitutional authority.

Addressing the perception of being soft on crime, Zeidman said it might be easier for Republicans who have established a tough-on-crime posture to offer commutation. That might be why the last commutation in Wisconsin was under Thompson, a tough-on-crime Republican.

According to a  2023 report, “Executive Clemency Power in Wisconsin” by Jillian Slaight for the Legislative Reference Bureau, Thompson commuted the sentence of seven people serving parole, stating, “further supervision would serve no useful purpose.”

The same report found that Gov. Patrick Lucey, a Democrat who served from 1971 to 1977  issued 177 commutations, including one to a man who had failed to provide child support. Lucey stated that sending the man back to prison prevented him from working and providing support.

Democratic Gov. Gaylord Nelson, who served from 1959 to 1963, issued 27 commutations for people he considered “rehabilitated.”

Cautionary tales vs. data

Zeidman and others who advocate for commutations argue that those eligible for commutation should undergo rigorous screening, including having members of the victims’ families and the district attorney participate in the commutation process.

“There should be a real careful vetting process,” he says, adding, “I would say to Wisconsin, have a very careful vetting process, go over it with a fine-tooth comb, and at the end of the day, it’s not going to be none (who are eligible for commutation) and it’s not going to be thousands either.”

Zeidman and the advocates say reincarceration rates are low for those who have served long sentences.

The Wisconsin DOC’s data on reincarceration shows a notable decrease for those who have served five years or more in prison.

A study prepared for the New York City Council in 2023 called “Justice on Aging” also noted older residents in prison tend not to return: “Nationwide, 43.3 percent of all released individuals recidivate within three years, while only seven percent of those aged 50-64 and four percent over 65 return to prison for new convictions—the lowest rates among all incarcerated age demographics.”

 “It’s a fact, people age out of crime,” Zeidman says. 

Another argument for restoring the possibility of early release is that rewarding good behaviour with commutations motivates more good behavior in prison. 

“Give people an incentive to improve themselves and get on with their lives,” says Tom Denk, an advocate for WISDOM who has served time in prison. 

“It does seem that too many governors are thinking about clemency and commutation in particular as a political act instead of an act of mercy or grace,” says Jennifer Soble, executive director of the Illinois Prison Project, who represents clients in Illinois who have a case for early release.  “And so they are shying away from commutations on the statistically very unlikely event that a commutation could end up harming them politically, and that’s a real tragedy, because we are talking about real human beings who are living their lives in prison, many of whom are doing so under the extraordinarily unjust circumstances.”

Soble says many in Illinois prisons received long sentences, even life sentences, under older laws, but if processed today, their sentences would not be as extreme.

As an example of how laws have changed in Illinois, she says, formerly, any death resulting during a pursuit of a crime by law enforcement, such as the police chasing a suspect and firing a weapon, killing an innocent person, could result in murder charges to the suspect being pursued, even if the suspect had not directly participated in the death.

“And the only way for those folks to get out is through clemency and there’s no other path,” she says, “and so although I understand political caution, especially in these very challenging times, that caution cannot come at the expense of a person’s entire life.”

Zeidman also notes there is movement across the country to take a second look at sentences. In Wisconsin, a bill that stalled in 2024 would review the life sentences without parole for those who were convicted while they were under 18 years of age but were prosecuted as adults.

“The prison system is intentionally sort of secreted away,” says Soble.  “Incarcerated people are not visible on purpose. And so your average person walking down the street is not thinking about, you know, is there or is there not a reasonably plausible way for an incarcerated person who shouldn’t be in prison to come home?”

Before he left office, President Joe Biden issued one of the largest commutations of all time for 2,500 people in the federal Bureau of Prisons system who had committed non-violent crimes.

“The recidivism rate of that group has been extraordinarily low,” says Soble of the 2,500 Biden commuted. “That effort saved taxpayer dollars. It made good sense. It was a good policy decision. It was also a just and humane decision, but governors at the state level have been just pretty unwilling to follow suit, even in cases that feel very, very obvious.”

Criminal Justice Fellow  Andrew Kennard contributed to this report.

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The Journey to Justice Bus at Madison Christian Community Church on Sunday, Oct. 12. | Photo by Frank Zufall/Wisconsin Examiner

Solitary confinement, the practice of putting someone in isolation in a small cell, is not a topic you expect to hear discussed at church on Sunday.

But on Oct. 12, at the Madison Christian Community, was a stop of the 18-city, nationwide Journey to Justice Bus Tour, that included two panel discussions focused on the topic, one with four state legislators, including two candidates for governor.

Visiting the Journey to Justice bus, standing in a bathroom-sized solitary jail cell replica and hearing the real-life stories of those who had spent part of their lives confined in such spaces, visitors gained a visceral appreciation of the United Nations declaration that punishing people with more than 15 consecutive days in solitary is a form of  torture.

In the Hollywood presentation, the practice is reserved for hardened criminals, a safeguard against violence that’s necessary to keep good order and discipline.

But the reality is that small procedural violations, medical conditions, mental health crises sometimes even pregnancy are reasons people inside our prisons end up isolated for multiple days at a time.

Those who have experienced solitary confinement, otherwise known as restrictive housing or segregation, say it is traumatizing and even years after they’ve been released from prison, they are still reliving dark memories.

The Solitary and Conditions of Confinement Legislation panel at the church included four Democratic state legislators, including gubernatorial hopefuls  Sen. Kelda Roys and Rep. Francesca Hong, both of Madison. Roys, an attorney, has served on the Judiciary Public Safety Committee and worked on the Innocence Project when she was a law student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Milwaukee area Reps. Darrin Madison and Ryan Clancy also participated. Madison is a former organizer for Youth Justice Milwaukee and a member of the Correction Committee. Clancy sits on the Corrections Committee and has served on the Judiciary and Law Enforcement Committee.

Jen Ann Bauer, who spent five and a half years in prison and is currently serving the remainder of her sentence on community supervision said she was put in solitary confinement at least four times, with the longest lasting 90 days.

“When people hear you’re in solitary confinement, they think discipline, and it is so much more to the detriment of human beings,” she said. “It is isolating. It is defeating. It is control and it is torture. We are often placed in solitary confinement for protection or safety measures, minor and major rule violations, or simply for struggling with trauma and mental health. And let’s be honest, most incarcerated people are already trauma survivors. So I ask, how is isolating a wounded person somehow equal to safety? Solitary doesn’t lock a body in a cell. It locks a person inside their own mind. Time stops and pain does not.”

In solitary, Bauer said, she paced the floor just to remind herself that she still existed.

“Women survive through connection, through relationships, and so when you take away human contact, you take away the very thing that keeps us alive,” she said. “No one is built to handle 23 hours a day in a cell. That’s not discipline, that’s psychological torture.”

She added  that in solitary there is no interaction with outside family members, weakening relationships with children.

Observing  people who spent time in solitary,  she said, she saw that they changed for the worse.

“People with dreams come out of solitary unable to make eye contact, unable to trust and unable to believe in themselves or the world around them,” she said. “Solitary doesn’t confine a body. It suffocates the heart. It doesn’t correct behavior. It destroys identity. Solitary confinement causes psychological and emotional distress, more harm, more trauma. Solitary confinement is not a tool. It is a wound, and it is a wound the system continues to inflict on people and then blame them for bleeding.”

Ventae Parrow agreed with Bauer that solitary confinement  had no redeeming  impact on him in prison other than causing him to reflect on what he wanted for his life. He questioned who had the authority to determine whether one should be in solitary, and noted that many who experienced it came out angrier.

“And now you got angry humans coming out back to the community with the vengeance in their heart and their mind versus rehabilitation,” he said.

Tom Denk, an advocate with several WISDOM affiliates and a member of the Mental Health Action Partnership, moderated the panel. Denk, who had also spent time in solitary confinement, noted there is a high rate of mental illness among incarcerated residents, 45%, and the experience of being isolated exacerbates their conditions.

“The use of solitary confinement or restrictive housing is a correctional practice with significant ethical implications,” said Denk. “Prolonged isolation has been associated with severe psychological distress, including anxiety, depression and increased risk of self-harm. It also worsens existing mental health conditions and contributes to higher rates of recidivism.”

But Denk said solitary is often chosen as a method to address psychosis instead of treatment.

Talib Akbar, vice president of the non-profit advocacy group WISDOM, the organizer of the event, said any rule violation in prison could result in being sent to solitary. He said even being a couple of feet outside a cell door could result in being sent to solitary.

The Wisconsin Examiner recently heard from a former resident of Oshkosh Correctional Institution who said he was put in segregation after calling the nearby fire department to report concerns over the prison’s fire safety protocols. He claims that when the fire department called the prison’s facility manager, the manager became upset that the resident didn’t follow the chain of command, and the resident was placed in segregation.  

The panel also addressed the types of medical treatments residents receive in solitary.

Megan Hoffman Kolb whose father, Dean Hoffmann, died in solitary confinement at Waupun Correctional Institution in 2023,  said her father, who suffered from mental illness for 30 years, didn’t consistently get the right medication for the first 80 days in Waupun and never received a psych intake exam, which he was supposed to have received.

She said when her father recorded a credible threat from his cellmate, the prison’s response was to place him in solitary.

“In solitary, he was locked alone in a concrete cell, 24 hours a day, no books, no paper, no phone calls home, no medication,” she said. “The lights were left on constantly. Silence was deafening, broken only by the sounds of people crying out down the hallway. He told staff he was suicidal, hearing voices and couldn’t sleep. A correctional officer responded, ‘What do you want me to do about it?’”

She added, “Solitary confinement is not just isolation. It’s sensory deprivation. It’s a slow unraveling of a person’s mind in a small space. Days blur together, hope disappears for someone already struggling with mental illness, unbearable, and it’s not just emotional, it’s biological. Prolonged solitary confinement literally changes the brain.”

After nine days in solitary, Kolb said, her father took his own life by hanging himself from the cell door. She had viewed the video of his body being removed.

She said the cost of solitary is the trauma the family has experienced, along with the lawsuits, investigation and broken communities, and at the end of the day, taxpayers are being asked to pay for all of it.

“We are pouring millions into a system that tortures instead of treats,” she said, “and families like mine are left paying the ultimate price.”

Regarding the cost of operating solitary, Akbar noted that prisons have to assign more correctional officers (COs) for supervision there because they are considered more dangerous areas, which also raises the cost.

Rep. Clancy said he is against solitary and the ultimate goal should be to ban it outright, but a more attainable goal is proposed legislation that would restrict solitary to 10 days and require 15 hours a week of programming while in solitary to ensure there are visits by people.

“When you talk to people at the DOC and they say, ‘Well, we looked at your legislation, it is onerous. There’s no way we’re going to be able to do that.’ We’re like,‘Great, then don’t put people in solitary.’”

He added, “Please understand that the goal here is to end solitary, but it’s also to bring to people’s minds the real harm from it.”

Rep. Madison said he grew up with a friend who went to prison and was put in solitary, and when his friend got out he still struggled with isolation. One time, the friend wasn’t able to contact Madison and then attempted suicide but didn’t die.

“I was reminded that it is our correctional system that creates the conditions where folks, even when they are released into the community, feel locked up,” he said.

“We simply incarcerate too many people,” said Roys.  She added the goal should be to ensure public safety, not incarcerate people who don’t pose a threat. 

“If we actually want public safety, then we need to change the way we are thinking about that time when people are incarcerated, and it really should be that time that they are building their skills so that they are going to see that they can thrive, and that is why we need to be fostering relationships,” she said.

She also said there needs to be reform of the Truth-in-Sentencing law that is leading to longer prison stays without parole, resulting in more people in prison, and also reforming community supervision to change  a “gotcha” attitude — finding technical violations of those on extended supervision that would send them back to prison, instead of  focusing on helping people succeed in the community.

“If our parole officers, probation officers (POs) viewed their role as facilitating success, and they judged themselves not by how many people would get reincarcerated, but by how many people succeed and never have to be reincarcerated, that’s transformational, and you don’t necessarily need statutes to do that. You absolutely do need a strong will and strong leadership from the top director who says what we are doing.”

Hong said more could be done through executive orders and the governor’s clemency power to grant pardons. She also said she would like to invest more to hire social and mental health workers.

“The more helpers that we have in an institution, the fewer enforcers we need in that same institution,” Clancy said. 

“We have to stop saying that our jails and prisons are understaffed,” he added. “They are not understaffed. They are overpopulated.”

Clancy also said the DOC should pay mental health staff as much, or more, as it does  guards, to help hire and retain staff.

Women in solitary

During a panel discussion on women in solitary, Juli Bliefnick said that after she was assaulted inside  a prison while eating lunch, she was placed in solitary for six days, and during that time she had her monthly period, but male guards didn’t allow her to shower or have clean clothes. She had a similar experience in a county jail.

“That’s some of the most dehumanizing experiences of my whole life,” she said.

In another jail, Bliefnick witnessed a friend who was eight months pregnant put in a cell and stripped naked to look for drugs as the friend screamed.

“You can even move from that environment for decades, and you can still dream about it,” she said.  “You can still think about it like til this day, like I can hear jingling keys, and I’ll still get like, you know, like a fear of like a guard coming to, you know, harass me about something or another, and it’s a terrifying thing because I’m not there anymore. You know, your brain tricks you into thinking that you are. You carry it with you no matter how long you’ve been removed from it.”

Jessica Jacobs, who has not been incarcerated for eight years, still said she is traumatized by her time in solitary.

“Various times I’ve been incarcerated, being stuck in a room like that kind of did something different to me that maybe other people might not understand,” said Jacobs, “but so I had post traumatic stress disorder already, and then the amount of treatment that I had to suffer and go through while I was incarcerated has made it worse. And so I find myself today, sometimes where I get overwhelmed or stimulated, I know my nervous system is out of whack, where I feel like I have to close myself up into my room, and that’s kind of weird, you know, and I feel like I have to lock myself up, and I just don’t even try to figure out what it is. I know that it’s connected to that.”

Jacobs said she remembers being locked up with a 17-year-old girl who had been sex-trafficked by her father, and the girl was missing her babies and was distraught and wanted mental health services, but Jacobs cautioned against it, knowing that seeking those services often meant being sent to solitary or being restricted to a chair.

“And the next thing I know, they hauled her off and stuffed her in solitary confinement by herself,” said Jacobs. “And then came the big banging and the cries began.”

Yolanda Perkins said her mother was in prison for 17 years and spent time in solitary, and that time changed her mother permanently.

“My mother hasn’t been incarcerated in about 20 years, but she won’t go into a room by herself,” said Perkins, adding, “It affects how she grandparents her grandchildren. It affects her communication with them. It affects her communication with society. And so she still struggles.”

Bliefnick spoke about her work with the Ostara Initiative, working with doulas to end the practice of putting pregnant and postpartum women in solitary for protective custody.

“Punishing women who are in that condition is actually a common practice,” she said, “and I mean, can you think of anything worse than putting a woman who just had a baby and had it ripped away from [her getting] 24 hours in solitary confinement like that? That’s like a horrible practice to begin with. It’s like they treat them like cattle, and then to put them in solitary confinement for their protection is like the cruelest thing that you could possibly imagine.”

This story has been updated to fix the photo captions identifying Jen Ann Bauer and Megan Hoffman Kolb

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Wisconsin Department of Correction Secretary Jared Hoy was one of the keynote speakers at the EXPO gala.

Jared Hoy, Secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, offered something the crowd gathered to celebrate Ex-Incarcerated People Organizing (EXPO)  could relate to – a confession, followed by a commitment to do better.

“I don’t think we’ve done a very good job of engaging with people who are receiving our services, friends and family,” Hoy said in a speech at the EXPO gala Oct. 11 at the Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center in Madison, explaining the reason for conducting Friends and Family Forums between DOC management and the public.

Hoy, one of two keynote speakers during the “EXPOnential” gala, expressed the aim of overcoming challenges confronted by people caught up in the carceral system, including several honorees at the event who had served time in prison, some still on community supervision, including a woman working on becoming a certified peer counselor, a former Iraq war vet and practicing lawyer from Eau Claire, and a newly appointed official for Milwaukee.

EXPO is a non-profit advocacy group in Wisconsin that works to end mass incarceration, dismantle structural discrimination and restore formerly incarcerated people to community life. It’s largely staffed by the formerly incarcerated, including its executive director, Jerome Dillard, who explained the theme of the gala.

The term exponential, he said, is  “not just a gala name, but it’s a map of mercy and it’s an algorithm of potential. An exponent takes a small number and it raises it and turns it into two, into many and sparks into a skyline. And that’s what Wisconsin EXPO is. It’s organizing with formerly incarcerated neighbors to restore rights.”

Marianne Oleson, operations director for EXPO, noted the Beth Israel Center, a conservative synagogue in Madison, was receiving the Ally Organization of the Year recognition for its “shared love” with EXPO’s goals.

“Beth Israel has opened their doors so that we can gather, learn and share our truth with the community, but their generosity extends far beyond the walls of their synagogue,” said Oleson. “They have opened their homes and they have opened their hearts to us. They share their wisdom, compassion, creativity. in so many ways that remind us what true allyship looks like. They give our state residents rides, share the incredible gifts of art, and they bring us homemade lasagna.”

Deandrea “Dee” Hardman received the Woman of the Year recognition. Hardman said before going to prison she had made many bad decisions, living on the streets, surrounded by people who took advantage of her, and burning bridges with people in her life, so that when she left the chaos of her life for prison, she actually felt free.

“Going to prison disrupted my tormented cycle,” she said. “It was the first time I felt like I had an option to choose a different life. I had every opportunity that came my way to grow and change.”

In prison she became a certified welder and participated in work release, and even though she was surrounded by others who didn’t want to change their behavior from the street, she chose differently.

She said being able to reenter society in the EXPO Safe House helped her succeed outside of prison.

“I came home and worked extremely hard, but it was not solely my hard work that got me here — It was my sisters who supported me in the home and everyone who works within the organization,” she said. “For the first time in my life, I was leaving an institution not alone, but with an entire team of people behind me who wanted to help me and have absolutely nothing but the best for me.”

Hardman noted that she had just received her certification to become a peer support specialist and her aim was to share her experience with others to overcome the trauma of addiction and imprisonment.

Man of the Year David Carlson said Expo was one of the first organizations that helped him gain a “foothold” and “get traction in rebuilding my life after re-entry.”

His wife, Alicia Carlson, said her husband was identified by  the number “558672” when he was serving time in prison, but recently he had obtained another number, “1138342,” his state bar license number to practice law in Wisconsin.

“He stepped out of a system that had silenced him and set out on a mission to make people listen, and just as important to make sure that those around him, especially those who’ve been overlooked, blocked out, written off, were seen and heard too,” she said.

Of the two numbers identifying her husband, she said, one reminded him of what it was like to be silenced and the other “gives him a platform to make sure others never are.”

Carlson described the initiatives  her husband launched since he left prison, including a peer support agency with 80 mentors operating in 30 western Wisconsin counties

Carlson, who is now the Justice Forward Wisconsin Coalition coordinator, noted he was sentenced after serving a second tour in Iraq in the military. While in the Stanley Correctional Facility, he had the opportunity to leave early under the earned release program, but he was a self-described  “hothead” who probably was going to serve his whole sentence until a mentor, a fellow resident, saw his potential.

“Instead of seeing me as a dumb, young hothead, he really took me time to mentor me,” Carlson said. “I think mentorship is a key theme in my life and my success in what I have accomplished.”

The Justice Forward Wisconsin Coalition, he said, is a network of “justice-impacted individuals mentoring each other and advocating for each other.”

He said the work needs to be led by those who have experienced incarceration.

“But if you’ve never felt what it feels like to be by yourself in solitary confinement, if you’ve never felt what it feels like to be a teenager in solitary confinement missing your mom, if you’ve never felt what it feels like to be treated and dehumanized after a visit, strip searched, told to bend over and cough — like, these types of things never go away,” he said. “I’m 10 years out, and it never goes away. I’m a lawyer, and it never goes away… I think that it’s time that individuals that have those experiences lead the way, and that’s what this coalition is about.”

Adam Procell, the new director of Community Wellness and Safety for the City of Milwaukee, a position that aims to prevent and reduce violence through community partnerships, received the Ramiah Whiteside Changemaker recognition.

Procell said on the first day of his new position he went back to the site where 35 years earlier, at age 15, when he was a gang member, he had killed 18-year-old Robert Bruce.

“Day One of my job, I went and started at the scene of my crime because I knew I was going to have to ask others to lean into uncomfortable situations,” said Procell, “So I can’t ask the community to lean into uncomfortability unless I take my two feet to be the most uncomfortable place on the face of this Earth, which is where Robert lost his life.”

Procell said there was much pressure on him to succeed and he admitted that he needed help and encouragement. He said others should also be honest about their struggles, adding that “transformation is never born in isolation – It rises from connections.” 

“It wasn’t punishment that changed me. It was the love and hope that I got when I came into this community that made a huge difference, and it changed me,” Procell said.

Hoy talks about changing the DOC culture

During his keynote speech, Hoy noted that in one of his early training sessions at the DOC, he participated in an exercise for recruits in which they were asked whether they perceived themselves as different from those they would be supervising or the same, and he perceived himself as the same.

“And that always stuck with me, because fundamentally I don’t see myself at all different than any people that are being sentenced to Wisconsin DOC,”  he said. 

Hoy said he was challenged by Procell to talk to those receiving services from the DOC to see how effective those services were.

Hoy said he told his staff that they would sit in a room with members of the community to listen.

“It’s just to hear how our policies, how our decisions, impact the lives of not only the people that we care for, provide services to, but their friends and family, and it’s probably been one of the best things that I’ve done since I started,” he said.

Hoy thought the forums would be opportunities to educate the public as well as providing feedback to the DOC.

“I think we are benefiting more by just being there and listening and understanding that the folks across the table and in those small groups are human beings just like us,” he said. “After the first forum, I sat at a table, after just about everybody left with a warden, and I won’t out him, but he was in tears and talked about how much his decisions impact not just people in our care, but their families and their systems. That is culture change.”

Hoy said recommendations are being generated to change the operation of the DOC, but what is more fundamentally important to him is the department’s culture.

“If we don’t make sure to address the culture and how we treat people, making sure that everything we do is treating people with dignity and respect, it’s not going to matter if we bring the overhead time from 35 days on average down to 20 or whatever it might be,” he said.

He noted that those working in maximum security prisons and restrictive housing settings often experience aggression by residents, including bodily fluids thrown at correctional officers.

“I get a lot of pushback when I say, not letting anybody off the hook for it, but what are the conditions that we are creating that make it OK for a human being to do that to another human being?” He said. “That’s the culture that we have to address, and it’s not everywhere. I’m not up here to completely bash DOC. I mean, I’ll tell it like it is, but there are pockets [needing change].”

Hoy also asked for understanding on the difficulty of making changes in an organization with 10,000 staff, 70,000 in community supervision and over 23,000 incarcerated.

“There’s going to be challenges; there’s going to be gaps,” he said of the DOC. But he asked for understanding for the thousands of people who  work for  DOC “who  “are trying to help change lives.”

National effort

The last keynote speaker of the evening was David Ayala, executive director of the national organization of The Formerly Incarcerated Convicted People and Families Movement, a network of over 60 organizations.

Ayala talked about the work of EXPO as part of a national movement that centers leadership by the people directly affected by the carceral system, narrative story-telling,  fighting for systemic change and creating infrastructure for reentry.

He stressed the importance of telling success stories like Carlson’s journey to obtaining his law degree.

“We need to lift up stories like that,” he said, “… there are many Davids across this country.”

Ayala encouraged EXPO to work across state lines with similar organizations.

“You’re not alone,” he told the group.  “You are part of a rich, resilient national web — a movement that believes freedom is not just a word, but a living horizon where every person returning home is met with care, dignity, and possibilities.”

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