After eight years, a federal judge has agreed to end the court-mandated oversight of a scandal-plagued youth prison.
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Dant'e Cottingham , who was formerly incarcerated, brings his perspective on the criminal justice system to students in a UW Law School class. | Photo courtesy UW Law School
A new class at the University of Wisconsin Law School aims to teach students about the perspectives of different people who are part of the criminal justice system, including those who are incarcerated.
Dant’e Cottingham, one of the course instructors, was himself once locked up inside Wisconsin’s prison system. He said that according to stigma, he’s not supposed to be in the classroom.
“So I’m aware of that, and I carry that,” Cottingham said. “That’s important to me, because I want to make sure that the city, the state, the country knows that we are a lot more than our worst mistake.”
Instructing the class along with Cottingham is Adam Stevenson, a clinical professor and director of the Frank J. Remington Center, which houses the law school’s prison-based clinics as well as the public defender and prosecution externships. While Cottingham has the experience of being incarcerated in the prison system, Stevenson brings to the course the legal expertise of a law professor, and one who has worked with a program focused on legal assistance to incarcerated people.
The Wednesday class, which has 19 students enrolled this semester, counts for two credits. It’s titled “Criminal Justice System: A Lived Experience Perspective.” The class, examining how theory, policy and practice line up with reality — or diverge from it, according to the syllabus, may continue in the future depending on how this semester goes.
In 1996, Cottingham was convicted of being party to a crime for first-degree intentional homicide for an offense that occurred when he was 17. While incarcerated, Cottingham applied to UW Madison’s program for legal assistance for incarcerated people and was assigned two law students who worked to help him win his release, he said. He was paroled in 2022.
Cottingham served as interim associate director of the group Ex-Incarcerated People Organizing, and spoke publicly about Green Bay Correctional Institution, where he spent some of his imprisonment, and which has been the subject of criticism for inhumane conditions and calls to close the facility. Now 47, Cottingham is the reentry and outreach support specialist for the Remington Center. He said he helps men and women who are transitioning from incarceration.
“I sit with people, build a rapport, get some insight and understanding to what their needs are,” Cottingham said. A person’s needs might involve housing, employment or medical care.
Cottingham said that when he gave presentations in classes in the past, students engaged with his description of his own experience, and he saw a need for the course he’s teaching now.
The experience of re-entering society after prison is one topic on the course schedule Cottingham shared with the Examiner. The arrest process, the trial process, sentencing, systemic inequality in criminal justice, and incarceration, and advocacy for reform and future directions are among the other course topics.
Guest speakers in the class range from Wisconsin Department of Corrections Secretary Jared Hoy, to Wood County District Attorney Jonathan Barnett, to Sharmain Harris, whose book “Rising Above the Odds: My Journey from Pain and Prison to Power and Purpose” is one of the required materials for the course. Requirements include book reports that analyze autobiographies of people who have experienced incarceration.
Jini Jasti, a spokesperson for University of Wisconsin Law School, said UW Law’s motto is “Law in Action.” She said the school does not only teach the law on the books but also encourages students to see how it works from different perspectives, such as those of prosecutors, defense attorneys, victims, defendants and prisoners.
“This unique class complements our other offerings, allowing students to hear about our trial, appellate and prison systems from someone who’s lived it,” Jasti said in a statement.
State Public Defender Jennifer Bias and Robert Taliaferro, who was formerly incarcerated, visited the class on Wednesday.
Bringing in these different perspectives helps “tease out topics that we should be discussing when we’re talking about what the law is, how the law should operate etc.,” Stevenson said in a Jan. 16 interview with the Wisconsin Examiner. “One person’s perspective is definitely great in doing that, but having multiple perspectives and the potential disagreement, or the clash, if you will, can also give rise to some really rich conversation.”
Stevenson said students will be graduating and working with clients as attorneys, and understanding the perspectives of people in the criminal justice system is important.
Lara Hendrix, a third year law student, is planning to be a public defender after graduation. She said she thought the class would be valuable for her future career.
Hendrix hopes that eventually people who don’t plan to practice criminal law take the class.
“These are real people with families, and people that love them, and other people that are affected,” Hendrix said, “and that needs so much more attention than it gets.”
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The price of making phone calls from prisons and jails was set to drop under a 2024 FCC rule, but a 2025 rule revision is driving costs back up | Getty Images
For many, the recent holiday season was a time to connect with family. For some, family includes someone incarcerated in one of Wisconsin’s prisons or jails.
Juli Bliefnick told the Wisconsin Examiner she was incarcerated in county jail and state prison from January 2012 to June 2016. She said that many people would save up precious telephone time to call their families for the holidays.
“People that came from more disadvantaged backgrounds would not call their families as often,” Bliefnick said.
She remembers the cost of calls putting strain on her relationship with her parents while she was incarcerated.
While incarcerated, Ventae Parrow said he had to choose whether to spend his money on additional food items and hygiene, or on talking with family on the phone. Parrow left prison in 2020 and is an organizer for the advocacy network WISDOM. He told the Examiner that how often he talked to his family depended on how much money he had.
Nationally, jail and prison phone call rates have declined over the years, according to a report covering 2008-2021 from the Prison Policy Initiative. And in 2024, the Federal Communications Commission voted for new rules to lower how much calls could cost.
The agency announced that for the overwhelming majority of people, the upper limit on the per-minute cost of calls would drop by over half. New per-minute caps ranged from 6 cents per minute for prisons to 12 cents per minute for very small jails.
However, the agency postponed aspects of the new rules in June, including the 2024 caps, until April 2027. Then the FCC voted in the fall of last year to partially roll back the 2024 change with new caps. The commission voted to increase the caps on the cost of a minute on the phone partway back to the caps that preceded the 2024 rules. The new caps range from 11 cents per minute for prisons to 19 cents per minute for extremely small jails. The FCC called them interim caps, and said it was seeking comment on how to establish permanent caps.
The FCC decision includes a ban on site commissions — payments from service providers to correctional facilities that the Prison Policy Initiative said had had the effect of inflating the final costs families paid. The ban will take effect on April 6. Wanda Bertram of the Prison Policy Initiative said that sheriffs’ desire for commissions “was an important factor in driving up phone rates in the past, but it’s hard to say how that is going to change the setting of rates going forward with the new rules,” and that companies may or may not choose to jack rates up to the maximum now allowed by the FCC.
Worth Rises, a group advocating for lower rates, said the 2025 revised caps will deliver substantially less financial relief to families affected by incarceration. They will take effect April 6 barring further action.
In northeastern Wisconsin, people incarcerated in the Brown County Jail currently pay a per-minute rate of 15 cents for phone calls, Captain Heidi Michel told the Examiner. They receive two free phone calls and two free messages per week.
Michel said the jail’s average daily population for 2025 was 661 people, which meets the FCC’s definition of a medium-sized jail. The 2025 caps will require jails of this size to have rates of 12 cents per minute or less. Under the 2024 rules, medium-sized jails would have to abide by a lower rate — 7 cents per minute or less — and therefore charge incarcerated people and their families less money.
The 2025 caps also allow for people to be charged higher rates for video calls than the 2024 rules. Michel said people incarcerated in the Brown County Jail can have video visitation for 18 cents per minute. A medium-sized jail can have this rate under the 2025 caps for video calls. However, the 2024 caps would have required a rate of 12 cents per minute or less.
Michel didn’t immediately respond to a question from the Examiner on Friday about whether the county currently receives a portion of the revenue from the phone calls that incarcerated people in their jail and their families make.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said rules the commission adopted in 2024 resulted in “serious, unintended consequences.” He said that limiting how facilities could recover safety and security costs through phone call charges caused some correctional facilities to scale back or even stop offering calling services.
The Baxter County Sheriff’s Office in Arkansas announced that the phone system used at the Baxter County Detention Counter would soon no longer be available due to the regulations. Two companies claimed to the FCC in April that its 2024 order was forcing correctional facilities to end or reduce access to services, and that the two companies were forced to end service to a few facilities.
Commissioner Anna Gomez, who dissented in the rollback of the 2024 rule change, said the commission took “narrow and speculative” concerns and granted a waiver of the entire 2024 decision. She also raised the idea that the commission could have considered an individual waiver of the 2024 caps for facilities that showed that having less revenue led to communication services being unavailable.
Gomez called the FCC’s order indefensible, saying it would implement “an egregious transfer of wealth from families in incredibly vulnerable situations to monopoly companies that seek to squeeze every penny out of them.”
Wanda Bertram of the Prison Policy Initiative told the Examiner that according to the FCC, the caps were calculated to offset the cost of companies offering certain features to jails and prisons, such as call monitoring. In an interview, Bertram argued that call monitoring technology should not be funded by fees charged to incarcerated people and their families.
The cost of a phone call varies across facilities. In the Eau Claire County Jail in western Wisconsin, incarcerated people pay 9 cents per minute on the phone and receive two free phone calls a week, Security Services Captain Chad Dachel told the Examiner. For the Polk County Jail, the rate is $0.19 per minute, and incarcerated people are allowed two free calls per week, according to Sheriff Brent Waak.
As of late 2021, the average cost of a 15-minute call from a local jail in Wisconsin was $3.00, according to a Prison Policy Initiative report.
In a statement to the Examiner, Mark Rice of WISDOM called for making prison and jail phone calls free for all. The effects of this would include reducing the financial challenge for families and improving the mental wellbeing of affected people, he wrote. The Prison Policy Initiative has argued that family contact also reduces recidivism.
In November, lawmakers and organizers announced a package of bills aimed at improving conditions in prisons and jails, including the affordability of communication, the Examiner reported.
ICSolutions, telephone service provider for the Wisconsin Department of Corrections (DOC), charges 6 cents per minute for calls at the department’s adult facilities, DOC communications director Beth Hardtke told the Examiner, as of late December. ICSolutions charges 1 cent per minute for calls made at juvenile facilities and continues to charge $2.50 for a 25-minute video visit or $5 for a 50-minute visit, according to Hardtke. According to reporting from the Examiner in 2024, a family member of a man incarcerated at Fox Lake Correctional Institution said people receive two free calls every Sunday. Three free weekly messages are provided, according to the department’s website.
People incarcerated in jails and their families have tended to experience higher phone rates than those in prison, according to the Prison Policy Initiative report covering 2008-2021. Under the caps the FCC passed in 2024, the DOC’s 6-cent rate would still have been allowed; that’s a 15-minute rate of 90 cents In 2021, the average 15-minute rate for a jail phone call was roughly $3.
However, ICSolutions is required to pay the department a commission of 4 cents per minute for all calls at adult institutions. The FCC decision includes a ban on site commissions, which critics say inflate call costs. The ban will take effect on April 6.
Under state law, two-thirds of the phone commission from the contract must go to the Department of Administration, according to Hardtke. One-third goes to DOC and must be spent on services that “directly benefit” incarcerated people.
In September 2024, Hardtke told the Examiner that ICSolutions paid nearly $6.3 million in commission in fiscal year 2024. The Department of Corrections’ share was nearly $2.1 million.
Hardtke said that “the commissions received allow DOC to purchase the following in support of the persons in our care,” and provided a list of items ranging from mail processing services to re-entry portfolios to art supplies.
It’s unclear whether the FCC’s commission ban will affect prisoners’ ability to access items and services currently funded by the commission money, or if other funding will sustain those items and services. However, $2.1 million is a tiny fraction of the Department of Corrections budget, and the commission money may not account for all of the funding supporting each item or service Hardtke listed. Hardtke said the Department of Corrections is continuing to evaluate how to best continue services to the Wisconsin prison population.
Bertram of the Prison Policy Initiative said that charging people higher phone rates shouldn’t be the source of money for things like free video calls that benefit incarcerated people.
The decision leaves some room for authorities to receive money from phone calls. Within the new FCC caps, a portion of up to 2 cents per minute exists “to account for the costs correctional facilities incur in allowing access to (communication services).”
Bertram told the Examiner that an example of this would be time spent by a correctional officer to escort people to a phone bay. The FCC said this was an interim measure while it sought comment for a permanent version.
Hardtke’s full list of items that receive funding from the commission was: “mail processing services, driver education simulation equipment, recreation equipment, exercise equipment, library resources, TVs, cable TV, art supplies, re-entry portfolios, puzzles, yarn, activity books, CD/DVD players, movies, dayroom microwaves, incentive prizes, visiting room toys/activities, media credits, dayroom newspapers, magazine subscriptions, modern technology improvements and services, bus tickets for release, dayroom ice machines, personal laundry washing machines and repairs, barber services, religious and chapel supplies and services, legal loans, lanyards, burial/cremation for unclaimed bodies, dayroom game tables, dayroom board and card games, graduation ceremonies expenses, and more.”
Before the rollback in October, the FCC postponed its rate cap rules in June. In a November interview, Bertram said she’d already heard from families about the cost of connection going up in the wake of the loss of the 2024 caps.
“This is going to come as a shock to a lot of families who had gotten a lot of relief from the 2024 rules,” Bertram said.
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Wrongly convicted people in Wisconsin can wait months to have their cases reviewed and receive compensation that does not meet their needs, advocates say. A bipartisan bill in the state Legislature aims to address those problems. | Photo by Caspar Benson/Getty Images
On Dec. 3, a committee of Wisconsin lawmakers heard from Gabriel Lugo about his time in prison before his conviction was overturned.
Lugo testified through a statement read by attorney Rex Anderegg in a hearing of the Assembly Committee on State Affairs. He said he experienced constant lockdowns that severely restricted his movement and some correctional officers treating him as less than human.
Lugo, 36, was convicted of first-degree reckless homicide in 2009 and spent the majority of his incarceration in Waupun Correctional Institution, the state’s oldest prison, which has received scrutiny for prison deaths and living conditions. After Lugo’s conviction was overturned, he was released from jail in June 2023.
According to Christopher Lau of the Wisconsin Innocence Project, the project has helped exonerate more than 30 people. Clients leave prison with medical ailments and emotional trauma, without familial support, employment, savings, and often, with nowhere to call home, his testimony stated. Many struggle to re-enter society.
Exonerees often have to wait months to get on the agenda for the claims board’s meetings, Lau stated. If they qualify, the law doesn’t provide enough to ensure stable housing, he said, “to say nothing of the costs of social services like counseling, vocational assistance and access to health insurance.”
The Wisconsin Claims Board can award up to $25,000 in compensation, at a rate not greater than $5,000 per year for the imprisonment, and has also awarded attorney fees. It can recommend that the state Legislature issue additional compensation.
In February 2016, the Assembly unanimously approved a bill that aimed to increase state support for wrongly convicted people, including enabling the claims board to issue higher payouts. It did not become law.
AB 583, a bill currently in the Legislature, also aims to provide more aid more quickly to wrongly convicted people. Under the bill, a wrongly convicted person would receive compensation at a yearly rate of $50,000, prorated daily, for the imprisonment; the total would not exceed $1 million. The claims board would adjust the rate yearly to account for the cost of living, and it would be able to award compensation in an annuity payable over time.
The bill addresses when people who received compensation for wrongful imprisonment in the past can petition for more under the new law, potentially allowing some to receive more compensation.
The bill lays out when wrongly convicted people could have health care coverage under plans offered by the Group Insurance Board to state employees.
Under the bill, if a person is released from imprisonment on the basis of a claim of innocence, they could petition for a court order directing the Department of Corrections to create a transition-to-release plan. They could also petition for a financial assistance award of up to 133% of the federal poverty level for up to 14 months, or while compensation proceedings are pending, whichever is shorter.
State legislators who introduced the bill included Republican and Democratic lawmakers. Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine), chair of the Senate Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety, submitted testimony in support of the bill.
The bill bars some people from filing a petition with the claims board for compensation for wrongful imprisonment, such as a person who is convicted of a violent crime after being released.
Also under the bill, a person released from imprisonment on the basis of a claim of innocence could petition the court for the sealing of all records related to the case. For Lugo, it took about two years to get a response from job applications because his case was still visible online, his statement said.
A similar provision in the bill that the Assembly passed in 2016 drew pushback from the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, which argued that it would “dramatically compromise the ability of media and the public to examine what went wrong in cases in which things are known to have gone terribly wrong.”
On Dec. 22, the Wisconsin Examiner reached out to the office of Rep. Jessie Rodriguez (R-Oak Creek), one of the lawmakers who introduced the bill, about the provision and the council’s concern in 2016.
“Thank you for bringing this information to our attention as we were not aware of this when we introduced the bill this session,” Rodriguez said in an emailed comment. “The organization has not reached out to us with any concerns at this time.”
Wrongly convicted people may also attempt to obtain a monetary award through lawsuits. The bill addresses the possibility of a person receiving a settlement, judgement or award for damages in a federal or state action related to their wrongful imprisonment.
Under one of these parts of the bill, if the person obtains a settlement before the claims board awards them compensation, the claims board would subtract the amount from the board’s compensation.
Under current law, the claims board is responsible for finding whether the evidence of the person’s innocence is “clear and convincing.”
The claims board members come from the Department of Justice, the Department of Administration, the Office of the Governor, the Wisconsin Senate and the Wisconsin Assembly. The Senate and Assembly members are Sen. Eric Wimberger (R-Oconto) and Rep. Alex Dallman (R-Markesan).
Under the bill, when the claims board receives a petition for compensation for an innocent convict, it would be referred to the Division of Hearings and Appeals in the Department of Administration. The division would find whether the evidence is clear and convincing that the petitioner was innocent of the crime they were imprisoned for.
If the evidence is clear and convincing for innocence, the division would transmit its findings to the claims board, which would decide what amount of compensation would be equitable.
In a decision dated Jan. 30 of this year, the claims board awarded $25,000 to Gabriel Lugo, plus approximately $77,000 in attorney fees, and recommended that the Legislature award him an additional $750,000.
According to Rodriguez, the Legislature has only passed individual appropriation bills awarding additional compensation three times.
Rodriguez’s testimony stated that it’s estimated that around 72 people have been exonerated in Wisconsin since 1990, and that seven received recommendations for compensation above the cap. She stated in a press release that “the Legislature should not have to play judge and jury again” when there is already a process at the claims board.
“Without these reforms, exonerees would continue to need individual appropriation bills to receive an adequate amount of compensation,” Rodriguez stated in a press release. “These bills have rarely been acted upon, and even more rarely are signed into law.”
The board has also recommended that the Legislature issue additional compensation for Robert and David Bintz, who were released from prison in the fall of last year.
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Advocates want Democratic Gov. Tony Evers to use his power to reduce prison sentences before he leaves office at the start of 2027.
The post It’s been more than 2 decades since Wisconsin’s last commutation. Advocates want Evers to change that appeared first on WPR.
If you or someone you know is considering suicide, call or text the three-digit suicide and crisis lifeline at 988. Resources are available online here.
A recently released report details problems at Wisconsin prisons including high staff turnover, overcrowding and issues with solitary confinement.
Wisconsin’s Department of Corrections paid the firm Falcon, Inc. roughly $500,000 to complete the yearlong review of the prison system’s adult facilities.
Among other issues, the report zeroed in on the department’s policies for solitary confinement, officially known as restrictive housing.
The report raised concerns about how often people are locked up in solitary confinement while dealing with serious mental health issues.
“Individuals with SMI (serious mental illness) placed in restrictive housing are more likely to become violent and, if released from restrictive housing, are more likely to return,” the report’s authors noted, citing outside research. “Those individuals housed in restrictive housing are also more likely to die by suicide than those living in other housing settings.”
On the last day of March 2025, 872 adults were locked up in solitary confinement through the DOC, making up close to 4% of the prison population. That was roughly on par with the percentage of inmates in solitary confinement six years prior.
A significant number of those in solitary confinement — 101 people on the day measured in March 2025 — were classified as having a serious mental health issue.
The report noted that people who spend extended periods of time in solitary confinement are more likely to be part of the DOC’s mental health caseload, meaning they’ve been referred for mental health needs of varying severity. Sixty-nine percent of the people locked up in solitary confinement for more than 120 days were part of the DOC’s mental health caseload. By comparison, 46% of the general prison population was on that mental health caseload.
The report did commend the DOC for attempting to limit extended stays in solitary confinement by adopting a May 2024 policy that requires a higher-up to approve solitary confinement stays longer than 120 days.
It urged DOC to change its solitary confinement policies by creating “alternative” units for people with serious mental illness, “so they can automatically be diverted from restrictive housing.”
Per its policies, the DOC can send people to solitary confinement as “disciplinary separation,” which is punishment for bad behavior.
It also sends people to solitary confinement through what it calls “administrative confinement,” which is when people are deemed a threat to themselves or others if they’re kept with the general prison population. Typically, that extends to people who are flagged for “suicide watch,” if they’re deemed to be at risk for suicide.
But putting suicidal people into solitary confinement cells is likely making the situation worse, the report warns.
“Observation cells are typically in restrictive housing units, which is problematic,” the report notes. “Individuals on observation status are not allowed therapeutic items, visits, phone calls, or recreation.”
The report urges the DOC to stop that practice and instead move its areas for observing at-risk people to “more appropriate environments that support therapeutic care and patient safety.”
Marianne Oleson, an activist with Ex-Incarcerated People Organizing of Wisconsin, described the DOC’s existing solitary confinement policies as barbaric. She spent five years incarcerated in Wisconsin.
“It’s torture,” Oleson said of solitary confinement. “As someone who has spent time in their quote-unquote ‘restrictive housing’ unit for being suicidal, you’re only compounding the harm and the hurt.”
She said solitary confinement left her with permanent psychological scars.
“My mind was my weapon,” Oleson said. “My mind was destroying me, and the answer they gave me was to lock me down with that weapon. And I nearly broke. I’ve seen women break, honestly.”
In an email, DOC spokesperson Beth Hardkte acknowledged that most observation cells for people on suicide watch are located in the restrictive housing units of prisons, although she said there is no specific DOC policy requiring them to be located there.
“Observation cells are specially designed to ensure safety and property can be restricted to prevent self-harm,” she said. “Observation status also requires more intensive staffing and availability of psychological or health care staff.”
Also noted in the report are struggles with “staff attrition” and a large proportion of inexperienced staff members.
“WIDOC has experienced a great deal of staffing changes, with a
significant number of the current staff hired during or after the COVID19 pandemic,” the report notes.
And it detailed the DOC’s struggles with overcrowding. Nearly every state prison is holding more people than it was designed for. On average, men’s prisons were at 130% capacity, and women’s prisons were at 166% capacity.
That overcrowding is leading to delays for people who are supposed to be transferred from one prison to another, the report notes. In some cases, that means people aren’t locked up according to their designated security level, such as men classified as medium-security remaining in a maximum-security prison.
Currently, there are more than 23,000 adults locked up in Wisconsin’s prisons — making them over capacity by more than 5,000 people. The state’s prison population is now roughly at pre-pandemic levels, which is more than triple the size of the prison population in 1990.
Oleson said the report highlights the need for policy and legislative changes to cut back on the number of Wisconsinites behind bars.
“It confirms what we have said for years,” Oleson said. “Wisconsin’s prisons are dangerously overcrowded, under-resourced and in desperate need of healing.”
Wisconsin’s Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who first took office in 2019, has said he wants to decrease Wisconsin’s prison population, although that reduction hasn’t happened in practice. Some Republican members of the GOP-controlled Legislature have said they oppose his goals of eventually decreasing prison beds and expanding certain early release programs.
In a statement, DOC Secretary Jared Hoy says the report by Falcon, Inc. shows the prison system is “moving in the right direction.”
“Falcon experts recognized the work of countless dedicated DOC employees to modernize our health care and restrictive housing policies,” Hoy’s statement said. “As much as we’ve done, we can always do more, do better and the recommendations in the report provide a guide for our agency.”
This story was originally published by WPR.
Review details problems with solitary confinement, overcrowding in Wisconsin prisons 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.
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ sweeping plan to overhaul Wisconsin’s aging prison system, which includes closing a prison built in the 1800s, moved forward Tuesday with bipartisan support despite complaints from Republican lawmakers that their concerns weren’t being addressed.
The bipartisan state building commission unanimously approved spending $15 million to proceed with planning for the Evers proposal. Republicans objected, saying his plan was “doomed to failure,” but they voted for it in the hopes it could be changed later.
Evers voiced frustration with Republicans who said they weren’t part of development of the plan.
“We’ve got to get this damned thing done, that’s the bottom line,” he said.
Evers in February presented his plan as the best and only option to address the state’s aging facilities. Problems at the lockups have included inmate deaths, assaults against staff, lockdowns, lawsuits, federal investigations, criminal charges against staff, resignations and rising maintenance costs.
Republicans have opposed parts of the plan that would reduce the overall capacity of the state prison system by 700 beds and increase the number of offenders who could be released on supervision. The GOP-led Legislature called for closing the troubled prison in Green Bay by 2029, but Evers vetoed that provision earlier this year, saying it couldn’t be done without getting behind his entire plan.
The building commission’s approval on Tuesday for spending the $15 million in planning money starts that process.
Republican members of the building commission complained that Evers was plowing ahead without considering other ideas or concerns from GOP lawmakers. Republican state Sen. Andre Jacqué objected to reducing the number of beds in the prison system that he said is currently “dangerously unsafe.”
He called it a plan “doomed to failure” and “not a serious proposal.”
“I feel like we’ve decided to plow ahead without the opportunity for compromise,” Jacqué said. “We’re merely asking that any ideas from our side of the aisle have the option of being considered.”
A GOP proposal to expand the scope of the plan was rejected after the commission, evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, deadlocked.
Evers said any Republican who wanted to be involved in the process going forward could be. Republicans said ahead of the vote that they were not included in discussions that led to the current proposal.
“Those other options will be discussed,” Evers said.
Department of Corrections Secretary Jared Hoy said that approval of the planning money was needed to keep the momentum going for closing the Green Bay prison, which Republicans support.
The entire plan, once fully enacted, would take six years to complete and cost an estimated $500 million. Building a new prison, as Republicans had called for, would cost about $1 billion. Evers is not seeking a third term next year, so it would be up to the next governor to either continue with his plan or go in a different direction.
The multitiered proposal starts with finally closing the troubled Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake juvenile correctional facilities in northern Wisconsin and building a new one near Madison at the site of a current minimum-security prison. The Lincoln Hills campus would then be converted into a medium security adult prison. The prison in Green Bay, built in 1898, would be closed.
The plan also proposes that the state’s oldest prison, which was built in Waupun in 1851, be converted from a maximum-security prison to a medium-security center focused on vocational training. The Stanley Correctional Center would be converted from a medium- to a maximum-security prison and the prison in Hobart would be expanded to add 200 minimum-security beds.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup. This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
Wisconsin moving ahead with prison overhaul plan despite Republican objections 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.
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ plan to overhaul Wisconsin’s prisons is set for a crucial vote this week that could determine whether the state can meet a 2029 closure of the Green Bay Correctional Institution and the long-awaited shutdown of Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake youth facilities.
The State Building Commission at a public meeting Tuesday is expected to vote on whether to release $15 million for advancing Evers’ plan, an amount the Legislature included in the 2025-27 biennial budget. Subcommittees will meet prior to the full commission Tuesday afternoon, which could signal how Republican members may vote on the money for Evers’ plan. Republican lawmakers were tight-lipped Monday morning about whether they have an alternative plan and whether they plan to roll it out Tuesday.
Evers in February announced what he called a “domino series” of projects that would include closing Green Bay Correctional Institution, converting Lincoln Hills into a facility for adults and turning Waupun’s prison into a “vocational village” that would offer job skill training to qualifying inmates. Evers describes the plan as the most realistic and cost-effective way to stabilize the state’s prison population.
The Green Bay prison has been roundly criticized as unsafe and outdated, Lincoln Hills has only in recent months come into compliance with a court-ordered plan to remedy problems dating back a decade, and Waupun has had lockdowns, inmate deaths and criminal charges against a former warden.
The $15 million would fund initial plans and a design report that would allow capital projects in Evers’ proposals to be funded in the 2025-27 budget, according to the governor’s office. It would also prevent delays of Evers’ plan while he is still in office. Evers is not seeking reelection next year, and Wisconsin will have a new governor in 2027.
But it’s unclear how the eight-member commission, which includes four Republicans, will vote on whether to release the $15 million for the governor’s plan. Sens. Mary Felzkowski, R-Tomahawk, and Andre Jacqué, R-New Franken, declined to comment while still reviewing the proposals. Reps. Rob Swearingen, R-Rhinelander, and Robert Wittke, R-Caledonia, did not respond to questions from Wisconsin Watch.
In addition to Evers, the commission includes Sen. Brad Pfaff, D-Onalaska; Rep. Jill Billings, D-La Crosse; and citizen member Barb Worcester, who served as one of Evers’ initial deputy chiefs of staff.
Pfaff, who said he will support Evers’ request, said he is “cautiously optimistic” that the $15 million will get approved with the necessary bipartisan support for it to pass. It’s not a final policy decision, Pfaff said.
“I think it’s important to know that the proposal that’s being brought forward is a design and planning stage, so it’s not the end-all or be-all,” Pfaff said.
At least one Republican, Rep. David Steffen, R-Howard, has asked fellow party members on the commission to support Evers’ request. Howard represents a district near the Green Bay Correctional Institution.
“I believe that the release of the $15 million will be important in moving corrections planning forward in our state,” Steffen wrote in an Oct. 14 letter to the Republican commission members.
The funding for Evers’ prison plan, which was included in the governor’s original budget proposal, totaled $325 million. During the budget process the Legislature approved just $15 million for corrections projects and a 2029 closure of the Green Bay Correctional Institution.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, criticized the governor for not including GOP lawmakers in the process and suggested the party would form its own plan.
“The idea of letting thousands of people out of jail early, tearing down prisons and not replacing the spots, I can’t imagine our caucus will go for it,” Vos told reporters in February.
A spokesperson for Vos did not respond to questions from Wisconsin Watch about whether the party started a process for forming its own plan. Evers in July partially vetoed the 2029 deadline for the Green Bay Correctional Institution and criticized Republicans for setting a date without providing a plan to close the prison.
While lawmakers on the State Building Commission have since been tight-lipped about which way they plan to vote, leaders in both Waupun and Allouez — on whose land Green Bay Correctional sits — haven’t been shy to express their support for the plan.
Waupun Mayor Rohn Bishop said he favors any plan that will keep Waupun Correctional Institution open. With three prisons within its jurisdiction, Waupun has been called Prison City in honor of its major employers.
“We take pride in the fact it’s here,” Bishop said of the 180-year-old prison.
Under the proposal, Waupun’s prison would turn from a traditional, maximum prison to what’s been called a vocational village that would offer job-skill training to those who qualify. The idea is modeled after similar programs in Michigan, Missouri and Louisiana.
“The first and most important thing is to keep the prison here for the economic reasons of the jobs, what it does for Waupun utilities, and how our wastewater sewage plant is built for the prison,” Bishop said. “If it were to close, that would shift to the ratepayers.”
In recent years, complaints about dire conditions within the cell halls have mounted, with inmates describing a crumbling infrastructure and infestations of birds and rodents. Under Evers’ proposal, Waupun’s prison would have to temporarily close while the facility undergoes renovations.
Meanwhile, under Evers’ plan, Green Bay’s prison is slated to close. In Allouez, where the prison stands, village President Jim Rafter said the closure can’t come soon enough.
“I’m more optimistic than ever that the plans will move forward this time,” Rafter said, pointing to the bipartisan support he has seen on the issue.
For Rafter, his eagerness to close the prison is partly economic: The prison currently stands on some of the most valuable real estate in Brown County, he said, and redeveloping it would be a financial boon for the village of Allouez.
But it also comes from safety concerns for both correctional officers and inmates.
“GBCI historically has been one of the most dangerous facilities across Wisconsin, built in the 1800s, and it has well outlived its usefulness,” Rafter said. “Its design doesn’t allow for safe passage of inmates from one area to the other. So safety is a huge concern.”
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Wisconsin Republicans mum on prison plans heading into key vote on moving projects forward 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.
It’s hard to find hope in a terminal illness. But for Darnell Price, the spread of a cancerous tumor opened the door for a new life. It was a chance to spend his remaining days outside of prison.
Two Wisconsin Department of Corrections doctors in 2023 projected Price would die within a year — one of several criteria by which prisoners may seek a shortened sentence due to an “extraordinary health condition,” a form of compassionate release.
That was only the first step. A Corrections committee next had to vet his application. Its approval would send Price’s application to the court that convicted him for charges related to a 2015 bank robbery.
Victims of the crime did not oppose an early release, and a judge granted Price’s petition. That allowed him to walk free in August 2023 after an eight-year stint behind bars.
Price beat the odds in multiple ways. He’s still alive in his native Milwaukee and has authored a memoir about his journey. That his application succeeded is nearly as remarkable as his survival.
Wisconsin grants few applicants compassionate release, leaving many severely ill inmates in short-staffed prisons that often struggle to meet health care needs.
Wisconsin courts approved just 53, or 11%, of 489 compassionate release petitions they received between January 2019 and June 2025 — about eight petitions a year, Corrections data show. Courts approved just five of 63 petitions filed in all of 2024.
That’s as the state’s adult prison population has swelled past 23,500, eclipsing the system’s built capacity. A growing share of those prisoners — 1 in 10 — are 60 or older with increasingly intense health care needs.
Increased use of compassionate release could help ease costs and crowding with minimal risks to public safety, prisoner advocates and legal experts say, but it remains off limits to a significant share of the prison population in Wisconsin and elsewhere, including those posing little threat to the public.
“The door is closed to so many people right at the very beginning,” said Mary Price, senior counsel for Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a nonprofit advocate for criminal justice reform.
“There’s lots of good arguments why they ought to be released: They’re the most expensive people to incarcerate and the least likely to reoffend.”
Wisconsin’s struggle to care for its graying prison population has long drawn concern.
By 2014, Corrections counted more than 900 inmates over the age of 60, or about 4% of the overall population. Citing that number, then-department medical director James Greer wondered in a WPR interview:
“What’s that 900 (inmates) over 60 going to look like? It’s going to (be) 1,100? Is it going to be 1,200 in five years? And if so, how are (we) going to manage those in a correctional setting and keep them safe?”
Those projections undershot the trend. By the end of 2019, state prisons held more than 1,600 people older than 60. That number stood at 2,165 by the end of last year, nearly 10% of the population.
The state’s truth-in-sentencing law, which took effect in 2000, has helped drive that trend. It virtually eliminated parole for newly convicted offenders.
“Old law” prisoners sentenced before the change were eligible for release after serving 25% of their time. They were mandatorily released after serving two-thirds of their time.
Truth-in-sentencing required prisoners to serve 100% of their sentences plus post-release “extended supervision” of at least 25% of the original sentence. Parole remains available only to those sentenced before 2000.
The overhaul increased lockup time by nearly two years on average, said Michael O’Hear, a Marquette University Law School professor and expert on criminal punishment. That likely contributed to the aging trend. Lengthened post-release supervision played an even bigger role, if indirectly.
“The longer a person serves on supervision, the greater the likelihood of revocation and return to prison,” O’Hear said.
Separately, harsher sentencing for drunken driving also sent more people to prison.
As prisoners age, they develop more complicated medical needs. Research is finding that the conditions of incarceration — overcrowding, lack of quality health care and psychological stress — accelerate those needs. Such conditions can shorten life expectancy by up to two years for every year behind bars, one study in New York state found.
“In Wisconsin overcrowding is a huge issue. Assigning more people to a room than they’re supposed to, which, of course, affects your sleep,” said Farah Kaiksow, associate professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, who has researched aging and care in prison.
The state has recognized the growing needs of older prisoners. In 2023, for instance, it opened a $7 million addition to the minimum-security Oakhill Correctional Institution that includes dozens of assisted living beds.
“Patients are helped with daily living tasks such as eating, dressing, hygiene, mobility, etc. Patients may be admitted for temporary rehab stays after injury or illness or longer-term stays due to age and frailty,” Corrections spokesperson Beth Hardtke said.
Hardtke also cited hospice programs at Dodge, Taycheedah and Oshkosh prisons.
But the department has struggled to recruit and retain competent medical staff. A Wisconsin Watch/New York Times investigation last year found nearly a third of the 60 prison staff physicians employed over a decade faced previous censure by a state medical board for an error or breach of ethics. Many faced lawsuits from inmates accusing them of serious errors that caused suffering or death.
That included a doctor whom Darnell Price sued for failing to order a biopsy on his growing tumor. She had surrendered her medical license in California after pleading guilty to a drug possession charge and no contest to a charge of prescription forgery.
Meanwhile, two Waupun Correctional Institution nurses are facing felony charges relating to deaths of two prisoners in their custody. One prisoner, 62-year-old Donald Maier, died in February 2024 from malnutrition and dehydration.
Advocates say boosting compassionate release could save taxpayer money in a state that spends more than its neighbors on incarceration. Health care tends to cost more for older prisoners.
Wisconsin lawmakers in the state’s most recent budget assumed that per prisoner health care costs will increase to $6,554 by 2026-27 — a fraction of the roughly $50,000 officials say it costs to incarcerate one person in Wisconsin.
The corrections department did not provide information breaking down health care costs by age. But a study of North Carolina’s prison system found that it spent about four times as much on health care for prisoners older than 50 compared to others. A 2012 ACLU report found it cost twice as much to incarcerate older prisoners nationally.
Most states and the Federal Bureau of Prisons have some version of compassionate release, though they vary wildly.
Wisconsin offers two main avenues: one based on medical condition and the other based on age and time served. Over the last seven years, Wisconsin has been more likely to grant petitions for early release based on medical reasons.
State law bars compassionate release for old law prisoners convicted before 2000 — about 1,600 people today. Parole is their only option for early release, and the state parole commission has been releasing fewer people on parole in recent years.
That leaves out people like Carmen Cooper, 80, a wheelchair-bound inmate at Fox Lake Correctional Institution who struggles to breathe. He lives with Parkinson’s disease, recurrent cancer and other ongoing pain and says he doesn’t always receive proper medication.
Convicted of murder and attempted murder in 1993, he is not eligible for parole for another 12 years. He has submitted two compassionate release applications with doctors’ affidavits, but the timing and nature of his convictions ban him from such relief; state law categorically excludes people convicted of Class A or Class B felonies, the most serious types of crime.
Cooper has little hope of dying outside of prison.
His daughters Qumine Hunter and Carmen Cooper say the incarceration has left a wide gap. He has missed deaths of close family members and births of grandchildren and great-grandchildren he has not met. The sisters never stop looking for ways to bring him home.
“If we got five years, 10 years, two years, whatever years we got left with him, we want all of them,” Hunter said.
Renagh O’Leary, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School, represents people in compassionate release hearings. She said several elements of the state’s process limit access, including that petitions first go to a Department of Corrections committee, which must include a social worker and can include health care representatives.
Committee members might ask for a person’s plan for housing or to explain minor infractions from time in prison. The petition advances to a judge only if the committee unanimously approves.
Sending petitions directly to the sentencing court would be fairer, O’Leary said. Those and other major changes to the process would require legislative action.
“We’re talking about how long someone should serve in prison,” she added, “and I think those questions are best answered in a public courtroom, in a transparent process by a judge in the county that imposed the original prison sentence.”
The courtroom is where crime victims can weigh in. Their opinions depend on individual circumstances, said Amy Brown, the longtime director of victim services at the Dane County District Attorney’s Office.
“Victims don’t all fall into one category, just like offenders don’t all fall into one category,” she said.
Another wrinkle in Wisconsin’s compassionate release system: Doctors must attest to prisoners having less than six to 12 months to live. Some doctors feel uncomfortable making such a prediction.
“It’s really hard for a doctor to say, ‘Yeah, he’s going to be dead in six months,’” said Michele DiTomas, hospice medical director for the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, California. “You just don’t know. Some people will be dead in three months, some people will go on for 18 months.”
California offers a different model for sick and dying prisoners.
The 17-bed hospice unit DiTomas runs, the first of its kind in the U.S., offers dying men as much comfort as can be found within a prison: medications that ease pain, visits from family members, time outdoors and attention from other incarcerated men who have been trained to provide hospice care. That hasn’t stopped DiTomas from working to get people approved for compassionate release so they can finish their lives at home.
California’s compassionate release process used to require a string of signatures — from the corrections secretary, the parole board, the governor and the original sentencing court — and often took longer than a person had left to live, she said. Similar barriers exist in many states.
The state a decade ago approved about 10 applications on average each year, DiTomas said, with approvals taking four to six months. A legislative overhaul streamlined the process. The state now approves about 100 compassionate release applications a year, taking as little as four weeks each, DiTomas said.
The changes resulted from leaders’ collaboration after recognizing that the previous system wasn’t working.
“We can give people their humanity and preserve public safety,” DiTomas said. “It’s not necessarily one or the other.”
Price initially lacked a place to stay while applying for compassionate release in 2023. It was his job to fix that or risk dooming his application.
“They can deny you for not having a solid plan for housing, but it’s not something they help you with,” he said.
He found a room in a transitional housing unit in Milwaukee through a faith-based organization. Had he required more intensive care, a nursing home may be a better option. But many nursing homes don’t accept someone fresh out of prison — a challenge described in a 2020 Legislative Audit Bureau report.
Wisconsin faces a wide shortage of affordable senior care beds, let alone for people with a criminal record.
That’s a problem nationwide, said Price, the Families Against Mandatory Minimums attorney. As more than 60,000 people aged 50 or older leave prison each year, housing demand continues to outpace supply. Her organization is creating a clearinghouse to help match prisoners who qualify for compassionate release with pro bono lawyers to help them find beds.
O’Leary said that illustrates how expanding compassionate release in Wisconsin would require more post-prison housing options.
Price now lives in a modest efficiency apartment on Milwaukee’s north side. It doesn’t have much, he said, but it has everything he needs, including a laptop and smart TV to watch Packers highlights. On his wall hangs a framed version of the Wisconsin Watch/New York Times story that detailed his struggle to receive medical care in prison — a gift from his attorneys. The tumors still lurk in his body, though for now they do not seem to be growing.
Price has faced some of his toughest challenges since leaving prison.
The opioids doctors prescribed to ease his pain triggered a past cocaine addiction, Price said, and drug use cost him the first place he stayed.
But Price checked into a treatment facility in February 2024. He managed to stay sober in 24-hour increments. The days eventually turned into weeks.
“At that time I didn’t have a plan. But in treatment, I started feeling better and better until finally, the lights started coming back,” he said. “Then there came a point that I even wanted to go back to that life.”
Kyesha Felts, with whom Price shares a daughter, is also taking life one day at a time, enjoying the time she gets to spend with the man she has loved for 30 years.
“I love it,” she said of Price being home. “I’m enjoying every minute of it. Because tomorrow’s promised to nobody.”
She said she admires his intelligence, the way he treats people and his strength and resilience.
Price is now eight months sober, and he’s proud of the memoir he published, “The Ultimate Betrayal,” a chronicle of addiction, incarceration and redemption. He tells his story around the community. He doesn’t hold anything back, he said, because it’s all part of his testimony.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Wisconsin rarely grants compassionate release as aging, ailing prisoners stress systems 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.
If you avidly read Wisconsin Watch, you’ve learned plenty about prisons in Wisconsin. As our reporting has shown, they’re overcrowded, understaffed and particularly expensive to operate. In 2020, the state spent $220 per resident to lock up people — significantly higher than neighboring states.
Wisconsin Watch has covered prison issues for more than a decade, but we’ve prioritized that coverage since reporter Mario Koran teamed up with The New York Times to expose a staffing crisis that resulted in extended lockdowns, substandard health care for prisoners and untenable working conditions for correctional officers. Our press corps colleagues joined us with months of sustained coverage, forcing lawmakers and the Department of Corrections to respond in some ways.
We’re proud of that reporting. But as we continue exposing such problems, we’re doubling down on exploring solutions. For instance, Addie Costello and Joe Timmerman last month profiled Camp Reunite, a unique program that helps Wisconsin prisoners maintain relationships with their children — recognizing that family visits have been shown to reduce recidivism.
But how might Wisconsin solve its biggest prison problems? We’re discussing that as a staff. The question is tricky because so many challenges outside of prison walls shape the problems within them, whether its barriers to housing, jobs or health care. That’s why we’re discussing coverage with beat reporters across the Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service newsrooms.
In the coming months, expect more coverage that highlights more humane and cost-effective ways to protect public safety and rehabilitate people who do break the law. What can Wisconsin learn from other states that have reduced prison populations without jeopardizing safety? We’re asking.
As with all of our stories, we’ll prioritize those with the potential for impact. Our journalism aims to help people navigate their lives, be seen and heard, hold power to account and come together in community and civic life.
Meantime, we want to hear from you. What topics or storylines do you hope to see us follow? What perspectives would you like to share? Feel free to email me at jmalewitz@wisconsinwatch.org.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
How we’re reporting on Wisconsin prisons 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.
The thunk of a plastic bat followed each pitch and question Tasha H. lobbed toward her 14-year-old son. She cheered after each hit as she tracked down the whiffle ball and prepared her next throw.
“Maybe baseball next year?”
No, he responded before hitting the ball over his mom’s head. He plans to try out for varsity football instead.
“You’re getting a lot better than you give yourself credit for,” Tasha told him.
Standing in a patch of green grass in late June, working to extract more than one-word answers from her son, Tasha looked like a typical mom of a soon-to-be high schooler. But as the ball landed on the wrong side of a chain rope fence, it was clear they were not standing in a backyard or baseball field.
“I can’t go get that,” she said.
The fence stood only about 2 feet high. But Tasha could not cross it or the much taller, barbed fence bordering Taycheedah Correctional Institution in Fond du Lac — not for at least another year.
The brief batting practice was part of Camp Reunite, a program for children with incarcerated parents. Before camp, Tasha had not seen her son in the year since she was arrested for crimes she committed related to a drug relapse.
WPR and Wisconsin Watch are withholding the last names of parents or kids included in the story at the request of Camp Reunite to protect the campers’ privacy.
One of the first things Tasha noticed about her son was that he’s taller than her now.
“Then he spoke and it was like a man, and I was appalled,” Tasha said. “I know that sounds crazy, but I just want to be there as much as I can, even though I’m in here.”
They both needed the visit, she said.
Maintaining relationships between children and incarcerated parents helps mitigate the negative impacts of the separation, experts say. Family visits have been shown to reduce recidivism.
Camp Reunite allows children to spend a week at a traditional summer camp where they can hike, canoe and participate in trauma-informed programming like art therapy. Two days out of the week, campers get to spend an entire day with their incarcerated parents in a more relaxed setting than typical visits.
Despite the camp’s success for parents and their kids, it remains unique to Wisconsin and has operated in just two prisons this summer: the women’s prison at Taycheedah and Kettle Moraine, a nearby men’s facility.
Public opinion is the camp’s biggest obstacle, said Chloe Blish, the camp’s mental wellness director. Prison and camp staff described hearing and reading concerns over the perception that the program is a safety risk — and that it rewards incarcerated parents.
Past media coverage of the camp has prompted online backlash against named parents — personal attacks that older campers can read and absorb, Blish said.
She wishes skeptics could experience a day at Camp Reunite, she said. “It’s electric.”
Tasha and her son started their reunion playing the board game Sorry!
“I miss you,” she said before moving her pawn 10 spaces and asking if he signed up to attend the winter camp.
He nodded before knocking her piece back to the start, softly telling his mom “sorry.”
Between turns and debates about the rules, she asked about school, football, friends, food at camp and where he got his shoes. He reminded her that she bought them for him. She told him he needed to clean them with an old toothbrush, which led to a short lecture about how often he should replace his toothbrush.
He asked her why she didn’t spend extra money to get Nikes with her prison uniform, a gray T-shirt and teal scrub pants. They joked about her all-white Reebok sneakers.
“I’m glad you came,” she said. “It’s been a long time, huh?”
When Taycheedah social worker Rachel Fryda-Gehde heard officials were trying to host a camp at the prison, her first reaction was: “Nobody’s ever going to entertain such a crazy idea.”
This summer, she helped run the prison’s eighth season.
She and other camp leaders plan to present on the program’s success at national conferences this fall, she said. They want to see the camp grow, but there are barriers, including public perception.
The nonprofit Hometown Heroes runs the camp in coordination with the Wisconsin Department of Corrections.
Camp Hometown Heroes started as a summer camp for children whose parents died after serving in the military. The camp paid to fly Blish and her sister from California to Wisconsin during summers when they were teenagers.
She still loves Hometown Heroes, but Camp Reunite has more impact, she said.
“There’s a lot of camps for gold star kids, that’s easy support,” Blish said. Things are different at Camp Reunite.
She and other camp leaders often work in the kitchen, filling in to wash dishes during Camp Reunite. During Hometown Heroes, that’s never necessary, because so many community members volunteer to help, she said.
Hometown Heroes, an exponentially larger operation, also receives more individual donations because of people who have a passion for helping veterans and military families, wrote Liz Braatz, the camp’s director of development.
She has heard the stigma around supporting people in prison, she wrote in an email. But discussing the camp as a way to help children affected by trauma “has made all the difference” in reshaping perceptions, she said.
Outside of camp, the organization provides campers with new clothing, school supplies and hygiene products.
“It does not matter who your God is or who you vote for, if your passion is helping these kids,” Braatz wrote.
The camp is in conversation with Racine Correctional Institution and now has plans to expand its program next summer.
The Wisconsin Department of Corrections would welcome Camp Reunite in additional facilities, spokesperson Beth Hardtke said.
The camp faces additional obstacles in expanding its service.
This summer’s camp at Taycheedah was far from capacity. There were enough camp staff for more than 100 kids, Blish said. But just over a dozen families showed up.
“We started out with a lot more,” Fryda-Gehde said.
There are two major requirements for moms to join the camp: no sex crime convictions and no major conduct issues in the six months leading up to camp. This year’s attendance shrank after women were placed into segregation cells after breaking prison rules.
Prison social workers spend months with the moms to prepare for camp. Moms create posters to decorate their campers’ bunk beds, while prison staff set up activity stations like a beauty parlor and photo booth in the visiting room.
But the biggest reason for lower attendance: getting some caregivers on board.
Some kids might not be ready to visit with their incarcerated parents, Blish said. Other times, caretakers are hesitant to allow them in a prison or struggle to get them there.
Women are more likely than men to be the primary caretakers for their children at the time of arrest. That often leads to major life disruptions for campers visiting the women’s prison who are more likely to live with foster placements or more distant relatives.
Even caretakers comfortable with the camp might struggle to get there. Many families lack cars, Blish said. The camp tries to arrange rides for as many kids as possible, but it can’t always pick up kids who live farther away.
Nyzaiah and his three younger siblings live with their grandparents in Milwaukee. Camp was the first time they’ve made the more than hourlong drive to visit their mom since she was incarcerated.
“I was trying not to cry because I don’t like really showing my emotions to people, but I did drop a tear,” he said. “Me and my mom are really close.”
They talk on the phone around four times a week, but seeing her in person felt different, he said.
Most of his classmates get picked up by their parents. Only his close friends know why his grandparents pick him up each day.
“At home, I’m big brother. I gotta do everything and make sure it’s good. I don’t like to bring a lot of stress on my grandma,” the 13-year-old said.
But at camp, his brothers and sister are in separate cabins.
“The counselors told me, ‘You’re here to have fun. Don’t worry about your siblings. We’ve got them,’” he said.
Moms aren’t the only ones asking questions at camp.
“You’ve got a TV?” asked Deloise L.’s 11-year-old son.
“Of course,” she answered. The morning before camp she woke up early from excitement and watched the morning news while she waited.
Deloise’s children are staying with her sister who brings them for somewhat regular visits throughout the year. But camp is different.
“I love this,” she said.
During a normal visit, her family is under the supervision of correctional officers, and her movement is more limited. At camp, most of the prison staff present are social workers. Moms walk from activity to activity without asking permission, including to the camp’s crowded “salon.”
Deloise clipped hot pink braids into her teenage daughter’s hair and applied glittery makeup over her eyes. Her son picked out a fake mustache.
As counselors warned that there were 10 minutes left until they would bus back to camp, kids scrambled to get close to their moms. Even the knowledge that they would be back later that week failed to stop the tears.
“When you got to separate from them, that’s when it gets bad,” Deloise said, wiping her eyes with a tissue. “It just gets bad when you want to be around your kids.”
This is her family’s second camp. They plan to attend one more summer camp before her release in 2026.
“I’m learning from my mistakes,” she said. “They won’t have to worry about this again.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
‘I did drop a tear’: Camp Reunite helps kids connect with their incarcerated parents is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
Responding to staffing shortages that imperiled guards and staff, Wisconsin lawmakers in 2023 significantly increased pay for corrections officers — hoping to retain and attract more workers to the grueling job.
It helped, at least initially. But following significant progress, staffing vacancies are again growing in many Wisconsin prisons. The data support a common complaint from correctional officers and their supporters: The Department of Corrections and the Legislature must do more to retain officers in the long run. Improving training, safety and workplace culture would help, they say.
Meanwhile, some Democratic lawmakers, prisoner rights advocates and correctional officers argue that reducing the prison population would improve conditions for inmates and staff by reducing overcrowding and easing tensions.
The two-year budget Gov. Tony Evers signed last week included a small boost in funding for programs geared at limiting recidivism and additional funding to plan the closure of one of Wisconsin’s oldest prisons. But Republicans removed broader Evers proposals that focused on rehabilitating prisoners, and a plan to close Green Bay’s 127-year-old prison includes few details.
“Reducing the number of people we incarcerate in Wisconsin is critical, both because of the harm that mass incarceration does to individuals and communities, and because of the resulting stress from overburdening prison staff,” Rep. Ryan Clancy, D-Milwaukee, told Wisconsin Watch. “Packing more people into our prisons leads to worse services and worse outcomes when incarcerated folks are released back into the community.”
Wisconsin Watch and The New York Times last year detailed how Wisconsin officials for nearly a decade failed to take significant steps to slow a hemorrhaging of corrections officers that slowed basic operations to a crawl. During that period prisoners escaped, staff overtime pay soared and lockdowns kept prisoners from exercise, fresh air and educational programming, leading some to routinely threaten suicide.
At Waupun Correctional Institution, staffing vacancies peaked at 56% in February 2024, leaving more positions open than filled.
As aging staff members retired, the state struggled to replace them, particularly after Act 10, a sweeping 2011 state law that gutted most public workers’ ability to collectively bargain for more attractive conditions. Vacancy rates steadily climbed to 43% in the state’s maximum-security prisons and 35% across all adult institutions before pay raises took effect in October 2023.
Following two years of partisan infighting, the Republican-led Legislature approved a compensation package that increased starting pay for corrections officers from $20.29 to $33 an hour, with a $5 add-on for staff at maximum-security prisons and facilities with vacancy rates above 40% for six months straight.
Within a year, vacancy rates plunged as low as 15% at maximum-security prisons and 11% across all adult prisons.
Rep. Mark Born, a Beaver Dam Republican who co-chairs the Legislature’s budget-writing Joint Finance Committee, credited legislative action with greatly reducing staffing shortages.
“As I’ve talked to the prisons in my district, they’re happy to see that the recruit classes are much larger and the vacancies are about half of what they were prior to the action in the last budget,” he told Wisconsin Watch.
It’s true that vacancies are nowhere near their previous crisis levels. Those include rates in Waupun and Green Bay, where officials previously locked down prisoners during severe staffing shortages. Green Bay now has just over half the vacancy rate it had during the height of the crisis. Waupun has recovered even more dramatically. After plunging much of last year, its vacancy rate has hovered near 20% in recent months.
But vacancies are increasing across much of the prison system, corrections data show. As of July 1, rates reached 26% at maximum-security prisons and more than 17% overall. The department has lost more than 260 full-time equivalent officer and sergeant positions over the past nine months.
The vacancy rate at Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage, which has the most gaping staffing shortage, reached 41% on July 1, up from a low of 11% a year ago.
The new state budget appropriated $15 million “to develop preliminary plans and specifications” to realign the Department of Corrections and eventually close the Green Bay prison, whose vacancy rate has grown from a low of 9% last October to nearly 25%.
Republicans proposed closing the prison by 2029, but Evers used his veto power to remove that date, saying he objected to setting a closure date “while providing virtually no real, meaningful, or concrete plan to do so.”
How a future prison closure would shape long-term population trends may hinge on what replaces the prison. Evers earlier this year proposed a $500 million overhaul to, among other provisions, close the Green Bay prison; renovate the Waupun prison — adding a “vocational village” to expand workforce training; and convert the scandal-plagued Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake youth prison into an adult facility.
Republicans rejected that more ambitious proposal in crafting the bill that became law.
Closing the Green Bay prison without replacing its capacity might reduce the prison population — and ease staffing shortages, Clancy argues. With less space to put those convicted of crimes, judges might issue shorter sentences, he said.
“Every time I’ve spoken with a criminal judge, I’ve asked if they are aware of the number of beds available when they sentence someone. They always are,” Clancy said. “And I ask if that knowledge impacts their sentencing decisions. It always does.”
But for now, corrections employees are supervising a rising number of prisoners. The state’s total prison population is up about 7% since the compensation boost took effect. Wisconsin now houses more than 23,400 prisoners in facilities built for about 17,700, with the state budget estimating that number to rise over the next two years.
The Department of Corrections did not respond to multiple requests for comment on staffing trends.
Multiple corrections officers called rising vacancies predictable as new officers, attracted by competitive starting wages, discovered the demands of the work.
“It doesn’t surprise me one bit,” said a former officer who recently left a job in Waupun. He requested anonymity to avoid jeopardizing future employment in law enforcement. “They put a Band-Aid on the problem. They lured people in, thinking they were going to make more money. But the reality is the job hasn’t changed.”
Even before the raises, it was not uncommon for officers to make upwards of $100,000 as they banked overtime pay while being forced to cover for open shifts. That pay came at a steep cost to work-life balance, said Rich Asleson, a correctional officer between 1997 and 2022, most at the former Supermax facility in Boscobel.
“It’s not a matter of needing more money. It’s a matter of how much of your soul can you afford to lose?” Asleson said.
Additionally, officers say they feel added risks — whether reprimands, lawsuits or even criminal charges — as news media increasingly scrutinize their actions. Multiple deaths of Waupun prisoners, for instance, resulted in rare criminal charges against the warden and eight other staff members. Officers say they get little support, with a larger focus on penalties and firings than reforming conditions.
More predictable hours, improved training practices and restored union protections would make the work more attractive, officers said.
“It’s one thing to do a job where you’re getting paid and you’re miserable,” the former Waupun officer said. “But can you imagine doing a job and feeling like you’re not even backed up by Madison? There’s people that are getting into trouble because the powers that be are scared, too. (Leaders) think if they’re ever called to the carpet, they can point to all the people they terminated.”
The officer said veterans, fearing reprisals, are increasingly choosing posts that separate themselves from prisoners and riskier work. They are less willing to train incoming officers due to turnover — seeing that time as wasted if new officers won’t stay long, he added.
The Department of Corrections should improve training and retention by pairing veteran officers with rookies on shifts to show them the ropes — designating training specialists, he said.
Waupun Mayor Rohn Bishop blames news media for recruiting and retention challenges, saying coverage disproportionately scrutinizes officers without recognizing their difficult jobs.
“I’m the mayor of a town with three prisons within its city limits. Any time an inmate dies all the TV trucks show up and reporters put microphones in my face,” Bishop said. “But when an officer gets killed or hurt for just doing their job, almost no media pay attention. And I think there’s a burnout because of that.”
Compared to other front-line workers, correctional officers often go unseen and unthanked, Bishop said.
“You see firefighters. You see nurses. You see cops. You see these other front-line workers. You don’t see correctional officers because they walk on the other side of the wall. And I just think we don’t appreciate them,” Bishop said.
Improving conditions for prisoners would simultaneously benefit correctional officers by boosting morale across prisons. That includes expanding the Earned Release Program, which offers pathways for early release to eligible prisoners with substance abuse issues who complete treatment and training — with the potential to ease overcrowding. Evers’ initial budget proposal included provisions that would have expanded eligibility for the Earned Release Program. The final budget included about $2 million to support programs to reduce recidivism and ease reentry.
“There needs to be a reimagining of what corrections are,” said the former Waupun officer. “It would make it easier for the inmates and the officers.”
Asleson agreed. “You can’t keep people locked away forever,” he said. “I think it’s about hope on both sides of the fence. If nobody has hope, it shows.”
Wisconsin Watch reporter Sreejita Patra contributed reporting.
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‘Band-Aid on the problem’: Past raises haven’t fully solved Wisconsin prison staffing problems is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
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