Wind turbines rise up above farmland near Middleton on November 19, 2013. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Wisconsin Democrats have announced a bill that would cap residential energy bills at 2% of household income. 

On Tuesday, Democrats said the proposal from Rep. Darrin Madison (D-Milwaukee) would protect Wisconsinites’ bank accounts while the state finds ways to expand clean energy production in the face of climate change and manage the increasing energy burden posed by data center developments across the state. 

“Rising energy rates are becoming an unsustainable burden on regular people in Wisconsin,” Madison said at a Tuesday morning press conference. “Our energy system still has big problems to tackle, like dramatically moving towards carbon-free electricity, or the challenge of data centers, which are currently on course to double the amount of energy creation in Wisconsin. Regardless of your stance on data centers, artificial intelligence and the role these technologies can or should play in our communities, the people of Wisconsin must have their energy burden lifted. This bill is a common sense, necessary protection for people struggling to afford their basic needs before we take further action on any of these things as legislators to address those issues.”

At the press conference, residents who have struggled with energy bills spoke about how getting power disconnected can reverberate through people’s lives, causing health problems or forcing choices between other household costs. 

“We’re doing everything we can, yet we still cannot keep up,” said Jill Sexton, a Wausau resident who is on disability assistance with a husband on Social Security. “I ended up taking a part time job specifically to cover the increase in our electric and heating bills. Nowadays, here’s our reality: Each month we choose between paying the electric bill and heat bill or filling our prescriptions. Some months I don’t buy the medication. Some months we stretch food until the very last day.”

Several lawmakers tied the bill to the national Democratic party’s growing focus on “affordability” and bipartisan skepticism of data centers. 

“We have the money. It’s all about how we prioritize where we spend it,” Rep. Ryan Spaude (D-Ashwaubenon) said at the press conference. “Folks in my district and around the state are on a knife’s edge. Many of them are just barely getting by. This bill is going to do something. It’s going to keep more money in their pockets. It deserves a hearing and it deserves to be passed by this body.” 

Legislators announced the bill just as communities are grappling with the construction of massive data centers across the state. While the centers can provide an easy source of property tax revenue for local governments, they also use a massive amount of water and energy — raising questions about the protection of local water supplies, adequacy of the state’s existing renewable energy sources and concerns that a data center-generated spike in energy use will be passed on to local ratepayers. 

Last week, Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin (D-Whitefish Bay) and Rep. Angela Stroud (D-Ashland) introduced a bill that would require data centers to cover the cost of increased energy use, mandate the development of more clean energy and ensure data center construction pays local workers living wages. 

“While our state energy system faces deep uncertainty, especially when it comes to the climate crisis, we’re responding to data centers that are going to have increasing energy demands and raise rates for many communities,” said Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Madison) who is running in the Democratic primary for governor. “It is vital that we cap all utility payments at 2% of income so that we can protect our ratepayers and our communities first. This bill is a clear and systemic practical response to rising energy rates, and it’s one of the key cornerstone priorities of the Assembly Democrats’ affordability agenda.”

Under the rate cap bill, the Public Service Commission would be responsible for administering an energy burden relief fund. The fund would cover the difference for any household with energy costs that are more than 2% of the monthly household income. The bill would give the PSC 12 months after enactment to start the fund and three years to automatically enroll every eligible household. 

The bill would allow the PSC to prioritize households making less than 300% of the federal poverty level, only provide payments to cover energy costs for primary residences and provide a maximum energy use threshold to prevent people from receiving state aid for energy intensive home businesses such as mining cryptocurrency. 

Also, the bill would prevent public utility companies from disconnecting the service of people making less than 300% of the federal poverty level and require the PSC to annually report the number of utility disconnections.

Lawmakers and community organizers gather outside the Milwaukee County Courthouse to announce a package of bills related to conditions inside prisons and jails. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

On Monday, a group of state and local lawmakers expected to see firsthand the conditions within the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility (MSDF), a state-run facility imprisoning people for things like probation and parole violations. Lawmakers said the Department of Corrections (DOC) approved the tour, only to back out. It wasn’t the first time that elected officials have reported being denied tours of prisons and jails around the state, many of which continue to produce troubling accounts of the conditions inside their walls. 

“Let me be clear, the conditions in Wisconsin’s correctional facilities are not simply unfortunate,” said Rep. Darrin Madison (D-Milwaukee), standing with other elected officials and community organizers on the steps of the Milwaukee County Courthouse on Monday. “They are unacceptable…We are not going to normalize inhumanity.” 

Madison said that in some incarceration facilities, people may be locked in their cells for 20-23 hours a day for months. “They are denied sunlight,” said Madison. “They’re denied movement. They’re denied programming. They’re denied medical care. They’re denied basic human contact. There are facilities where people can’t even get consistent access to quality hygiene products. Where food is so poor, it does not meet the nutritional needs of grown adults…Where communication with family, the very thing that reduces recidivism, is treated like a privilege instead of a right.” 

Inhumane conditions in Wisconsin’s  jails and prisons, Madison said, is “state-sanctioned violence, and it’s being done in our name and disguised as justice.” Rather than creating spaces where rehabilitation can occur, Madison said, the Legislature has favored “choices related to punishment over rehabilitation, control over care, silence over accountability.” He stressed that “when you run a system on punishment and silence, abuse becomes the operating procedure.” 

That’s why Madison, alongside other elected officials and organizers from Ex-Incarcerated People Organizing (EXPO) and the Milwaukee Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, gathered outside the courthouse in Milwaukee to announce a package of bills aimed at improving conditions in prisons and jails. The bills would accomplish a number of things including:

• Guaranteeing 180 free minutes of telephone access, 60 minutes of free video calling, and 100 free messages per week to incarcerated people. In-person visits would also not be replaced with video or phone calls, 
• Increase wages to incarcerated people to at least $2.33 per hour. In  Wisconsin most incarcerated people are paid anywhere from nothing to 40 cents per hour, 
• Guaranteeing at least four bathing periods for people incarcerated in  state and county facilities, 
• Providing culturally sensitive products and a $25 a month stipend to help pay for them, female hygiene supplies, and other grooming and hygiene products, 
• Guaranteeing up to two in-person visits a week, and allowing incarcerated people to have up to 25 registered visitors who may embrace them for up to 20 seconds before and after visits, 
• Requiring that all state and county correctional facilities provide recreational activities, as well as organized and structured programming,
• Ensuring that people placed in solitary confinement are given a book, pen or pencil, paper, envelopes, hygiene products, a personal address book, and other supplies within two hours of being placed in restrictive housing, requiring structured programming while in solitary confinement, guaranteeing access to case managers, and providing three 25-minute video visitation periods per week, 
• Ensuring that housing units are kept at 68-76 degrees Fahrenheit, 
• Granting incarcerated people the ability to see the outdoors at least three hours daily, and the ability to be outside and up to three hours a week, 
• Creating a public dashboard with status on solitary confinement, prison lockdowns, and complaints, 
• Ensuring that lawmakers are able to access prisons and jails for oversight purposes, 
• Allowing counties to oversee control of a jail if lawmakers vote to do so, 
• And requiring jails and prisons to provide written documents to incarcerated people detailing their rights, and ensuring the document can be viewed and accessed throughout any correctional facility. 

Justin Bielinski, a Milwaukee County supervisor and chair of the Judiciary, Law Enforcement, and General Services Committee, quoted the adage that with great power comes great responsibility and added, “our carceral system is the ultimate power, depriving people of their freedom.” Bielinski said she  fears that “we’re not holding up our end of the bargain and our responsibility to keep people safe and free from harm.” 

Meanwhile, Milwaukee County is running out of space in the jail and Community Reintegration Center (CRC). “So it’s more important than ever that the conditions inside these facilities are the best that we can make them so that when people come out, they are not worse, that they are at least the same, if not better.” Bielinksi said. She added, “The Sheriff’s Office has been resistant to every attempt that we’ve made to offer change, offer oversight within the jail.” Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-Milwaukee), who was also in attendance on Monday, said he has also battled the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office to visit the jail and improve conditions there.

Although the county board can pass resolutions, they are not binding and do not usurp the authority the sheriff has over the jail. “We cannot force change inside of that facility,” said Bielinski. “And so we do need state legislation to help us out with that…We know these things are going to cost money, but we cannot let money be the excuse for treating people in a way that is less than human. And if we can’t find the money, then we shouldn’t be locking this many people up.” 

Bielinksi recalled the string of deaths inside the Milwaukee County Jail from 2021 to 2022, which led to a third-party audit of the jail. Yet in that audit, Bielinksi said, the county didn’t address the specific circumstances that led to the deaths. Among the people who died were 21-year-old Brieon Green and 20-year-old Cilivea Thyrion, whose deaths were both ruled suicides despite  their families’ insistence that jail staff were at the very least negligent in their care. Green and Thyrion’s loved ones joined local activists in calling for reform to the jail and sheriff’s office. 

December will mark three years since Thyrion died. Kayla Patterson, a member of the Milwaukee Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, highlighted the deaths and riots at the jail in recent years. “And we will continue to see that until the sheriff and her office are held accountable,” said Patterson. “This legislative pack should represent one of the first steps in standing with the people of Milwaukee for jail oversight that works with them, and not against them. For real transparency input into how our loved ones are kept while in custody. In the Alliance there’s a slogan we use: ‘In your custody, in your care.’ These are not just inmates, but community members that deserve dignity 24-7 during their time in the jail.” 

Conditions within state prisons have also been under the microscope. Last year, the warden of Waupun Correctional and eight other staff members were charged with crimes related to the treatment and neglect of people within the prison, which may have contributed to a string of four deaths from 2023 to 2024. 

The deaths included Dean Hoffmann, ruled suicide by hanging, Tyshun Lemons who overdosed on a substance containing fentanyl, Cameron Williams who complained of breathing issues and was found unresponsive in his bed, and Donald Maier, who died while in solitary confinement of dehydration and malnutrition. Water to his cell had been shut off, and correctional officers allegedly knew that Maier’s mental condition was worsening, that he had not eaten for days, and had begun drinking sewage water. In 2025, Waupun warden Randall Hepp was convicted of a misdemeanor in Maier’s death, and fined $500. Hepp pleaded no contest. 

The DOC didn’t respond to a request for comment, and the story will be updated with any reply from them. 

Sen. Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee) said at the press conference, “We invest, as a state, millions of dollars in folks who are in our care. And they should be coming out on a trajectory of success to make sure that they are finding a job, finding a community, and the only time they think about their time incarcerated is in the rear view mirror, in the past tense. Unfortunately, the way that we have this set up is a broken ‘tough on crime’ idea that once you touch the criminal justice system it is cruel to you, it diminishes you, and it never lets you go.” 

Androne Lane has experienced the struggles Larson described. He came home in 2018 after spending time in several prisons including Waupun, Green Bay, Red Granite and  Fox Lake. “I think it was important for me to come out and speak today because being a returning citizen, this bill or this movement that these guys are pushing to me is like a basic, like our own constitution for returning citizens,” Lane told the Wisconsin Examiner. “We’re not asking for a lot, we’re asking for dignity. We’re asking for humanity.” 

The priorities outlined in the bill package cover things that would help incarcerated people heal and become whole, Lane said. When people return home from prison, Lane continued, “How do you get a community to accept them coming back in there? And what does that look like for encouraging the community or an individual coming back to recover something that wasn’t replaced?” 

Lane and other advocates say there needs to be a “community care plan” for people returning home from incarceration. When Lane returned home, he told the  Examiner, it took a while for him to accept that he needed mental health therapy. “I think one of the hardest things for individuals is to ask for help, not knowing what help you need,” he said. “When I came home there was a lot of things that was on the surface that I had to deal with. But there was a lot of things inside that I didn’t know I was dealing with.” On the surface, Lane was unemployed and deeply stressed, but on the inside he was struggling with the trauma of being molested as a child, and he didn’t know how he’d be accepted in the community. “What does mental health look like for us? What does wellness look like …and what is this ‘whole’ that everybody is working for?” 

Rep. Margaret Arney (D-Wauwatosa), said the bills embody important work for Wisconsin to take on. “I hate living in a state where we lock up so many people and have so little regard for how those people live their lives,” Arney told the Examiner. “It’s a heartbreaking, enraging type of situation…When I look around and say, ‘What’s as bad as slavery was?’ And I think of the conditions of incarceration in the state of Wisconsin. That us as the United States, we’re addicted to locking people up, and in Wisconsin we do it even more so and even worse than in other states. And even though it costs a tremendous amount of resources, there’s so little willingness to engage in what those resources are here for, what we’re doing. Why does it cost so much to treat people so badly? Why do we, everyday, just put up with the fact that we’re somewhere on the order of 5,000 people over capacity?” 

Although “conditions of confinement” sounds like a “sterile” term to Arney, she said,  it’s not. “It’s human beings that are being treated at torture-level conditions, and I just can’t stand that.” 

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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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