Humanity Unlocked podcast series logo | Courtesy Wisconsin Humanities

“There was something happening that was bigger than anything, any one of us or any group of us was doing. It was just too big to be just about poetry. It was a voice restored,” said  Joshua Wells, a formerly incarcerated person, speaking on the Wisconsin Humanities podcast series “Humanity Unlocked.”  

Now in its second season, the podcast offers listeners the stories of those who have been through the prison system and engaged with the humanities – poetry, writing, art and college classes  – discovering not only ways to express themselves but also an identity that’s larger than their criminal records.

The goal of the series is to “focus on amplifying the human stories of incarceration and lived experiences of individuals impacted by the justice system.” A thread through the series is that the humanities matter, especially in some of the darkest places where one’s humanity seems diminished the most.

The podcasts are hosted by Adam Carr, a Milwaukee storyteller, filmmaker, radio producer and historian who sets the narrative and places interviewees’ comments in a larger context. Co-host Dasha Kelly Hamilton is a writer, performance artist and creative change agent and 2021-22 Poet Laureate of Wisconsin.

In Episode 5, “Bead by Bead,” college student James Price talks about gaining discipline from practicing Native American beading at the Stanley Correctional Institute, a discipline he draws on in his college studies. 

Commenting on the story, Hamilton said that, contrary to reductive stereotypes, people who have been incarcerated are “philosophers. There are filmmakers. There are all brands of humans in those buildings (prisons) the same way there are all brands of humans walking around free, so finding a way to feed and fuel those parts of the people in those places is essential.” 

The idea for the podcasts grew out of Hamilton’s work in a poetry exchange with people inside and outside of prison, and producer Jen Rubin’s involvement with the University of Wisconsin’s Odyssey Beyond Bars Project conducting storytelling workshops in prisons.

“I think partly things like art, poetry and storytelling and history are ways that all of us can help find meaning in our life,” said Rubin. “I think Rob (Dr. Robert S. Smith, Director of the Center for Urban Research, Teaching & Outreach, Marquette University) from Episode Five says it really well – ‘If there’s any place we need help finding meaning in our lives, it’s in mass incarceration.’”

Over two years, interviews were conducted with residents inside and out of the prison system and with those who engaged them with poetry and writing courses, publishing newspapers and newsletters, offering space for art shows and teaching college classes.

Very little time is given to why the persons are or were in prison. Most of the podcast recounts their engagement with the humanities. Robert Taliaferro, who is mainly featured in Episode 3: “Three convicts, twenty dollars and a newspaper,” spent 38 years behind bars, but the podcast focuses on his path to become editor of the leading prison newspapers in America, The Prison Mirror.

Episodes

Episode 1: “Death-defying Feats,” takes excerpts from Hamilton’s poetry seminar in the Racine Correctional Institution. She sets up the writing prompts and then we hear commentary of the residents and excerpts of their work.

Episode 2: “A Mic and Five Minutes,” is about the Wisconsin Odyssey Beyond Bars project at Oakhill Correctional Facility where incarcerated students take an English 100 story and then tell  their stories in their own voices in a five-minute presentation.

Episode 3: “Three Convicts, Twenty Dollars, and a Newspaper” tells the history of a prison newspaper from the 1880s started by members of the Jessie James Gang, and the experience of Taliaferro to become an award-winning writer, and also about Shannon Ross, who started a newsletter that reaches 30,000, including those inside and out of prison.

Episode 4: “Art Against the Odds,” details the art-making journey of residents who struggled to find both the resources and encouragement to make art in prison, and the 2023  “Art Against the Odds” show in Milwaukee featuring 250 works by those who are or were incarcerated.

Episode 5: “Bead by Bead,” is a look at the Educational Preparedness Program (EPP) at Marquette University that integrates students enrolled at the Milwaukee campus with those who have been incarcerated or are still in the system.

Episode 6: “It’s Not Just a Vote,” explores those disenfranchised from voting because of their criminal record. Convicted felons in Wisconsin cannot vote until they have served their sentence and probation and parole. There are approximately 45,000 people in the state who are waiting to be allowed to vote.

There’s also more information with each episode, including profiles and information about the criminal justice system.

The first five episodes explore how humanities have affected people’s  lives both inside and outside the system. The  sixth explores  how the legacy of being in prison continues to affect  one’s humanity by witholding the right to vote.

“If your government’s telling you that you don’t count, you know, then how are you supposed to feel like you belong in your community?” said Rubin.

Carr said the sixth episode came out of the larger discussion of recognizing people’s  humanity.“I don’t know that most people would connect this specifically with a humanities curriculum,” he said of voting. In the larger conversation about how people survive the prison system and how they recover a sense of their own humanity when they get out, he said,  “it made sense for the arc of the season.” 

Inside the podcasts

The first five episodes illuminate why engaging with the humanities is more than just a feel-good  exercise.

Peter Moreno, featured in Episode 2: “A Mic and Five Minutes,” is the director of Odyssey Beyond Bars and an attorney and former law professor, who touts the merits of bringing writing classes to inmates to tell their stories.

“When people are given a platform to express themselves and are able to convey their personal story from inside prison in a way that other people can hear and understand, boy that humanizes things in a hurry,” he said.

Mark Español recently served a nine-year prison sentence, and talked about the impact of writing a story from his life and delivering a 5-minute presentation as part of a class he took from Kevin Mullen, an assistant professor of Continuing Studies at UW-Madison and director of  adult education for the UW-Odyssey Project, the larger campaign to bring higher education to low-income adult students.

“It made me feel human again,” Español said. “It made me feel human that class, that environment that he created allows us as inmates to not only be vulnerable, but to get to know each other personally.”

Students in Odyssey Beyond Bars can write about any subject. Español chose to write about one day in his life as a 5-year-old in his apartment and walking into a room where his sister was holding her boyfriend who had been shot.

“You know for almost a decade I’ve sat in prison just wondering where I went wrong, you know, how did I get here?” he said. “It all went back to that apartment. Things that I witnessed, that I was exposed to as a child that I should have never been exposed to, and that story was one day. It sucked that I had to go through that as a 5-year-old.”

Presenting a story has a deep effect, Hamilton said. 

“It shifts the skill sets and the calculation,” she said, describing a way of calculating how to survive that is different from the skills involved in storytelling. Instead of staying in “survival mode,” being able to  able to “process a story,”  to  “convert that memory into a five-minute presentation that is engaging to someone who doesn’t know you and wasn’t at that memory – it is not a small thing.”

Carr said those in the system are often reminded that what counts most about them is their crime or “the biggest mistake you’ve ever made and nothing else,” but engaging with the humanities opens another conversation.

Much of what is offered in prison under the umbrella of rehabilitation, Hamilton said, is premised on the assumption that a  resident has a “deficit” that is addressed with counseling or parenting or financial literacy classes. The humanities operates from a different assumption.

“It’s meeting people where they’re already full,” she said. “It’s giving people an opportunity to lean into that part that doesn’t deplete, that doesn’t diminish their humanity, their creativity.” 

A touching moment in Episode 4: “Art Against the Odds” comes when former incarcerated resident, Sarah Demerath, who missed years with her 14-year-old daughter while in prison, has the opportunity to see her daughter’s reaction to Demerath’s art featured in a large gallery show.

“When we got to the gallery, I had never seen her be so proud of me,” said Demerath. “She’s an artist and she was just as excited as me and she was like, ‘That’s my mom,’ and she was watching me do the interviews with the news and she was buzzing around the entire exhibit with this huge smile. Never in my life did I ever think that my art would be in a gallery, let alone my daughter and mom would be there with me to see it and it was beautiful.”

Listen to the podcast at wisconsinhumanities.org/podcast/.

 

 

 

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• Wisconsin’s prison population has swelled significantly since dipping during the pandemic, complicating efforts to address dangerous conditions. 

• The prison population increase comes years after Gov. Tony Evers vowed to ease crowding.

• The latest trend highlights the challenge of doing so a quarter century after Wisconsin enacted one of the country’s most punitive sentencing laws.

• Experts note that the governor has limited control over the size of the prison population.

Wisconsin’s prison population has swelled since a pandemic dip, complicating efforts to address dangerous conditions that were highlighted in June when prosecutors criminally charged nine Waupun Correctional Institution workers, including the former warden, following multiple prisoner deaths.

The state’s adult institutions were locking up nearly 22,800 people as of Aug. 9. That’s more than 5,000 above the design capacity of Wisconsin’s prisons and more than 3,000 above levels three years ago when COVID-19 actions shrunk prisoner ranks to a 20-year low.

If the growth persists at this rate, Gov. Tony Evers’ administration could oversee more prisoners within a year than it inherited when Evers succeeded Scott Walker in early 2019.

The trend does not correspond with an increase in reported crime. Statewide offenses reported to the Wisconsin Department of Justice were up in 2021 but declined in 2022 and 2023. 

The prison population increase comes years after Evers vowed to ease crowding in a state that stands out nationally for disproportionately imprisoning Black residents. In a 2018 Democratic gubernatorial debate, Evers — who has spoken of “second chances” and “redemption” — called a goal by activists to cut Wisconsin’s prison population by half  “worth accomplishing.”

The latest trend highlights the challenge of doing so a quarter century after Wisconsin enacted one of the country’s most punitive sentencing laws.

The prison problem spans policy and politics. Evers, a Democrat, contends with a Legislature led by Republicans who seek to paint Democrats as soft on crime. Meanwhile, some Democrats say Evers has done too little to wield his own powers to reduce crowding. 

“I’m hoping he honors the promises he made on the campaign trail,” said state Rep. Darrin Madison, D-Milwaukee. “Because right now that promise is not being fulfilled the way voters thought.”

Experts note that the governor has limited control over the size of the prison population.

Changes such as shrinking maximum sentences, reducing imposed sentences or diverting more people to treatment would require action by judges or the Legislature. 

Evers spokesperson Britt Cudaback pointed to the governor’s last three budget proposals — largely rejected by Republican lawmakers — that, she said, sought to “bolster evidence-based and data-driven policies we know have improved community safety and reduced recidivism in other states, and support alternatives to incarceration, including increased investments in treatment and diversion.” 

“The single greatest obstacle to implementing real, meaningful justice reform in Wisconsin is Republican control of the Legislature,” Cudaback added. “There’s no question that if Republicans had adopted all or even some of the governor’s justice reform initiatives, Wisconsin would have begun relieving pressure on correctional institutions years ago.” 

The Evers administration can address some issues on its own. For example, the governor could parole more “old law” prisoners convicted before sentencing reform or issue more pardons.

Evers has issued the most pardons of any Wisconsin governor — more than 1,200 during his tenure. But that has not affected prison populations. He has limited pardon applicants to those who completed their sentence at least five years ago and have no pending criminal charges.

Separately, the Evers administration can make administrative changes to reduce one major driver of new prison admissions: technical revocations — violations of community supervision rules that can return people to prison even if they haven’t committed new crimes. 

The Department of Corrections beginning in 2021, for instance, raised the threshold for revocations in certain circumstances, which corresponded with an initial dip in technical revocations.

No matter who’s responsible, the ballooning prison population comes with a financial cost for Wisconsin taxpayers, a physical and psychological toll for those in the corrections system and — with now six recent deaths of inmates in custody at one prison alone — the potential loss of life.

Advocates: New staff alone won’t improve conditions 

The prison population is rising as the Wisconsin Department of Corrections works to reverse a long-ignored hemorrhaging of corrections workers. The department reluctantly acknowledged staff vacancies played a role in recent lockdowns in Waupun and Green Bay Correctional Institution that left prisoners confined to cells without timely medical care.

The former warden at Waupun was among nine state employees charged in connection with the deaths of inmates Donald Meier and Cameron Williams. Meier and Williams were among six Waupun inmates who died from various causes since June 2023; investigators and family members have linked many of those deaths to inhumane conditions and the treatment of inmates by corrections staff. 

State leaders can’t substantially improve conditions without decarceration — releasing more inmates and diverting others to programs rather than prisons, justice reform advocates say. The high population requires prisons to need so many guards and medical staff in the first place. Curbing the population, advocates say, is the pathway for closing the troubled Waupun and Green Bay prisons, which were both built in the 19th century.

“Wisconsin doesn’t have more crime than other states, but we have a bad habit of keeping people incarcerated much longer than necessary,” Beverly Walker and Sherry Reames of WISDOM, a statewide faith-based organization, said in an email.  

How state officials tackle prison crowding matters for the welfare of prisoners and corrections officers — and for taxpayers. 

Wisconsin allocates more money for corrections than most states do. In 2020, the state spent $220 per resident to lock up people, according to a Wisconsin Policy Forum analysis of National Institute of Corrections data. That was far above neighboring states and the $182 national average.

State efforts to imprison fewer people are unlikely to yield major savings unless they prompt prison closures — a politically challenging task, said Michael O’Hear, a Marquette University Law School professor and expert on criminal punishment. 

“The big driver of the system costs are in the fixed costs of having an institution,” O’Hear said. “The big savings come from getting your prison population down to the point where you can actually start closing institutions.” 

Other states — some led by Republicans and some by Democrats — have managed to close prisons by adopting rehabilitation-focused reforms that trimmed thousands from the prison population. 

Roots of mass incarceration in Wisconsin    

How did Wisconsin prisons fill in the first place?  

Aggressive prosecutors and judges in the 1980s and 1990s — seeing retributive justice as a pathway for winning elections — fueled mass incarceration in Wisconsin and nationally, as did toughened drug sentencing laws. 

Then the state’s truth-in-sentencing law — signed in 1998 by Gov. Tommy Thompson and passed with bipartisan support — virtually eliminated parole for newly convicted offenders. By then prisons filled up beyond the system’s designed capacity, in some cases requiring doubling up or tripling up in cells.

Some zeal in the war on drugs waned after 2000, with fewer drug arrests statewide, particularly in Milwaukee, O’Hear said. But the sentencing overhaul closed pressure release valves in the prison system; it narrowed release options, preventing a corresponding drop in the prison population.

“The potential dividends of walking back the war on drugs were lost as a result of truth-in-sentencing,” O’Hear added.  

Prisoners sentenced prior to truth-in-sentencing — a group known as “old law” inmates — were eligible for release after serving 25% of their time. They received a mandatory release after serving two-thirds of their time. The overhaul changed that, requiring them 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 the law took effect on Dec. 31, 1999. 

Rules of extended supervision 

Extended supervision requires following at least 18 standard rules, including regularly reporting to a supervision agent and giving blanket consent to be searched. People under supervision learn that violations could include any conduct that conflicts with law or “is not in the best interest of the public welfare or your rehabilitation,” or failing to comply with probation agent-imposed rules that can be modified at any time. 

Like most issues across Wisconsin’s criminal justice system, revocations back to prison disproportionately affect Black residents, according to a February Council of State Governments report. The state has the widest racial disparities in the country in revocations among states that provided data for the report. Black people in Wisconsin are 15.4 times more likely than white people to be incarcerated for a revocation.

Little is more traumatic than returning to prison following a brief stint of freedom, said Dennis Franklin, who previously served prison time and is now the interim associate director of EXPO, a Wisconsin-based advocacy organization for formerly incarcerated people.

 “It’s very depressing when you don’t have a new charge,” he said. “It’s discouraging to get out and then go through the same thing.”

Extended periods of supervision after release from prison do little to improve public safety, according to Cecelia Klingele, a University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School professor of criminal law. The long terms “may interfere with the ability of those on supervision to sustain work, family life and other pro-social connections to their communities,” she wrote in a 2019 study examining 200 revocation cases.

“Fewer, more safety-focused conditions will lead to fewer unnecessary revocations and more consistency in revocation for people whose behavior poses a serious threat to public safety,” she added. 

Streamlining the standard supervision rules would require the Legislature to act.

Back to prison for violating supervision rules

Supervision or probation can be revoked in three ways: a new sentence for a new crime; a revocation plus a new sentence; or a technical rules violation without a criminal conviction. Revocations follow a Department of Corrections investigation, supervising agent’s recommendation and administrative law judge’s ruling. They require a lower standard of evidence than in a criminal courtroom. Administrative law judges may accept even hearsay as evidence.  

Criminal justice reform advocates often call technical violations “crimeless revocations,” although corrections officials note such violations could include allegations of criminal behavior not yet charged.  

Still, advocates highlight examples of seemingly minor behavior that send people back to prison.

Joseph Crowley, a Kenosha man who was convicted of sexual assault in 1999 before truth-in-sentencing kicked in, said he was sent back to prison in 2011 for technical violations that included wearing a green hat on St. Patrick’s Day and using a credit card to buy a PlayStation 3 and the laptop he was using at Gateway Technical College. 

Crowley said one of his probation rules barred him from altering his appearance and another allowed him to use debit cards but not credit. 

“Their reasoning was that if you got locked up, you wouldn’t have any way of continuing the credit payments,” Crowley recalled. 

He said he served nine additional years in prison because of the violations. Crowley was assaulted at Dodge Correctional Institution before being paroled in 2021 under the old law, he said.

Klingele’s research suggests most technical revocation stories look different than Crowley’s. 

Her 2019 study found numerous examples of revocations stemming from multiple technical violations. The most frequent serious allegations were: failing to complete the terms of an alternative program; alleged assaultive crimes; and absconding, which included continually failing to attend meetings or check in with agents. 

Substance abuse problems contributed to technical revocations in an “overwhelming majority” of cases, Klingele wrote, because “agents have few options to impose meaningful sanctions other than imprisonment.” 

That’s why researchers say expanding substance abuse treatment could help reduce revocations and recidivism. 

Beth Hardtke, a corrections department spokesperson, noted that Evers’ most recent budget proposal sought to invest millions of additional dollars in Alternatives to Revocation, the department’s Earned Release Program, other types of substance use disorder treatment and a program that helps formerly incarcerated people experiencing mental illnesses safely transition into communities. 

The Legislature rejected or reduced funding for those proposals.

The department did, however, make changes to increase enrollment in the Earned Release Program, which offers pathways for early release to eligible prisoners with substance abuse issues who complete treatment and training, Hardtke noted. That included expanding access to prisoners in medium custody. 

Effort to reduce technical revocations

Technical revocations accounted for more than 13,800 prison admissions from the beginning of Evers’ first term in January 2019 through last May, according to Department of Corrections data. That’s about 34% of all admissions during the period. 

“If we really want to reduce the prison population responsibly, that is the way to do it,” David Liners, executive director of WISDOM, said about curbing technical revocations. 

“The governor is not handling it. He’s basically maintained the status quo.”

The Department of Corrections has sought to reduce technical revocations. Beginning in 2021 it raised the threshold for revocations in a number of circumstances. That included requiring all treatment options be exhausted before returning someone to prison for violations related only to substance abuse — changes widely unpopular with parole officers who must implement them, according to a legislative audit.

The changes corresponded with an initial drop in technical revocations — to 27% of prison admissions in 2022 from 34% a year earlier. 

The department previously cited the changes as one of several factors in the prison population’s plunge to a two-decade low in mid-2021. A spring 2020 pause on admissions to slow COVID-19 largely shaped that decline, as did court backlogs that left defendants waiting for their cases to be processed — a trend seen nationally.

“With some exceptions, the statutory framework courts and the department operate under largely remains the same” since the pandemic, Hardtke said in an email. “This underscores that, without comprehensive criminal justice reform, including strong investments in substance use and mental health treatment, Wisconsin will not be able to meaningfully and safely reduce our prison population.” 

As the broader prison population rebounds, so have technical revocations, which increased to about 30% of total admissions in 2023 and 40% during the first five months of this year.

Hardtke cautioned that the department may later link some of the recent technical revocations to new criminal sentences when more information is available, which would retroactively affect the admissions data.  

Lessons from the pandemic and from other states

Incarceration rebounds in Wisconsin and other states reflect having moved past the pandemic, which saw disrupted court operations and intense concerns about COVID-19’s spreading, said O’Hear, the Marquette law professor.

State Sen. Kelda Roys, a Madison Democrat who sits on the Senate’s Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety, said the population decline during the pandemic public health emergency illustrates that Wisconsin can safely decarcerate without a clear impact on public safety. 

But more action is needed to reduce revocations and increase paroles, Roys said. 

“We did it when it was necessary to save people’s lives. We were able to bring the prison population down safely and we can do that again,” she said. “Crimeless revocation is making us less safe.”

Her Republican colleagues see things differently. 

Sen. Eric Wimberger, R-Green Bay, called rehabilitation an important component for those wanting to change after hitting rock bottom. But he claimed that many don’t seek redemption. 

“The bulk of prisoners are not inclined to change, and they are just doing their time looking for opportunities to get out as soon as possible by completing programs,” said Wimberger, who also sits on the judiciary and public safety committee. “Gov. Evers, with hubris, seems convinced that society is responsible for the crimes against it, and he can somehow sit criminals down for a good talking-to in a program to have an epiphany about doing the right thing.”

Advocates for prioritizing rehabilitation say Wisconsin should follow the lead of other states that have dramatically reduced their prison populations without jeopardizing safety. 

New York, for instance, has cut its population in half since 2008 and closed some prisons. That’s due to various factors, including fewer admissions and releases to parole supervision, early releases of certain people during the pandemic and reforms to drug sentencing laws. The state in 2021 removed incarceration for most minor technical parole violations. 

Republican-led Texas has also closed several prisons in recent decades as a result of bipartisan criminal justice reforms that reduced the need for incarceration. That included a greater focus on substance abuse treatment and diversion. 

The Minnesota Legislature’s criminal justice overhaul in 2023 included provisions to curb revocations. 

California, meanwhile, has carried out the largest court-ordered prisoner reduction in history by shifting responsibility for certain lower-level offenders from prisons to jails — encouraging more cost-effective local alternatives to incarceration. 

“We don’t have to have 20,000 people in prison,” O’Hear said. “The ability of many states to experience reductions in their prison population — by whatever means — without necessarily having big public safety problems resulting, there’s a lesson to be drawn from that.” 

This story was co-produced by the Cap Times and Wisconsin Watch. Mario Koran of Wisconsin Watch contributed reporting. Nicholas Garton joined the Cap Times in 2019 after three years as a features writer for Madison365. Jim Malewitz joined Wisconsin Watch in 2019 as investigations editor and is now deputy managing editor.

Wisconsin’s inmate population swells as other states limit incarceration and close 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.

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Gov. Tony Evers asked a federal judge Wednesday not to impose any changes at Wisconsin’s youth prison after an inmate was accused of killing a counselor during a fight earlier this summer, insisting conditions at the prison have been slowly improving despite the death.

Evers, a Democrat, said in the letter to James Peterson, chief judge for the Western District of Wisconsin, that Republican lawmakers could soon ask him to give Lincoln Hills-Copper Lakes Schools more leeway in punishing incarcerated children. The governor said that it’s important to remember that brutal staff-on-inmate punishments led to tighter restrictions on what action staff can take.

Lincoln Hills-Copper Lake is Wisconsin’s only youth prison. The facility has been plagued by allegations of staff-on-inmate abuse, including excessive use of pepper spray, restraints and strip searches.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit in Madison in 2017 demanding changes at the prison. Then-Gov. Scott Walker’s administration settled the lawsuit in 2018 by agreeing to abide by a consent decree that prohibits punitive confinement, restricts confinement to 12 hours, restricts the use of mechanical restraints to handcuffs and prohibits the use of pepper spray. A court-appointed monitor has been checking the prison’s compliance ever since.

According to prosecutors, a 16-year-old boy attacked a counselor on June 24, punching her before fleeing into an outdoor courtyard. Counselor Corey Proulx confronted him, and the boy punched him in the face. Proulx fell and hit his head on concrete pavement. He was pronounced brain-dead two days later.

His death has pushed Lincoln Hills-Copper Lake staff to demand more freedom in dealing with inmates. Republican lawmakers sympathetic to their demands have been talking about asking Peterson to revise the consent decree to give them more latitude, including allowing them to use pepper spray. Sen. Van Wanggaard, chair of the Senate judiciary committee, released a letter Wednesday to state Corrections Secretary Jared Hoy signed by a host of GOP legislators demanding he ask Peterson for changes.

“Lincoln Hills staff need to get the bullseye off their back, so that they may safely and efficiently ensure the security and welfare of themselves and the residents of Lincoln Hills,” the letter said.

Asked if Hoy would comply, Evers spokesperson Britt Cudaback released Evers’ letter to Peterson. The letter was dated Wednesday, but Cudaback said the administration had been working on it before receiving the Republicans’ request.

Evers reminded Peterson in the letter of the abuse that led to the consent decree in the first place and said Republicans are refusing to acknowledge that history. The governor added that he doubts the ACLU would support any changes.

He went on to detail changes at the youth prison, saying relationships between staff and inmates have improved and that Hoy received a letter last week from the president of Council of Juvenile Justice Administrators board recognizing Wisconsin as an emerging leader in prison reforms.

Evers added that since Proulx’s death, the facility has been working to increase staff-to-inmate ratios, utilizing overtime when needed. Supervisors regularly ask staff about their comfort levels, especially when staffing levels are lower, he said.

He intends to visit the prison later this month, and Hoy has been working there at least one day a week since Proulx’s death, the governor wrote.

Emily Stedman, one of the lead attorneys for the ACLU in the 2017 lawsuit, didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment on the governor’s letter.

Wanggaard aide Scott Kelly said in a text to The Associated Press on Wednesday evening that instead of being open to balance and change, Evers was instead doubling down on policies that created the dangerous conditions at the prison.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup. This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers urges federal judge not to make changes at youth prison following counselor death 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.