Prison barbwire fencing. Credit: Alex Potemkin, Getty Images.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons is closing a women’s prison and other facilities “after years of abuse and decay,” the Associated Press has reported. The bureau is suspending operations at a minimum-security satellite camp in Wisconsin. 

The camp is adjacent to FCI Oxford, Wisconsin’s federal prison, the AP reported. According to the bureau, such camps “provide inmate labor to the main institution and to off-site work programs.” FCI Oxford is located in southern central Wisconsin, north of Wisconsin Dells. 

The bureau previously announced the closure of a federal prison in Dublin, California, which staff and incarcerated people named “the rape club,” according to AP reporting in 2022. 

The bureau is closing minimum-security prison camps in Florida, Minnesota and West Virginia. It’s also suspending operations at minimum-security satellite camps in Wisconsin, Colorado and Pennsylvania, the AP reported. 

Such facilities have seen frequent escapes and an influx of contraband, according to the AP. Oxford’s satellite camp had an escape in 2022; the man was later arrested in connection with a retail theft offense. 

The camp at FCI Oxford was cleared out in June, the AP reported. For the three satellite camps, employees have been or will be moved to adjacent low-security prisons while the minimum-security incarcerated people are moved elsewhere. 

The AP reported that the bureau pointed to efficiencies and infrastructure concerns for the moves. This included a $26 million estimate for repairs to a camp at FCI Englewood in Littleton, Colorado.  

In June of last year, the bureau announced FCI Oxford would transition from medium security to low security, in support of the First Step Act signed into law by then-President Donald Trump in 2018. 

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• Wisconsin budgets nearly $463,000 a year to incarcerate each child at the state’s beleaguered Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake schools, a figure that has ballooned over a decade as enrollment has plummeted.

• A new Department of Corrections budget request would nearly double that figure to about $862,000 a year — 58 times what taxpayers spend on the average K-12 public school student.

• Experts attribute the enrollment trends and costs to demographic changes, a paradigm shift from large youth prisons to smaller regional facilities and scandals on the campus that made judges hesitant to send teens to Lincoln Hills.

Wisconsin budgets nearly $463,000 a year to incarcerate each child at the state’s beleaguered juvenile prison complex in the North Woods, a figure that has ballooned over a decade as enrollment has plummeted.

A new Department of Corrections budget request would nearly double that figure to about $862,000 a year — 58 times what taxpayers spend on the average K-12 public school student.

It comes as efforts to close the Lincoln County complex — home to Lincoln Hills School for boys and Copper Lake School for girls — and build a new youth prison in Milwaukee have slowed to a crawl.  

Six years after the Legislature approved the closure plan, Republican lawmakers and Democratic Gov. Tony Evers are blaming each other during funding and policy disagreements that have delayed the closure. 

A 2018 legal settlement restricted how guards could discipline youth. That followed a series of scandals involving allegations of inhumane conditions, such as frequent use of pepper spray, strip searches and mechanical restraints and solitary confinement. 

Republicans earlier this year pushed to lift pepper spray restrictions after a 16-year-old incarcerated at Lincoln Hills struck a counselor in the face, resulting in his death. A judge denied requests to alter the settlement in a dispute that has added to closure delays, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

Meanwhile, the facility’s population is dwindling. As of late November, it served just 41 boys and 18 girls on a campus designed for more than 500 youth.  

Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service spoke to judges, lawmakers, former prison staff and researchers about the eye-popping price tag to incarcerate fewer young people. They attributed the trends to demographic changes, a paradigm shift from large youth prisons to smaller regional facilities and scandals on the campus that made judges hesitant to send teens to Lincoln Hills. 

“No judge wants to send a kid to Lincoln Hills,” said Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Laura Crivello, who has presided over juvenile cases. “You feel like you’re damning the kid. And if you look at the recidivism rates that come out of Lincoln Hills, you pretty much are damning a kid.” 

Here’s a closer look at the numbers. 

Who sets budgets for youth prisons? 

Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake schools are the state’s only youth prisons, but they are among four main state facilities for young people convicted of serious juvenile offenses. The others are Mendota Mental Health Institute, a psychiatric hospital in Madison that treats youth involved in the juvenile justice system, and Grow Academy, a residential incarceration-alternative program outside of Madison.

The Legislature sets uniform daily rates that counties pay to send youth to any of the locations — spreading costs across all facilities. 

In 2015, lawmakers approved a daily rate of $284 per juvenile across all four facilities, or nearly $104,000 a year. This year’s rate is $1,268 a day, or nearly $463,000 annually. 

The annual per-student rate would jump to about $841,000 in 2025 and nearly $862,000 in 2026 if the Legislature approves the latest Department of Corrections funding request. 

By contrast, Wisconsin spent an annual average of $14,882 per student in K-12 public schools in 2023, according to the Wisconsin Policy Forum. 

Why have costs ballooned? 

A campus built for more than 500 is mostly underused as enrollment declines, but taxpayers must still pay to maintain the same large space. It affects county budgets since they pay for youth they send to state juvenile correctional facilities.

Fixed infrastructure and staffing costs account for the largest share of expenses, said department spokesperson Beth Hardtke. Spreading the costs among fewer juveniles inflates the per capita price tag.

But taxpayers haven’t seen overall savings from the steep drop in enrollment either. The state in 2015 budgeted about $25.9 million for the Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake complex. That number climbed to about $31.3 million by 2023 with the addition of staff — a cost increase nearly in line with inflation during that period. 

Driving requests to further hike rates: The Department of Corrections seeks $19.4 million in 2026 and $19.8 million in 2027 to expand Mendota Mental Health Institute’s capacity from 29 beds for boys to 93 beds serving girls or boys — an expansion required by state law. 

The expansion requires adding 123 positions at the facility. Such additions affect calculations for the rates of all state facilities for incarcerated juveniles, including Lincoln Hills.  

Why are there fewer incarcerated students? 

The trends driving high costs at Lincoln Hills started more than 20 years ago, said Jason Stein, president of the Wisconsin Policy Forum.

First, Wisconsin is home to increasingly fewer young people. 

The state’s population of youth under 18 has been shrinking. The state saw a 3.2% dip between 2012 and 2021 — from 1,317,004 juveniles to 1,274,605 juveniles, according to a  Legislative Fiscal Bureau report.

Juvenile arrests in Wisconsin dropped by 66% during the same period.  

Meanwhile, judges became reluctant to sentence juveniles to Lincoln Hills —  even before abuse allegations escalated and prompted authorities to raid the campus in 2015.     

“I was the presiding judge at Children’s Court, when we blew open the fact that kids weren’t getting an education and they were having their arms broken,” said Mary Triggiano, an adjunct professor at Marquette University Law School and former District 1 Circuit Court chief judge.

“But we knew before that there were problems with Lincoln Hills because we watched the recidivism rates. We would bring in DOC and say: ‘Tell me what kind of services you’re going to give. Tell me why they’re not in school. Tell me why you’re keeping them in segregation for hours and hours and hours’ — when we know that’s awful for kids who experience trauma.”

Enrollment dropped and costs increased, but outcomes didn’t improve. 

More than 61% of the 131 boys who left Lincoln Hills in 2018 committed a new offense within three years, while about 47% of the 15 girls who left Copper Lake reoffended. The recidivism rate for boys during that period was roughly the same as it was for those released in 2014. The rate for girls was worse than the nearly 42% it was four years earlier. 

Stein compared Lincoln Hills to a restaurant that tries to compensate for lost customers by raising meal prices. If prices keep rising, customers will look for a different restaurant, he said. 

“That, in a nutshell, is how you get into this spiral where you’re seeing fewer residents, higher rates, and greater costs for counties,” Stein said. “Then it’s just rinse and repeat.”

How much do other states spend to incarcerate youth?  

Wisconsin is not the only state spending hundreds of thousands of dollars per juvenile it incarcerates. 

A 2020 Justice Policy Institute report showed Wisconsin spent less than the national average in 2020. But Wisconsin’s per-juvenile costs have since more than tripled as Lincoln Hills remains open and incarcerates fewer young people.  

Incarcerating juveniles is generally more expensive than it is for adults, said Ryan King, director of research and policy at Justice Policy Institute. Rehabilitation plays a bigger role in juvenile corrections, and those programs cost more. Incarcerated children typically access more  counseling, education and case management programs. 

States nationwide are rethinking their approach to youth incarceration as crime rates fall and more research shows how prison damages children, King said. 

“There was an acknowledgement that locking kids up was not only failing to make communities safer, but it was making kids worse, and really just putting them in a position where they were more likely to end up in the adult system,” he said.  

How is Wisconsin trying to reshape juvenile justice? 

In 2018, then-Gov. Scott Walker signed Act 185, designed to restructure the state’s juvenile justice system. The law kicked off plans for a new state youth prison in Milwaukee and authorized counties to build their own secure, residential care centers.

Milwaukee and Racine counties are moving forward on such plans to build these centers. The centers function similarly to county jails: County officials operate them under Department of Corrections oversight. Officials hope keeping youth closer to home will help them maintain family connections. 

“We have always pushed smaller is better. You can’t warehouse young people like you do adults,” said Sharlen Moore, a Milwaukee alderwoman and co-founder of Youth Justice Milwaukee. “Their brain just doesn’t comprehend things in that way.”

The law aimed to close troubled Lincoln Hills and give judges more options at sentencing while balancing the needs of juvenile offenders and the public. But those options have yet to fully develop. 

Today’s alternative programs typically have limited space and extensive waitlists. That won’t be fixed until more regional facilities go online. 

How else could Wisconsin spend on troubled youth? 

Triggiano, now director of the Marquette Law School’s Andrew Center for Restorative Justice, was astounded to learn youth incarceration costs could nearly double next year. 

“You just want to drop to your knees because if I had that money, we had that money, what could we do differently?” she said. 

She quickly offered ideas: programs that recognize how traumatic experiences shape behavior, violence prevention outreach in schools, community mentorship programs — evidence-based practices shown to help children and teens. Milwaukee County had worked to create some of those programs before funding was pulled, Triggiano said.

“It all got blown up in a variety of ways at every juncture,” she said. “Now there’s going to be an attachment to the secure detention facility because that’s all people could muster up after being slammed down every time we tried to do something that we thought was going to work.”

State Rep. Darrin Madison, D-Milwaukee, echoed Triggiano and offered additional spending suggestions, such as housing resources, mental health support and summer jobs programs. 

“The cost of sending one young person to Lincoln Hills would be enough to pay several young people working jobs over summer or the span of the school year,” Madison said.  

Wisconsin’s disproportionate spending on incarcerating its young people runs counter to the Wisconsin Idea, its historical commitment to education, he added. 

“We’re so committed to incarcerating people that we’re willing to eat the cost of doing so, as opposed to making investments in deterrence and getting at the root cause of the problems.” 

One child, $463,000 per year: Ballooning costs of troubled Lincoln Hills youth prison 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.

Gov. Tony Evers kicks off a budget listening session in Appleton, Wis. on Monday, Dec. 2 | Photo by Andrew Kennard

Members of the public traveled to Einstein Middle School in Appleton Monday to tell Gov. Tony Evers about their priorities for Wisconsin’s 2025-2027 budget. 

During the first of Evers’ five planned listening sessions around the state ahead of his next budget proposal, Wisconsin residents expressed concern about the cost of housing, Wisconsin prisons and other issues in a breakout group attended by the Examiner. 

In opening remarks, Evers expressed support for addressing “long neglected” priorities and cited Wisconsin’s budget surplus of over $4 billion for the 2024 fiscal year. 

Evers said his priorities include expanding BadgerCare, legalizing marijuana, protecting access to reproductive health care, gun and justice reform, protecting the environment and investing in kids and schools. 

Local Republican state Rep. Ron Tusler (R-Harrison) has a different view on the surplus, Fox 11 reported. He wants to use it to  return money to taxpayers and provide relief from inflation.  

Members of the public split into six breakout groups. Each group focused on different topics relevant to the budget. The Examiner attended the “Strong & Safe Communities” group, which addressed issues ranging from affordable housing to Wisconsin’s prison system. 

A De Pere resident brought up the high cost of housing, saying that she and her husband are from Door County but couldn’t afford to live there even though they both work. Even in De Pere, “all the houses in my neighborhood are getting bought up and flipped,” she said. 

Tom Denk, who was formerly incarcerated, said he wants to see change in Wisconsin prisons. He said he wasn’t allowed access to enrichment  programs in prison. 

“The DOC needs more funding because their staff need to be educated. They need to have that trauma-informed care,” Denk said. “Because most people are going to get out of prison. I’m one of them.”

Substance abuse and anger management programs in the Wisconsin prison system have waitlists in the thousands. The Department of Corrections’ website says the agency tries to enroll people in programming as they get close to their release date. 

Karen Winkel, a homeless prevention specialist, said many of her clients have been recently released from the Department of Corrections or the Green Lake County Jail, with “no place to go. There’s no place to live.” 

Lisa Cruz, executive director of Multicultural Coalition, Inc., said her nonprofit is overwhelmed with serving immigrants and refugees. 

“It’s [a] humanitarian crisis,” Cruz said. “And I think we often think about that happening somewhere else, in another country, maybe in another state. It’s right here and it’s right now.”

Members of the group expressed concerns about American Rescue Plan funding running out, including funding for services for crime victims. Wisconsin passed $10 million in funding for victim services earlier this year, but providers are still facing budget cuts. 

“My agency received a 72% reduction, really impacting nearly half of our budget,” said Isabel Williston, executive director of ASTOP Sexual Abuse Center. 

Jared Hoy, secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, attended the group discussion, but mostly listened since the focus was on the public’s input. 

An informational packet distributed at the event described positions the governor has taken on criminal justice. These include increasing funding for Wisconsin’s TAD (treatment alternatives and diversion) program and addressing staffing shortages that have worsened conditions in state prisons. 

Evers will introduce his budget proposal early next year, Communications Director Britt Cudaback told the Examiner in late October. In his remarks, Evers praised Wisconsin’s new legislative maps as more reflective of the “will of the people.” In last month’s election, the maps helped Democrats flip 14 previously Republican-held seats in the Legislature, narrowing Republican majorities. 

Evers’ next listening session is Wednesday evening in La Crosse, followed by Milwaukee, Ashland and a virtual session.  

Members of the public can submit comments on budget priorities through the governor’s constituent services page. 

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Transfr, a New York company, seeks to put virtual reality technology in the hands of people who are incarcerated in Wisconsin, hoping they can overcome barriers to employment once released. 

“It’s life-changing for an individual to be able to come out of incarceration with actual career pathways,” said Ruben Gaona, executive director of My Way Out, an organization that supports people who are leaving reincarceration and one of Transfr’s local collaborators. 

“They’d be able to go out into the community and say, ‘OK, you know what: I’m not only here to get a job, I’m out here to get a career.’” 

Avoiding reincarceration

Research has found that a criminal record leads to a 50% reduction in callbacks and job offers. 

The Wisconsin Department of Corrections, among others, reports that the more likely someone with a criminal record is employed, the less likely the person is to return to incarceration. 

According to the department’s 2022 report, people who “completed vocational programming had lower rearrest, reconviction and reincarceration rates … compared to their peers who were identified as having a vocational programming need but who did not receive programming.” 

“From a personal and professional standpoint, I can tell you that a good-paying, career-supporting job is very essential to someone staying out and keeping that recidivism rate down,” said Andre Brown, employment specialist with Project RETURN, a reentry nonprofit established nearly 50 years ago.

For all the talk about pipelines into prison, Brown and his colleagues are trying to create a pipeline out of prison.

“If one can support themselves, pay their bills, take care of their family and have some fulfillment, one has no time to think of crime,” Brown said. 

Inside and outside

My Way Out provides six weeks of training and education to people inside Milwaukee County Community Reintegration Center, a county-run correctional facility. This support is designed to help people with job searches, including résumé writing and interviewing skills. 

With Transfr, Gaona and his team see an opportunity to expand their support by adding four weeks of virtual reality training for in-demand vocations, in fields such as construction, manufacturing,  hospitality and health care.

My Way Out staff also want to bring these resources to state prisons overseen by the Department of Corrections. 

“People will be able to come out (of incarceration) and take apprenticeship tests, so they’d start getting placement in apprenticeship programs and secure living-wage jobs,” said Gaona. 

Funding obstacle

Funding is the main obstacle to getting this technology into the hands of people who are incarcerated. 

The Department of Corrections does not have a budget for this type of technology but suggested that Transfr reach out to Wisconsin Workforce Development Boards, which partner with the department in reentry work, Beth Hardtke, director of communications for the Department of Corrections, said in an email. 

Ryan Leonhardt, state workforce manager for Transfr, said the company has had conversations with these boards but, for the most part, has heard that funding is not currently available from them as well.  

My Way Out applied for a grant that would help provide funding to work with Transfr, but its request was denied. 

Opportunities

Transfr offers more than 350 trainings, all 12 to 20 minutes, which teach foundational skills within various fields, Leonhardt said.

“If somebody is learning how to use calipers, they pick up calipers in the virtual environment. They set the calipers using the controls. They actually do the measurements,” said Leonhardt, explaining how Transfr users learn about this measurement tool common in engineering, metalworking and woodworking. “And then the final thing is they get step-by-step instruction from a digital coach, who then turns around and gives them an assessment.” 

Transfr also provides career explorations. Like the trainings, these are hands-on and guided by a coach but are five- to eight-minute experiences of a day in the life of a job “so people can get an idea of what it’s like,” Leonhardt said. 

Better trained workers are beneficial not just for the people getting trained but for the wider economy as well because of nationwide workforce shortages, Leonhardt said.

“Right now, the labor markets are such a way that if someone can come in and they have foundational skills … they’re going to have better chances for employment because they’re going to be able to meet their (employers’) needs right away,” he said. 

News414 is a service journalism collaboration between Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service that addresses the specific issues, interests, perspectives and information needs identified by residents of central city Milwaukee neighborhoods. Learn more at our website or sign up for our texting service here.

Virtual reality technology connects people who are incarcerated to a new type of job training 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.

Illustration by Diana Ejaita

A survey of a small segment of incarcerated residents in Wisconsin over the year 2024  showed 35% identified as independents, and if they could vote in the upcoming Nov. 5 presidential election 45% would vote for Republican former President Donald Trump while 33% would vote for Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.

The data is a result of The Marshall Project’s 2024 Political Survey. The survey, a partnership between The Marshall Project and Columbia University, reached approximately 54,000 incarcerated people in roughly 400 prisons and jails across 45 states and the District of Columbia.

However, even with 54,000 responding, the survey organizers say the sample size is not sufficient to be representative of the over 2 million who are incarcerated in the U.S.

The survey was conducted twice in 2024 with residents responding to questions on a tablet:

• Between June 4-July 17 when President Joe Biden (Democrat) was still in the race.
• Between August 8-22 after Harris became the Democratic candidate.

Nationwide, as in Wisconsin, the largest share of respondents — 35% — stated their party affiliation was independent. Most incarcerated Wisconsinites favored Trump in the presidential race: 45% for Trump vs. 20% for Biden among a sample of  105 respondents,  and 45% for Trump vs. 33% for Harris among a sample of  219 respondents.

Nationwide, with 11,695 taking both surveys, most chose Trump. Trump garnered more than 46% vs. Biden with 20%. But when Harris entered the race, Trump support dropped to 44% and Harris garnered 35%. (But in a survey of 25,092 who just responded to the Trump/Harris contest, 46% supported Trump to 33% for Harris.)

During a zoom call with The Marshall Project and The Journalist’s Resource on Tuesday, Oct 29, Nicole Lewis, engagement editor of The Marshall Project, noted that Biden in the national survey was not the favorite of Black respondents and she credits that to Biden’s support of the 1994 Crime Bill that drove an increase of incarceration, especially for Black men.

But 49% of Black respondents in the national survey said they supported Harris compared with only  30% for Trump. In contrast,  60% of white respondents supported Trump vs. 21% for Harris.

In the related article by The Marshall Project (“Trump remains very popular here”: We surveyed 54,000 people behind bars about the election, by Lewis, Shannon Hefferman and Anna Flagg) reviewing its nationwide survey, the authors noted that Trump has support from a majority of incarcerated Americans, especially white men, even though his policies “are at odds with most criminal justice reformers,” and that he supports the death penalty for convicted drug dealers and “has been critical of efforts to curb police violence and has repeatedly made racist comments about crime.”

The article attributes Trump support to how racial segregation in prison and jails often results in white men tending to watch right-leaning Fox News and Newsmax, while Black inmates tend to watch more liberal-leaning CNN and MSNBC.

The article also noted that some inmates believe because of Trump’s troubles with the law, including 34 felony convictions, he is now more sympathetic to those who have been incarcerated.

Wisconsin prison and jail survey

In the Badger State, 291 incarcerated residents responded to The Marshall Project surveys, and of those, 87% were in county jails and not the state prison system.

With over 20,000 people in Wisconsin state prisons and another 12,000 in county jails, the 291 respondents offer a non-representative sample of the total incarcerated population in the state – the data collected does not statistically identify any meaningful trends.

Even though it is not statistically representative, the surveys offer a rare peek at  political preferences for incarcerated people.

Because most of the Wisconsin respondents for the survey were in jail, it’s possible they were in confinement, charged and waiting for a court date, but not convicted, so even if they had been charged with a felony but not convicted on Nov. 5, they would still be eligible to vote, while convicted felons are not eligible to vote.

And if they are in confinement serving a misdemeanor sentence, they are still eligible to vote in Wisconsin because a misdemeanor conviction doesn’t make one ineligible.

There may be some in jail due to a revocation violation of the conditions for felony supervision ­– probation, parole or extended supervision. Supervision is served after the incarcerated portion of a sentence, and those on felony supervision are not eligible to vote, and if they violate any conditions of their supervision they could land back in jail pending a revocation hearing and eventual return to prison.

In Wisconsin it’s estimated over 45,000 people have served the incarcerated portion of their felony sentence and are out in open society but are still ineligible to vote because they are under supervision – parole, probation or extended supervision (often referred to as “being on paper”).

Of 101 who responded to whether they were eligible to vote in Wisconsin, 58 said they were not, 27/ said they were eligible and 15 were not sure.

Lewis noted for incarcerated or formerly incarcerated persons there is often uncertainty over whether they are eligible to vote and many fear attempting to vote  and being charged with a violation and re-incarcerated.

In Wisconsin, the Department of Corrections (DOC) is supposed to keep the Wisconsin Elections Commission updated on the status of felons and whether they are eligible to vote, and then the Election Commission in turn is supposed to inform municipal clerks.

Of 99 who responded to the question of how likely they were to vote in the November election, 48 said they “definitely will not vote” and 24 chose “probably will not vote,” with 14 choosing “probably will vote” and 12 saying they “definitely will vote.”

Clark Merrfield, senior editor of The Journalist Resource, noted in the Zoom call that even in the states of Maine and Vermont where a felony conviction never leads to a loss to voting, in 2018 only one third of incarcerated people registered to vote and only 8% with felonies voted in Vermont and just 6% with a felony voted in Maine.

Lewis said any run-in with the law often leads to disenfranchisement.

“There is some research already that shows that any contact, no matter how small, even a traffic stop, can actually depress people’s civic participation and interest in their civic life,” she said, “so imagine if you’re taken from a population and incarcerated for a period of years. Like what impact is that going to have?”

Concerning their political party affiliation, of the 291 people incarcerated in Wisconsin who responded, 35% chose “Independent” followed by 22% “Democrat,” 21% “Other” and 18% “Republican.”

In the national survey on party affiliation, more chose Republican than those in Wisconsin: 22% nationally versus 18% in Wisconsin.  

In both the national and state surveys, Independents garnered 35%.

Lewis said that independent leaning might represent a distrust of both major parties.

Regarding Harris’s record on crime, of the 208 responding, 58% had “no opinion,” 25% said she was “tough on crime” 12% said she was “just right on crime” and 5% said Harris was “not tough enough on crime.”

To the question how should Trump be punished for the crimes for which he has been convicted, of the 90 responding, 42% said he should be “incarcerated” and 36% said he should be “fined” and 21% said Trump should be “fined and put on probation.”

And to the questions whether the U.S. was ready to elect a woman president, of the 209 responding, 53% chose “yes” and 24% chose “no” while  22% selected “not sure.”

For more details from the survey, search Wisconsin at: https://observablehq.com/@themarshallproject/survey3-state-summaries.

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Marshall Jones and his wife, Jessica, have an expression they use when worries about the future threaten to overwhelm them. 

“Here is holy,” they tell each other. 

“We have to continue to be mindful of the steps that we have to take to build this life today,”  Marshall Jones said. 

As Marshall Jones, who grew up on Milwaukee’s North Side, serves two consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole, the way he and his wife build their today centers around faith in God and family. 

‘A bond started to be built’

In 2019, Marshall was incarcerated at New Lisbon Correctional Institution in Dodge County, about 15 years into his sentence, when he met Jessica Christensen, the prison’s new recreational leader. 

He was assigned to be one of her workers. 

“Then, being a normal human being, I stuck my hand out to shake his hand … and he threw his hands up and said, ‘I can’t touch you,’” Jessica said. 

Initially offended, she learned that he was looking out for her. 

Had they touched, she would’ve been written up for inappropriate contact, which the Wisconsin Department of Corrections explicitly regulates.

“I just saw in that moment that a narrative can be painted about a simple handshake … ,” Marshall said. “From that point, a bond started to be built.” 

From acquaintance to fellowship

At New Lisbon, Jessica oversaw recreation, including exercise programs and athletic tournaments. 

“I did anything that was active to get them off their sedentary lifestyle,” Jessica said. 

The effects on the men were not merely physical, she said. 

“You’re in there and you’re constantly thinking, ‘What did I do? I’m worthless, and there’s nothing good about me,’” Jessica said. “But you know, these guys started to feel better about themselves. ” 

Eventually, Marshall began working more directly within recreational programming. 

“I noticed he was a leader,” Jessica said. “He was all about helping the men around him.” 

The professional relationship had an extra element. 

“We learned we were brother and sister in Christ. So, there was a different level of conversation that we would have,” Jessica said. “It wasn’t crossing boundaries, it was sharing what we were learning about our faith.”

After New Lisbon

After six months, Jessica was let go from New Lisbon for, she was told, not meeting probationary standards. 

“I loved impacting the men that were incarcerated and humanizing them,” she said. “And I knew I couldn’t do that anymore.” 

But something unexpected happened as she was leaving the prison. 

“I remember walking away from the institution, and I audibly heard in my ear, ‘Write to him.’ And I believe with all my heart that it was the Holy Spirit telling me to write Marshall Jones,” Jessica said. 

That same day, they began corresponding. 

“And it just developed into this beautiful relationship,” Jessica said. “ It’s amazing because we’ve gotten to experience every level of relationship with each other – a professional relationship and then a friendship and then a relationship and, now, a marriage.”

Marshall said he was not expecting this transformation.

“I didn’t want to be in a relationship, to be honest with you,” he said. “I got crashed and burned so many times that I didn’t want no part of it.” 

They cannot pinpoint a specific moment things changed because it all happened organically, said Jessica. 

Marshall proposed three times – by letter, phone and, finally, in person. 

Her family supports the marriage, she said, and her kids see Marshall as their stepfather. 

“My mom has completely changed in this relationship,” said Falicia Jones, Jessica’s daughter. 

“Marshall really knows how to just settle her down and bring a calmness over her life in a way that I’ve never seen,” she said. 

‘The unseen of believing’

Marshall and Jessica married on Nov. 1, 2022, in commemoration of Hebrews 11:1, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” 

“That truly is our marriage,” Jessica said. “You know, the unseen of believing that my husband is going to come home and that I’m going to share a life with him.” 

“Based on his circumstances, his attitude and frame of mind are pretty amazing,” added Andrew Reavis, Jessica’s brother. “Just knowing that he may never get out, and just the positivity he has and the moving forward and the faith he has that he is going to get out despite what the state says.”  

Marshall and Jessica still put their faith at the center of their thinking regarding a release date. 

“God doesn’t make mistakes, and he doesn’t put people together for no reason whatsoever,” Marshall said. 

“We’ve entrusted our faith to God that he’s going to absolutely free me from this. But no matter where we go, and what problems we address, we still deal with today,” he said. 

“Here is holy,” he said. 

News414 is a service journalism collaboration between Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service that addresses the specific issues, interests, perspectives and information needs identified by residents of central city Milwaukee neighborhoods. Learn more at our website or sign up for our texting service here.

What does marriage look like while incarcerated? 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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• The Wisconsin Department of Corrections has banned donations of used books to prisoners in an effort to prevent drugs from entering state prisons through secondhand books.

• Critics say the department is limiting inmates’ access to information while failing to address wider entry points for drugs, like prison staff.

• The department has additionally spent about $4 million on restricting prisoner-bound mail in recent years — rerouting it to Maryland, where a company scans mail and sends a digital copy to those incarcerated.

• Multiple Wisconsin prison workers have faced charges related to drug smuggling in recent years.

The Wisconsin Department of Corrections has halted the work of a nonprofit that donated used books to prisoners for nearly 20 years, calling it necessary to prevent drugs from entering state prisons through secondhand books.

The move is drawing pushback from leaders of the nonprofit Wisconsin Books to Prisoners and prisoner rights advocates. They say the department is limiting inmates’ access to information while failing to narrow wider entry points for drugs, like prison staff. 

The used book ban comes after Wisconsin rerouted prisoner-bound mail out of state in the name of blocking drug shipments — an effort that has cost millions yet has had little visible impact on the numbers.

As they restrict books and mail shipments, Wisconsin prison officials have shared less about plans to stop prison employees from bringing in drugs. 

That’s despite last year’s launch of a federal investigation into employees suspected of smuggling contraband into Waupun Correctional Institution. Separately, multiple Wisconsin prison workers have faced charges related to drug smuggling in recent years. 

Prison officials ban used book donations

Wisconsin Books to Prisoners (WBTP), a small volunteer-run organization, has sent over 70,000 free books to state prisons since 2006.

Camy Matthay, the group’s director and co-founder, said she was alarmed in August to learn state prisons would no longer accept the group’s used books.

“The decision to bar WBTP from sending books unnecessarily restricts incarcerated peoples’ access to valuable educational resources, particularly when many facilities suffer from underfunded, outdated, or non-existent library service,” Matthay’s group wrote on social media when announcing the ban.

“We just want to send books to prisoners, that’s all,” Matthay said in an interview.

The organization inspected all books before sending to ensure they met prison “clean copy” criteria: no highlighting, underlining or marks of any kind, she said. 

In an Aug. 16 email to the nonprofit, Division of Adult Institutions Administrator Sarah Cooper wrote that her agency is not concerned with the organization itself, “but with those who would impersonate your organization for nefarious means.” 

“Bad actors” may send packages and books laced with drugs that “appear to be sent from the Child Support Agency, the IRS, the State Public Defender’s Office, the Department of Justice and individual attorneys,” she wrote.

The corrections department announced its latest ban of used books in January. Then Oshkosh Correctional Institution officials in February and March detected drugs in three shipments of books purporting to be from Wisconsin Books to Prisoners, spokesperson Beth Hardtke told reporters Monday in an email.

That was news to Matthay, she said Monday. The department never notified the group about the incidents, nor did Cooper’s August email mention them. 

Latest effort to restrict book donations 

This isn’t the first time restrictions have threatened the group’s work.  

Prison officials cited drug concerns in halting the nonprofit’s donations in 2008 before eventually agreeing to let it send only new books, following ACLU of Wisconsin intervention. In 2018, the department clarified that the nonprofit, as an approved vendor, could send used books so long as they were clean copies. It reaffirmed that decision in 2021. 

Hardtke said the latest restrictions don’t specifically target Wisconsin Books to Prisoners. They are instead part of a broader ban on all secondhand book deliveries. Prisoners may still receive new books sent directly from a publisher or retailer with a receipt, she said. 

Matthay’s group cannot keep up with demands while being limited to only new books, she said.

The policy will chill prisoners’ access to information, said Moira Marquis, a senior manager at the freedom of expression advocacy group PEN America. Marquis authored the report “Reading Between the Bars,” which detailed state book restrictions nationwide.  

Wisconsin Books to Prisoners sent donated books to inmates for free to address a specific barrier to information. Many prisoners, who in 2023 made as little as five cents per hour in jobs behind bars, cannot afford to buy new books from retailers. 

“If you’re going to limit somebody’s First Amendment rights excessively, you really should have a very strong burden of proof that not only is this necessary, but also that it’s effective,” Marquis said.

Wisconsin Watch asked the corrections department for evidence that necessitated the ban. 

“Unfortunately, in recent years individuals have repeatedly used paper, including letters and books, as a way to try to smuggle drugs into DOC institutions,” Hardtke said in an email.  

The department since 2019 has flagged 214 incidents of drugs being found on paper, representing a quarter of all 881 contraband incidents flagged during that time, according to figures Hardtke provided.  

“DOC is continuing the conversation with Wisconsin Books to Prisoners in the hopes we can come to an agreement to help fulfill the reading requests of those in our care and do so safely,” Hardtke wrote. 

Matthay in August asked the department if providing tracking information on its packages could help it verify that book shipments were indeed coming from Wisconsin Books to Prisoners. 

The department has yet to respond, she said Monday.  

Millions spent rerouting prison mail to Maryland

The corrections department’s broader efforts to restrict mail do not appear to have slowed the flow of drugs. The department counted more incident reports of drugs being found on paper (55) thus far in 2024 than it did in 2021 (49), the year it overhauled its mailing system, the figures Hardtke provided show. 

Not all incident reports flagged as drug-related turn out to actually be so, Hardtke noted, and the figures may not account for drug-related incidents logged in separate medical or conduct reports. 

In December 2021, the department began rerouting all prisoner-bound mail to Maryland, where a company called TextBehind scans each piece of mail and sends a digital copy to those incarcerated. The department has paid nearly $4 million for those services since they began, according to information Wisconsin Watch obtained through an open records request.

Some incarcerated people told Wisconsin Watch the loss of physical mail has increased their feelings of isolation. They can no longer hold the same handwritten letters and photographs their loved ones sent; photocopies aren’t the same. 

“I don’t get to smell the perfume on a letter. I don’t get the actual drawings my kid sends me. It takes away from the sentimental value of it,” said a Waupun prisoner who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution.  

A range of research has shown that maintaining connections to loved ones improves the likelihood that a prisoner will reintegrate into society and avoid recidivism. 

The prisoner said the mail policy hasn’t stopped the flow of drugs into prison.

“Every day I smell weed,” he said. “They’re trying to blame us for the drugs, but if the administration doesn’t hold their staff accountable for their actions, it won’t solve the problem.”

Lockdowns don’t stop drug flow 

Wisconsin in recent years has locked down prisons, limiting inmate movement and privileges to alleviate staffing shortages. Drugs kept flowing even after in-person visits and direct mail to prisoners stopped. 

The department counted 214 total drug-related contraband incident reports in 2024, up from 142 a year earlier and 164 in 2022. 

Last year, a U.S. Department of Justice investigation into a possible drug and contraband smuggling ring prompted the state to place 11 Waupun prison employees on leave. In September, a former Waupun prison employee was convicted of smuggling contraband into prisons under the guise of completing repairs.

And in October 2023, three months after state officials asked federal authorities to investigate staff-led smuggling inside Waupun’s prison, 30-year-old Tyshun Lemons was found dead from fentanyl poisoning. In June, prosecutors criminally charged nine Waupun prison workers, including the former warden, following multiple inmate deaths, including Lemons’.

At least two dozen correctional officers have been caught smuggling contraband into Wisconsin prisons since 2019, according to public records obtained by the advocacy group Ladies of SCI and shared with Wisconsin Watch. 

Wisconsin Watch is awaiting department records requested Sept. 5 detailing additional information related to recent drug incidents in its adult facilities. 

Mail restrictions scrutinized in other states

Multiple states have restricted books and mail since 2015, citing drug smuggling concerns, Marquis said. Meanwhile, prisoners have increasingly relied on electronic tablets, which have come with new limits on what they can read, Marquis said. 

Have such restrictions limited the flow of drugs in those states? Not necessarily, news reports have found. 

A Texas Tribune/Marshall Project investigation in 2021 found that curtailing mail did not curb drugs found in Texas prisons. Guards wrote up even more prisoners for drugs after the policy change. Prisoners and employees reported that staff were most responsible for smuggling drugs.

Pennsylvania’s prison officials banned physical mail in 2018 after blaming a series of staff illnesses on drugs allegedly sent by mail. But less than five years later, the number of prisoners who tested positive on random drug tests substantially increased, The Patriot News reported last year. 

Florida in 2021 stopped all paper mail from entering prisons, citing 35,000 contraband items found in mail between January 2019 and April 2021. But those represented less than 2% of all such items found in the prisons during that period, the Tampa Bay Times reported.  

Wisconsin in 2022 issued new screening requirements for people entering prisons and added metal detectors at points of entry. But one Waupun prison worker said screeners at entrances do not routinely inspect employees’ bags or lunches, allowing drugs to pass through undetected. The prison worker requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to media.

“If it were me trying to stop drugs, the first thing I would do is come up with a system where employees are screened better,” he said. 

To Rebecca Aubart, executive director of Ladies of SCI, the secondhand book ban is an example of how policies touted as safety measures harm incarcerated people. 

“To me this policy is another way DOC is blaming families and the people they incarcerate for the problems their staff can’t or won’t address,” she said. 

“It’s a false narrative that gets repeated, and when it becomes policy, the false narrative gets reinforced.”

Wisconsin prisons restrict books and mail to keep drugs out, but some staff still bring drugs in 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.

Books by Atlantide Phototravel | Getty Images Creative

A Wisconsin nonprofit announced the state Department of Corrections (DOC) had barred them from sending books to incarcerated people, sparking an outcry.  

The department’s spokesperson says the group isn’t barred. Beth Hardtke, director of communications for the Wisconsin DOC, told the Examiner that the nonprofit can send books to prisoners—though they have to be new copies, not used books. 

The department has expressed concern about “those who would impersonate” the nonprofit — Wisconsin Books to Prisoners (WBTP) — in order to send drugs into prison. DOC did not specify whether anyone has tried to send drugs into prisons by impersonating WBTP, but a department administrator said bad actors have tried to send in drugs and have also used prison mail to impersonate the IRS and others.

In an email to the DOC, WBTP co-founder Camy Matthay said that reading contributes to the safety of residents and staff of prisons and reduces recidivism. Matthay said a large proportion of the books incarcerated people request from WBTP underscore that they are trying their best to prepare to be productive members of society. This includes books on various trades and on how to start a business or nonprofit, she said. Matthay’s email was part of an email chain between WBTP and the DOC, which the DOC sent to the Examiner. 

“We feel reading is a human right. Access to books is a human right,” Matthay told the Examiner. 

WBTP said that the group was barred by the DOC from sending books to incarcerated people in a statement dated Sept. 16. The group said it has sent close to 70,000 books to prisoners across Wisconsin since its founding in 2006. 

“It’s a bad, very, very unfair situation,” Matthay said. “Especially when a [very] few bad actors — if we can assume this really is going on… cause thousands of prisoners not to be able to get literature.”

Media outlets and social media accounts have publicized the claim that the DOC barred the group from sending any books to incarcerated people. The DOC has received backlash, including a petition with 324 supporters criticizing the alleged decision by the department. WBTP said in a statement that the group is “pursuing all legal options.”

Did the DOC bar the group from sending new books?

The DOC had already told the nonprofit that it couldn’t send used books to prisoners. Security Chief Robert Miller of the DOC’s division of adult institutions (DAI) told the nonprofit in mid-January that the department would not accept used publications at that time, according to a timeline provided by WBTP.

In May, WBTP proposed that the DOC give the group special permission to send clean copies of used books. The group said Idaho is an example of a state that has a list of approved vendors that can send both new and used books. 

In a follow-up email in August, Matthay said well over 200 prisoners were waiting to receive books they requested and hoping the DOC would restore the arrangement allowing WBTP to send used books.  

“To us, it simply doesn’t feel defensible to withdraw opportunities for the men and women in your care to read and occupy their time in ways that are meaningful to them,” Matthay wrote in the email, which was part of an email chain the DOC sent to the Examiner. 

In mid-August, DAI Administrator Sarah Cooper responded to WBTP and referenced a past decision. 

“…We have not made exceptions for any other organizations or entities, and we cannot do so for Wisconsin Books to Prisoners,” Cooper said. “In fact, since the decision was made to no longer allow books in from your organization, we’ve had to implement a whole new process for handling mail from the entities listed in the above paragraph.”

A month later, on Sept. 16, WBTP published its statement condemning the alleged ban on the organization sending any books to incarcerated people in Wisconsin. After speaking to Hardtke, the Examiner spoke with Matthay about the possibility that Cooper had meant the nonprofit couldn’t send used books to prisons — not that the group couldn’t send in any books. 

“The way that message has been interpreted by everybody that’s read it… our project was barred,” Matthay said. 

According to the timeline provided by WBTP, the group asked the DOC if it could resolve the problem by providing a USPS tracking number for every package of books it ships. 

Hardtke also said friends and family can purchase books directly from bookstores, which send the books to prisons, along with a receipt, for incarcerated people.

Is the concern about drugs a good reason to limit books?

In January, Miller said the department, as well as jails and prisons across the country, were “experiencing a large amount of sprayed-on narcotics and foreign substances on paper,” according to the WBTP timeline. This created a significant risk to the health and safety of staff and incarcerated people, he said. 

In August, Cooper said “there have been many instances” of people trying to send drugs into the prisons while pretending the mail is coming from legitimate sources, such as the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Justice. 

“So our concern is not with your organization, but with those who would impersonate your organization for nefarious means,” Cooper told WBTP on Aug. 16. 

In its appeal to the DOC in May, WBTP referenced an article by the Marshall Project, which quoted a former science-to-action coordinator for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Foundation’s Overdose Response Strategy program. The former coordinator, Jennifer Carroll, said there is little evidence that limiting access to books will help save lives.

Hardtke said “bad actors” in Wisconsin and other states have exploited “otherwise positive programs” that rely on donations to support incarcerated people. She said donated books have recently been among materials that have tested positive for drugs. Neither the Examiner nor Tone Madison have heard back from Hardtke about the frequency of incidents of books testing positive for drugs. 

What’s next for Wisconsin Books to Prisoners? 

Matthay said WBTP’s project has been stalled. If the DOC does allow her organization to send in new or used books, she said she needs to see their policy in writing. She said she wants the DOC to tell wardens, staff, mailroom clerks and property sergeants what the new policy is so WBTP doesn’t have to ship the same box of books more than once. 

Even if WBTP can start sending new books again, Matthay said a ban on used books hobbles the project. The group doesn’t have the money to buy the amount of books that they send. The ban on used books prevents WBTP from sending used books donated by the general public. 

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Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the name of Tone Madison. 

The Waupun prison sits in the middle of a residential neighborhood (Photo | Wisconsin Examiner)

Friday the 13th of September is the gloomy anniversary of the signing of the federal 1994 Crime Bill. It is also a chance to start to remedy a horrible mistake.

It seems rare that there is consensus among leaders of both of our political parties to make a significant change. Sometimes, those are great steps forward. Sometimes it is just a big bipartisan mistake. Such was the case 30 years ago when the US Congress and President Bill Clinton passed and signed the 1994 Crime Bill.  

In 1994, our leaders saw a real problem – the toll being taken by drug addiction. But they came up with the wrong solution. That mistake cost billions of dollars; it devastated entire communities; it broke up families; it ruined thousands of lives.

The 1994 Crime Bill had very little impact on crime. In the U.S., as in Wisconsin, there is almost no relationship between crime levels and prison population levels. The Crime Bill did, however, devastate many communities, especially low-income communities and communities of color.  The Crime Bill introduced extremely harsh penalties for even low-level drug crimes. Famously, it was far harder on crimes involving crack than for crimes involving powder cocaine, which resulted in more and longer incarceration for central city residents. The population of U.S. federal prisons in 1994 was less than 50,000. Today, it is more than 158,000.

The 1994 Crime Bill had a huge impact on Wisconsin and other states. The Crime Bill helped pay for new prisons.  It rewarded police departments for increasing their arrest rates as well as tougher sentencing laws, like Wisconsin’s so-called ‘Truth in Sentencing.”   Aided and encouraged by the Crime Bill, Wisconsin’s prison population went from less than 10,000 in 1994 to more than 22,000 today.   

In Wisconsin in 2024, there is a new bipartisan consensus: We need to close at least two of Wisconsin’s prisons. The Green Bay Correctional Institution (GBCI) and the Waupun Correctional Institution (WCI) were built in the 1800’s. Both have received a lot of well-deserved negative publicity recently, as people have died and as the horrid conditions in those prisons have become better known. Even with dramatic pay increases, the Department of Corrections has not been able to keep enough staff to fully run programs at GBCI and WCI. The facilities are dangerous and outdated. Even spending about $50 million for each facility every year, it is impossible to make them suitable for humans to live in, or even to want to work in.

We all, Republicans, Democrats and Independents, believe GBCI and WCI need to be closed.  The question is: How? There are those who want to spend $500 million of taxpayer money to build a new prison. We believe there is a better way.

Wisconsin can close the Waupun and Green Bay prisons by taking common sense steps to safely reduce the prison population. Consider this: the combined populations of GBCI and WCI is about 2,000 people, less than 10% of the prison population. In Wisconsin’s 38 prisons, there are about 5,000 people incarcerated for “crimeless revocations.”  These are people who served a sentence and have been sent back for a technical violation of their terms of supervision – not because of another crime. By reducing such revocations, as states like Texas have done, we could easily have 2,000 fewer people in prison in less than a year.  

Thousands of people in Wisconsin prisons are, as part of their sentence, eligible to participate in “Earned Release” programs. But, we have not funded the Earned Release program sufficiently, so that many of them wait for years to get into the program so they can go home. We have hundreds of senior citizens languishing in Wisconsin prisons, some of them in assisted living wings of prisons.  

To build a new prison would cost Wisconsin about $500 million, and would take at least 4-5 years. In the meantime, we would o force incarcerated people and staff to continue suffering in WCI and GBCI.  Common sense policies could safely reduce the population such that we could create enough space to move everybody out of the Green Bay and Waupun prisons within a year.

In 1994, we spent billions to build the incarceration infrastructure. In 2024 we can turn that around, and we can reinvest the savings in education, mental health and addiction treatment and other programs that will heal and revitalize the communities the Crime Bill helped to devastate.

After 30 years, we have a new chance to get it right. We can get it right in Wisconsin by closing our worst prisons without building new ones.  And, in 2025 our new President needs to work with the new Congress to repeal the 1994 Crime Bill, and replace it with a 2025 Justice Reinvestment Bill.

 

Angela Lang Robert Kraig David Liners
Black Leaders Organizing Communities (BLOC) Citizen Action of Wisconsin WISDOM

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An inmate found dead at a maximum-security prison in northeastern Wisconsin was strangled, investigators said Thursday.

Brown County Sheriff’s Office deputies and medical personnel were called to the Green Bay Correctional Institution on Tuesday evening for a report of a pulseless inmate who wasn’t breathing. They found 19-year-old Micah Laureano dead at the scene. It’s unclear exactly where in the prison Laureano was found.

The sheriff’s office said that an initial investigation determined that Laureano had been killed in his cell and his 24-year-old cellmate was a suspect.

The sheriff’s office said in an updated news release Thursday that an autopsy revealed Laureano had been strangled.

Laureano and the suspect had been together in the cell for only hours before his death, the sheriff’s office added. The release did not say specifically how long they had been together.

The investigation is ongoing, and charges are expected to be filed late next week, the sheriff’s office said.

Online court records indicate that Laureano was sentenced to two years in the state prison system in January for being a party to substantial battery in Waukesha County, with the first year to be served behind bars and the second on extended supervision. His attorney in that case, public defender Maura McMahon, described Laureano as a “funny, thoughtful young man and a talented artist” in an email to The Associated Press.

Laureano’s cellmate was sentenced to 40 years in the prison system in January 2018 for attempted homicide in Manitowoc County, with 20 years to be served behind bars and 20 years on extended supervision. The cellmate was 18 years old when he was sentenced.

Asked for comment on the incident, state Department of Corrections spokesperson Beth Williams Hardtke responded with an email acknowledging that Laureano died Tuesday after an “incident in his cell.” She said no staff members were hurt, and law enforcement was investigating. The prison was operating normally with all scheduled activities continuing as usual, she said.

Laureano’s death is another blow for the Department of Corrections as it struggles to protect inmates and prison workers in the face of aging facilities and chronic staffing shortages.

Five inmates at the maximum-security Waupun Correctional Institution have died since June 2023. Two killed themselves, one died of a fentanyl overdose, one died of a stroke, and one died of malnutrition and dehydration. Prosecutors charged the prison’s former warden, Randall Hepp, and eight other Waupun staff members this past June with misconduct in connection with the stroke and malnutrition deaths.

Men held at Waupun have filed a class action lawsuit alleging mistreatment, including not having access to health care. And the U.S. Department of Justice is investigating a possible smuggling ring at the prison.

Just weeks after the charges came down against Hepp and his staffers at Waupun, Corey Proulx, a counselor at the state’s youth prison outside Irma, died after a 16-year-old inmate punched him in the face. His death sparked calls from the facility’s staff and Republican legislators to lift a court-imposed ban on pepper spray. The federal judge who imposed the prohibition in 2018 has so far refused to consider their requests.

Waupun opened in 1854. Green Bay Correctional Institution opened in 1898. Republicans have been calling for years to close both prisons, saying they’ve outlived their usefulness. But concerns over job losses in the communities and the cost of building a new prison, estimated at as much as $1 billion, have proven to be stumbling blocks. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has tried to address the prison system’s problems by giving guards raises.

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.

Autopsy determines man killed at Green Bay Correctional Institution was strangled 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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• Prisoner rights advocates are calling for the creation of an independent ombudsman — as exists in other states  —  to investigate concerns inside prisons and to study solutions.

• Allowing prisoners and their families to air grievances could decrease tension that fuels violence and abuse, advocates and experts say, and it could limit tax dollars paid out in lawsuits rising from unresolved complaints. 

• Between 2013 and 2023, Wisconsin paid out at least $17 million in 450 legal settlements to people alleging abuse, neglect or civil rights violations while incarcerated in adult prisons.

Wisconsin lawmakers have offered few remedies for deteriorating prison conditions spotlighted this year by investigative journalism, litigation surrounding extended lockdowns and criminal charges against nine Waupun prison officials following a string of inmate deaths.

But prisoner rights advocates remain energized by the recent attention. They are calling for the creation of an independent ombudsman to investigate concerns inside prisons and to study solutions.

Experts say such an office, versions of which exist in 19 states and the District of Columbia, could improve safety. Allowing prisoners and their families to air grievances could decrease tension that fuels violence between guards and inmates. And independent monitoring could prevent neglect and abuse — limiting tax dollars paid out in lawsuits, advocates say. 

Between 2013 and 2023, Wisconsin paid out at least $17 million in 450 legal settlements to people alleging abuse, neglect or civil rights violations while incarcerated, according to a Wisconsin Watch analysis of settlement data. The cases involved alleged failure to prevent self-harm, deliberate indifference to medical needs and reckless disregard for the safety of prisoners, among other complaints. As a matter of practice, the state typically admitted no fault in its settlement agreements. 

The Wisconsin Watch analysis does not include more than $25 million in settlements and legal fees related to allegations of abuse at Wisconsin’s only youth prison at Lincoln Hills-Copper Lake, including excessive pepper spray use, strip searches and restraints. A counselor was killed this summer in a fight at the prison.  

Prisoners and advocates say they have nowhere to turn outside of courts for an impartial review of complaints.

While concerned family members can write to the Department of Corrections, their letters often get ignored or routed to prison staff who may retaliate — for instance by writing up the prisoner in question or reducing privileges like family visitation, Rebecca Aubart said. She’s the executive director of Ladies of SCI, a statewide advocacy group that initially focused on prisoners and loved ones at the medium-security Stanley Correctional Institution. 

“What’s going to happen is that it’s going to eventually end up in front of the warden, and nothing will be done about it,” Aubart told Wisconsin Watch.

Creating an ombudsman office, she said, “would give family members a place to go, and it would be kept confidential. We wouldn’t be experiencing the retaliation that we do now.” 

Aubart and other advocates brought the idea to the Republican-controlled Assembly’s Committee on Corrections during a July hearing. Lawmakers signaled openness to the idea.  

Rep. Angie Sapik, R-Lake Nebagamon, said she had previously considered writing a bill. Rep. Darrin Madison of Milwaukee said he and fellow Democrats have worked on their own proposal.

Aubart asked lawmakers to work together. 

“One side cannot fix it,” she said. 

Department of Corrections spokesperson Beth Hardtke said the agency is reviewing the idea, but cautioned a new office would require funding and staff resources.

“We would also note that DOC does have a complaint system, including an appeals process, for individuals in our care,” Hardtke added. “We also regularly offer guidance to the public, route complaints or concerns to the appropriate place, and resolve issues.” 

That complaint system is Wisconsin’s primary avenue for resolving prison grievances, with concerns submitted to and reviewed by an institution complaint examiner. Prisoner advocates call it unresponsive. Unlike an independent ombudsman, it exists completely within the Department of Corrections. Complaints first flow to staff at the prison where they originate, creating a perverse incentive to dismiss them out of hand, critics say.

Rep. Ryan Clancy, D-Milwaukee and a corrections committee member, calls it “the worst possible system.”

“We need an independent fact-finder to investigate because a system where you can be punished for speaking out is not a good one,” Clancy said. 

Independent prison oversight in other states

Lawmakers outside of Wisconsin are increasingly turning to independent prison monitors. Virginia and Maryland this year passed bipartisan bills to create ombudsman offices, as did Congress — strengthening oversight of federal prisons. 

“States and legislators around the country are starting to understand how essential this is. It’s basically what democracy and good governance is all about,” said Michele Deitch, director of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at the University of Texas at Austin, who has extensively researched independent prison monitoring. “And that’s why these bills are passing with bipartisan support, unanimous support.”

New Jersey and Washington state represent strong models of oversight, Deitch said, giving investigators broad access to inspect facilities. Internal inspection offices can serve a purpose, she added, but they rarely share findings publicly, limiting transparency and accountability. 

Some corrections staffers who initially bristle at outside oversight end up benefiting through improved relations with prisoners and working conditions, Deitch said. 

“Oversight benefits everybody involved in the system, from incarcerated people and their families, to staff and administrators,” Deitch said.

Employees at understaffed Waupun Correctional Institution might welcome such results. The prison experienced 176 assaults on staff from June 2023 to June 2024 — more than a third of assaults systemwide, Department of Corrections data show.

One Waupun prison staff member said the many assaults and tensions from ongoing litigation at times make correctional officers reluctant to impose consequences for threatening or assaultive behavior for fear of triggering additional lawsuits or charges.

“You can’t run a prison in fear, and right now, we’re on our heels,” said the staff member, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.  

How Minnesota does it

Wisconsin can look to its neighbor for one oversight model.

In the early 1970s, in the wake of one of the country’s bloodiest prison riots in Attica, New York, problems brewed at Minnesota’s Stillwater prison, which saw uprisings, escape attempts, murders and a violent attack on the warden. In 1970, armed inmates took three officers hostage and tried to walk out wearing their uniforms. The prisoners gave up after listing their grievances to a reporter.

Two years later Minnesota created its ombuds office to address grievances before hostilities spiraled into violence. 

The office was defunded in 2002 and closed the following year, but it reopened in 2019 after the deaths of two correctional officers, said Margaret Zadra, the state’s ombudsperson for corrections. 

“A lot of people at the time were talking about the office as a pressure release valve,” Zadra said. “But we tend to talk about our office more like a flashlight. We shine a light on issues, and we can go behind the walls and see things that most people don’t have access to and can’t see.”

Although Minnesota and Wisconsin have roughly the same demographics and population, their corrections systems look dramatically different. Wisconsin locks up more than 22,000 people in adult prisons, more than twice as many as Minnesota.

Minnesota, as a result, spends proportionately less on corrections than Wisconsin: $111 per state resident in 2020, compared to Wisconsin’s $220, according to a Wisconsin Policy Forum analysis. 

Minnesota’s Office of the Ombuds for Corrections employs five staff members and plans to add three more. It oversees 11 prisons and 150 jails statewide and has a budget of $1.3 million. The office is independent from the state’s corrections department and reports to the governor. 

Minnesota’s ombuds fields complaints from prisoners, staff and community members and holds office hours at correctional facilities. It lacks enforcement powers but presents recommendations to the Department of Corrections and Legislature. The office helps those incarcerated resolve individual problems and advocates for systemic change after diagnosing larger problems, Zadra said.

Since 2020 the office has produced recommendations for improving use of force policies, unsafe practices when transporting prisoners and crumbling conditions within state prisons. Several recommendations have prompted legislative action, including creating a body-worn camera pilot project for correctional officers.

Costly complaints

Wisconsin prisoners who believe their rights have been violated can sue the Department of Corrections, but only after exhausting every step of the internal grievance process.   

Missing a step or deadline can trigger a case’s dismissal. 

That happened in May when a federal judge dismissed eight of 10 plaintiffs in a lawsuit alleging cruel and unusual punishment at Waupun’s prison. U.S. Magistrate Judge William Duffin ruled the eight incarcerated men failed to exhaust administrative remedies before suing. 

Lonnie Story, who represents the inmates, told Wisconsin Watch he plans to refile the case. 

Reliance on internal complaint systems stems from the Prisoner Litigation Reform Act of 1996, which Congress enacted to stem the tide of “frivolous” lawsuits. Legal scholars and prisoner rights advocates say the law created barriers to resolving grievances — aside from prompting more case dismissals. 

For instance it capped attorney fees plaintiffs’ attorneys can win, making it harder for prisoners to find representation.

Many prisoners represent themselves in lawsuits, and some win — evidenced by the 450 settlements over prison allegations from 2013 to 2023. 

Of the $17 million paid out in those lawsuits, $5 million went to the family of James Black. The family’s 2014 lawsuit alleged correctional officers ignored Black’s requests to be moved out of a cell he shared with an inmate known for sexually predatory and violent behavior. The prisoner later violently raped Black and stomped on his head, leaving him with severe and permanent brain damage that required 24-hour supervision, according to the suit.

Another $175,000 went to a Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility prisoner who was harassed and sexually assaulted by former correctional officer Paul Vick Jr., who later received a prison sentence for sexually assaulting inmates and misconduct in office. 

Improving prison conditions at the complaint stage might save the state money by reducing lawsuits, Deitch said, adding that critics counter that added scrutiny would expose more problems that festered in secret, perhaps at least initially increasing lawsuits. 

“It could cut either way,” said Deitch. “But the reality is, if you clean up what’s going on inside prisons, of course, you’re going to reduce the number of lawsuits.” 

Minnesota’s ombuds office operates parallel to the internal correction department grievance system. Investigators encourage prisoners to follow the internal complaint process ahead of an ombuds investigation. 

Little progress

The push for increased scrutiny over Wisconsin prisons follows months of lawmaker inaction. 

In November, months after Wisconsin Watch and the New York Times exposed worsening conditions and extended lockdowns at Waupun’s prison, Democratic lawmakers called a press conference to unveil  17 bills that they said would improve transparency, oversight and conditions of confinement. The bills did not advance in the Republican-controlled Legislature. 

Speaking at the July hearing, Rep. Michael Schraa, R-Oshkosh, the outgoing Assembly Committee on Corrections chair, said he may have supported some bills had Democrats sought his input before the press conference. 

“You guys went in front of the TV cameras. You took your five minutes of fame. You never came to any member on this committee, on the Republican side, and worked with any of us,” Schraa said. “That’s not the way that things work here. The majority party brings these bills forward, and if they’re bipartisan bills, they get hearings.”

Clancy, the Milwaukee Democrat, disputed that account. Email correspondence he shared with Wisconsin Watch showed he contacted Schraa’s office about the bills weeks before the press conference. Schraa’s office canceled the meeting before it took place, Clancy said. Through an aide, Schraa declined to be interviewed for this story. Schraa lost his reelection bid in a Republican primary earlier this month.

Entrenched partisanship has fueled gamesmanship that prevents lawmakers from solving problems, Clancy said.  

“It’s just a really toxic environment of them not wanting to give us, as Dems, a win.” 

Legislative stalemates left chronic prison staffing shortages unaddressed for years. While DOC officials warned of a looming staffing crisis nearly a decade ago, the Legislature took no meaningful action to hire and retain correctional staff until 2023 — after the prisons began locking down due to a lack of staff to fully operate. 

DOC has since filled vacancies in some prisons. The systemwide vacancy rate for correctional staff and officers as of Aug. 28 sits at 12%, down from its 35% peak in August 2023. The vacancy rate at Waupun still remained above 41%, higher than any other prison. 

Madison, the Milwaukee Democrat, recalled seeing a stack of letters from incarcerated people during his first day in office. The letters detailed problems Madison saw evidence of while touring prisons as a member of the Assembly corrections committee. 

“If an office of ombudsman existed, those complaints would fall on them instead of an internal system, which is not a good model of accountability anyway,” Madison said. “We’d likely see more results in changing practices within facilities if it was independent of administration.”

Douglas Duncan contributed research for this story.

Short on fixes for prison problems, Wisconsin weighs independent oversight 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.

Reading Time: 5 minutes

What Gawaine Edwards would like to do with his remaining 12 years in prison and what he is able to do are worlds apart.

“I’m being forced to stay in a place that has absolutely nothing for me. It’s not teaching me anything,” Edwards said.

Edwards points to the elimination of parole, which took place in Wisconsin more than 20 years ago, as the central reason for his predicament. 

As some legislators propose reforms, Edwards said, his time, and the time of many others, is being wasted.

He’s not being as productive as he wants, not learning what he wants and, in his opinion, not being effectively rehabilitated.  

“I’m stuck here doing all this dead time,” Edwards said. 

Edwards has served time in various prisons in the state and is currently at New Lisbon Correctional Institution, located in Juneau County, the central region of the state.

Edwards’ backstory

Edwards, who grew up on Milwaukee’s North Side, was charged with felony murder/armed robbery and first-degree reckless injury in November 2000. 

He was found guilty on both charges and, at the age of 22, sentenced to a total of 35 years in prison and 15 years of extended supervision.

As it stands, Edwards will be released from prison in April 2036, at the age of 57. 

But he believes that his debt to society has already been paid in full.  

He wants to get out and help his wife more – she’s a small business owner who also has had health issues recently.

He also has adult children he would like to spend more time with. 

“I never got a chance to be a dad because I got locked up,” Edwards said. 

What is truth in sentencing?

Edwards cannot be released for another 12 years because he committed his crime after the enactment of 1997 Wisconsin Act 283, more commonly known as the truth-in-sentencing law. 

This law changed prison sentences from indeterminate to determinate, which means that the amount of time a person must serve is determined by the judge at time of sentencing and cannot be reduced later with parole. 

Wisconsin’s truth-in-sentencing law was part of a national trend of states adopting such laws – with the main goal of eliminating what was seen as the troubling gap between a person’s sentence and the amount of time they actually served.

“The politics were pretty similar surrounding all of these laws. They were adopted in the 1990s when ‘tough on crime’ politics were at their height,” said Michael O’Hear, law professor at Marquette University Law School and an expert on criminal punishment. 

While there have been some adjustments to the original truth-in-sentencing law, “the basic architecture” remains the same, O’Hear said.

“The (Wisconsin) Parole Commission is completely out of the business of doing anything at all with respect to crimes that were committed on or after Dec. 31, 1999,” he said.

Because of the nature of his offenses, Edwards also is unlikely to benefit from other avenues of securing an earlier release. 

Those convicted of a violent offense are generally ineligible for sentence adjustment provisions and earned release programs, said Jillian Slaight, managing legislative analyst at the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau.  

Quantity vs. quality

However, Edwards still cares how he spends his time.

Much of his time currently is spent at his job inside New Lisbon. He earns about 17 cents an hour pushing people in their wheelchairs to health appointments. 

Edwards said he wants to go to a different prison where he can “do something that’s beneficial to me, to where, if I did get out, I can make money.”  

After more than 20 years of incarceration, he feels he deserves a shot at a work-release program, which allows incarcerated individuals to work outside the prison while still serving their sentences.

Work-release programs are designed to develop people’s future employability and simply help them earn more money. These programs are available within the Wisconsin Department of Corrections but to those at minimum-security prisons.

New Lisbon is a medium-security prison. 

The Department of Corrections’ policy explicitly outlines how a person’s sentence length factors into a person’s custody classification, which, in turn, determines programming eligibility.

Rock and a hard place

Another factor to consider is that what is theoretically available in prisons is not what is always actually available. 

Two of the vocational programs that have been offered in the past at New Lisbon –  bakery and cabinetry – are currently shut down.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and the Department of Corrections have pointed to chronic staffing shortages as a reason why typical programming and resources are not always available. 

With many of the educational and treatment programs, demand is higher than capacity, said Kevin Hoffman, deputy director of communications at the Department of Corrections. 

“Gov. Evers and our leadership have consistently supported funding for new programming initiatives,” Hoffman said. 

While there have been salary increases for security staff, these raises do not apply to teachers and health care professionals. 

Nevertheless, Hoffman said, the department offers a “vast number” of programming and educational opportunities. 

As the department looks to recruit staff to resume cabinetry and baking at New Lisbon, it does have a framing course and customer service training running, Hoffman said.

Current reform efforts

“Certainly those of us on the left know that it (truth-in-sentencing) has been a disaster,” said Rep. Ryan Clancy, D-Milwaukee. 

Clancy, along with others, argues that truth-in-sentencing laws do not help people who are incarcerated nor do they contribute to public safety.

“I’ve heard from many current and former correctional officers and people who are or were incarcerated that truth-in-sentencing does not encourage rehabilitation because there is no incentive for good behavior,” said Rep. Darrin Madison, D-Milwaukee. “Instead, it can cause individuals to lose hope, knowing nothing will change their sentence and only ‘dead time’ awaits.”

Both Clancy and Madison are members of the state’s Assembly Committee on Corrections, which reviews and amends legislation relating to the correctional system.   

The Department of Corrections provides a similar analysis as Clancy and Madison do.

The department also maintains that prisons are made more dangerous for both staff and those incarcerated without effective programming and rehabilitation, Hoffman said.

Encouraging better choices

Rep. Jerry O’Connor, R-Fond du Lac, also on the corrections committee, said in an email that he does not believe rehabilitation was the intent of truth-in-sentencing. 

“Truth-in-sentencing was created to affect choices and behavior with the goal of discouraging individuals from crossing specific criminal lines,” he said. “In talking with many inmates over time, truth-in-sentencing is something they are aware of and attempt to avoid.”

“To this extent, there is a measure of benefit to the offenders by encouraging them to make better choices,” O’Connor added.

While O’Connor said that he would like incarcerated individuals to have earlier access to programming, he said it’s also important to “step back and address the balance of who has lost opportunities.”

“How does this victim of sex trafficking ever find normal,” he said. “The murder victim and their families have lost all opportunities for the future.” 

Clancy, Madison and other Democratic colleagues proposed a package of 17 bills  – called the “Conditions of Confinement” package – to, among other things, improve access to programming and other recreational activities for those who are incarcerated. 

The package included 2023 Assembly Bill 771, which would guarantee at least three to five hours per day of programming per individual and lead to “a dramatic difference in the quality of life for individuals currently incarcerated,” Madison said. 

This bill failed to pass in April. 

“People need to take this issue seriously because there are some of us who actually want to do better and are trying to do better, but we’re stuck in a system where we can’t,” Edwards said. 

A version of this story was originally published by Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service.

News414 is a service journalism collaboration between Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service that addresses the specific issues, interests, perspectives and information needs identified by residents of central city Milwaukee neighborhoods. Learn more at our website or sign up for our texting service here.

As Wisconsin legislators tinker with prison reform, a Milwaukee man continues doing ‘dead time’ 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.

Reading Time: 2 minutes

A federal judge has rejected Republican legislators’ calls to give counselors at Wisconsin’s troubled youth prison more leeway in controlling and punishing inmates after a counselor was killed during a fight at the facility this summer.

U.S. District Judge James Peterson sent a letter Tuesday to state Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Van Wanggaard and Democratic Gov. Tony Evers telling them if they want changes at Lincoln Hills-Copper Lake Schools they should file a formal legal motion and need to show current restrictions on counselors are endangering staff and inmates.

The youth prison in northern Wisconsin 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 2017 demanding improvements at the prison. Then-Gov. Scott Walker’s administration settled the case in 2018 by agreeing to a consent decree that prohibits punitive confinement, restricts confinement to 12 hours, limits the use of mechanical restraints to handcuffs and prohibits the use of pepper spray.

A group of GOP lawmakers led by Wanggaard have been pushing to relax the consent decree since counselor Corey Proulx was killed in June. According to a criminal complaint, Proulx fell and hit his head on concrete pavement after a 16-year-old male inmate punched him in the face. He was pronounced brain-dead two days later.

Wanggaard and other Republicans sent a letter on Aug. 16 to Evers, Corrections Secretary Jared Hoy and U.S. District Judge James Peterson complaining that the consent decree’s restrictions have made the youth prison more dangerous for staff and inmates. The Republicans asked Hoy to ask Peterson to reconsider the prohibitions.

Evers wrote his own letter to Peterson on Aug. 14 urging the judge to leave the consent decree alone. He reminded Peterson that brutal staff-on-youth punishments led to the restrictions in the first place and said conditions at the prison have been slowly improving since Proulx’s death. After learning of the governor’s letter, Wanggaard sent another letter on Aug. 16 to Peterson saying the governor’s letter was political rhetoric.

Peterson wrote in his letter Tuesday that the consent decree has been in place for six years and it’s unfortunate that Proulx had to die to get state officials’ attention.

He went on to say that the way to demand change is through a legal motion, which would give all parties involved in the case a chance to weigh in.

The judge warned anyone who might consider filing such a motion that the U.S. Constitution sets minimum standards for treating inmates “beyond which lie cruelty and barbarism.” He noted that the consent decree does allow the use of handcuffs and confinement to protect anyone from harm and he’d like to see evidence that the restrictions pose a risk to youth or staff.

Wanggaard said in an email to The Associated Press on Wednesday morning that he’ll continue to push for “responsible training and tools” at the youth prison and criticized Evers for not authorizing Hoy to demand Peterson revisit the consent decree.

Asked if GOP legislators might file a motion themselves, Wanggaard aide Scott Kelly said that the Legislature isn’t a party in the case and Wanggaard hadn’t discussed with him or other lawmakers joining it. Kelly threw the problem back at Evers, saying the governor could direct Hoy to seek revisions to the consent decree and improve policies at the youth prison.

Evers spokesperson Britt Cudaback and Department of Corrections spokesperson Beth Hardtke didn’t immediately respond to messages Wednesday morning.

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.

Judge rejects GOP call to give Wisconsin youth prison counselors more freedom to punish inmates 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.