Legislatively Speaking
By Senator, Lena C. Taylor
This week Representative Rob Hutton (R-Brookfield) and I welcomed Republican political activist, Grover Norquist to the State Capitol.
Invited to speak at a legislative briefing on correction reform, Norquist has traveled the country to discuss justice reinvestment strategies.
Most people would be surprised to see the collaboration of Republicans and Democrats on the highly contentious issue of corrections.
In addition, states around the country differ on justice policies and punishment.
We have seen such policies as three strikes in California, which resulted in life-long incarceration for relatively minor offenses. Truth-in-sentencing in Wisconsin, which doesn’t allow for early release, is even at conflict with other sentencing guidelines in the state that were in place before the laws were changed. However, what has been consistent, in nearly every state regardless of their positions on incarceration, is the skyrocketing costs and numbers of people currently behind bars.
In fact the Pew Center determined that since 2002, the United States has had the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. The result is ballooning state budgets that are buckling under the disproportionate amount spent on corrections.
For those reasons and more, many agree that something must be done about the over-burdened courts and correctional facilities.
Typically on the opposite side of the issue, Democrats and Republicans, albeit for differing rationales, are coming to the table to look at justice reform.
I couldn’t be more excited. For more than 10 years, I have pushed for a thorough review of Wisconsin’s correction policies and legislative justice decisions.
Dating back to 2007, as the Chair of the Senate Judiciary and Corrections Committee, I hosted a State of the Justice System Tour.
The information learned from those early visits around the state to Wisconsin prisons, meetings with corrections staff, law enforcement, judicial stakeholders and community listening sessions laid the foundation for our reform work today.
In addition we realized early on that African- American men shoulder a disproportionate amount of arrests, charging, and lengthy sentencing outcomes.
Prisons are being used to warehouse individuals with mental health conditions and frequently to get them the help they truly need.
Nearly half of those incarcerated in Wisconsin, will complete a prison sentence, before they have completed their high school education or obtained a GED. Quite frankly, we have much to do on correction reform. But there is light in sight.
We have taken meaningful steps to identify best practices to improve Wisconsin’s justice system.
The work that was done with the Justice Reinvestment Initiative in 2009 and subsequent efforts with national organizations, have provided us a framework for data driven strategies that have proven successful.
Representative Hutton and I came together with the vision of identifying and implementing solutions that target the root causes of incarceration like mental illness, addiction, and joblessness.
Norquist’s visit was a first step in a series of many opportunities to enlist bi-partisan interest and support for corrections reform.
It has taken a long time, but we are finally on track to implement improved justice outcomes and reform a system that is clearly broken.