Capitol Report
By State Representative, Leon D. Young
Leon D. Young
Last week, WISDOM (a statewide network comprised of 12 congregation- based community organizations that work to live out their values regarding social justice in the world) brought its 11X15 Blueprint for Ending Mass Incarceration in Wisconsin to the State Capitol.
(The 11X15 campaign aims to reduce the state’s prison population from about 22,000 where it is today, to 11,000 by the end of 2015.)
Clearly, WISDOM’s campaign is intended to address a serious injustice that has existed for far too long.
Here are a few facts that illustrate the overwhelming failure of the state’s criminal justice system:
• Wisconsin spends more than $1.2 billion per year on the Department of Corrections.
In a previous budget cycles, the state has actually spend more taxpayer money on its prison budget than on the entire University of Wisconsin system.
• Wisconsin has the nation’s highest rate of incarceration for African American and Native American males.
(If you’re a Black male in this state, your incarceration rate is 13 percent, nearly double the national average.)
• More than half of all African American men from Milwaukee County in their 30’s and early 40’s have been incarcerated.
• Wisconsin has nearly 3,000 people in its prison who have long been eligible to be released on parole.
• It costs the hardworking taxpayers of state a hefty $96 million each and every year to warehouse inmates who (by the virtue of time spent behind bars and their behavior and accomplishments while incarcerated) should already be back in their respective communities.
• Nearly 5,000 people return to our prisons every year.
About 4,000 of them have not committed a new crime.
Not to mention that countless inmates are getting the proverbial runaround.
They appear before the Parole Commission time after time, only to be denied parole in the end.
When does this inmate repay his debt to society?
When will he be afforded the opportunity to move on with his life by being reintegrated back into the community?
For far too many Wisconsin inmates, with parole eligibility, they languish in prison indefinitely, with no real chance for a second life.
This approach to incarceration seems punitive, rather than rehabilitative.
Make no mistake about it, Wisconsin’s parole system is morally bankrupt, and needs to be reformed now.
Too many parole-eligible inmates are denied an opportunity to move on with their lives by returning to their communities, due in large measure, to Scott Walker’s parole eligibility shell game.
WISDOM’s 11X15 Blueprint for Ending Mass Incarceration in Wisconsin is not only good, but necessary public policy. The time is now (2015) to take appropriate action.