Why is Wisconsin’s Prison System Such a ‘Mess,’ and What can be Done to fix it?

Deteriorating prisons, truth-in-sentencing, Act 10: Reasons for problems abound, while solutions remain elusive

By Sreejita Patra 
Wisconsin Watch

Wisconsin incarcerates more people per capita than the majority of countries in the world, including the United States. 

Wisconsin Watch and other newsrooms in recent years have reported on criminal charges against staff following prison deaths, medical errors and delayed health care and lengthy prison lockdowns linked to staffing shortages in Wisconsin prisons.

The state prison population has surged past 23,000 people, with nearly triple that number on probation or parole. Meanwhile, staff vacancies are increasing again across the Department of Corrections.

A reader called this situation a “mess” and asked how we got here and what can be done to fix it.

The road to mass incarceration

The first U.S. prison was founded as a “more humane alternative” to public and capital punishment, prison reform advocate and ex-incarceree Baron Walker told Wisconsin Watch. Two years after Wisconsin built its first prison at Waupun in 1851, the state abolished the death penalty.

For the next century, Wisconsin’s prison population rarely climbed above 3,000, even as the state population grew. But as America declared the “War on Drugs” in the 1970s and set laws cracking down on crime in the ‘80s and ‘90s, Wisconsin’s prison population began to explode.

“In the early 1970s … the rise in incarceration corresponded fairly closely with increases in crime,” said Michael O’Hear, a Marquette University criminal law professor. “The interesting thing that happened in both Wisconsin and the nation as a whole in the ‘90s is that crime rates started to fall, but imprisonment rates kept going up and up.”

According to O’Hear, Wisconsin was late to adopt the “tough-on-crime” laws popular in other states during that era. But by the mid-1990s, the state began to target drug-related crime and reverse leniency policies like parole. 

“There was a period of time in which Milwaukee was just shipping bazillions of people into prison on … the presumption of being a dealer with the possession of very small amounts of crack cocaine,” UW-Madison sociology Professor Emerita Pamela Oliver said. She cited this practice as one of the reasons Wisconsin’s racial disparities in imprisonment are the worst in the nation.

Starting in the late 1990s and 2000s, Wisconsin’s “truth-in-sentencing” law, which requires people convicted of crimes to serve their full prison sentences with longer paroles, resulted in both a cycle of reincarceration and a large prison population full of aging inmates with low risk of re-offending.

Then in 2011, the anti-public union law known as Act 10 caused a mass exodus of correctional officers as working conditions in the state’s aging prisons continued to deteriorate.

Extended supervision

Along with mandating judges impose fixed prison sentences on people convicted of crimes, truth-in-sentencing requires sentences to include an inflexible period of “extended supervision” after a prison term ends. This is different from parole, which is a flexible, early release for good behavior and rehabilitation.

Judges often give out “extraordinarily long periods of extended supervision,” according to Oliver, at least 25% of the incarceration itself by law and often multiple times that in practice. To her, it is simply a “huge engine in reincarceration.”

According to DOC data, over 60% of the 8,000 people admitted to Wisconsin prisons in 2024 were in on extended supervision violations, known as “revocations.” The majority were technical rules violations that did not involve a criminal conviction.

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

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

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

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

Oliver attributes Wisconsin’s high rates of revocations to parole officers failing to reintegrate people into society in favor of playing “catch-somebody-offending.”

“You get reincarcerated, (and) all that time (in prison) doesn’t count,” Oliver said. “You can stay on a revolving door of incarceration and extended supervision for five times longer than your original sentence.”

People behind the statistics

The factors behind both crime and incarceration are complex, with socioeconomic factors relating to poverty, race, location and more increasing the chances of contact with the judicial system. 

According to O’Hear, overall crime rates began increasing in the ‘90s during the War on Drugs in part due to prosecutors “charging cases and plea bargaining more aggressively.” 

A study by the Equal Justice Initiative found that plea bargaining perpetuates racial inequality in Wisconsin prisons. White defendants are 25% more likely than Black defendants to have charges dropped or reduced during plea bargaining, and Black defendants are more likely than whites to be convicted of their “highest initial charge(s).”

In the 53206 Milwaukee ZIP code where Baron Walker grew up, nearly two-thirds of Black men are incarcerated before they turn 34. Recalling his youth, Walker said “it seemed like almost all the males in my family were incarcerated at one point in time.”

During his time in the prison system, which included stints at Waupun, Columbia and Fox Lake correctional institutions, Walker struggled with accessing his basic needs.

“Their water came out black, dirty. It had a stench,” Walker said. “It sinks into your clothing, even when you wash them … you consume this water, it’s what they cook the food with.”

Water quality in Wisconsin prisons has been a consistent concern of inmates and activists in the past 15 years. Despite multiple investigations into lead, copper and radium contamination at these maximum- and medium-security prisons, recent reports found unhealthy radium levels in the drinking water — with no free alternatives.

“They would microwave the water (at Fox Lake) and the microwaves would spark up and blow out,” WISDOM advocate Beverly Walker, Baron’s wife, told Wisconsin Watch. “The water at the time was $16 to just get a case of six bottles of water … it so ridiculously high.”

EX-incarcerated People Organizing (EXPO) of Wisconsin peer support specialist Vernell Cauley’s issues within Wisconsin prisons were more personal. His daughter died during his intake into Dodge Correctional Institution, and Cauley wasn’t allowed a temporary release to attend her funeral. 

“It had some deep effects on me,” he said. “Some of the things I didn’t realize I had until I was actually released, when you understand that you didn’t get the proper time to grieve.”

Cauley was put in solitary confinement during that time, and for three months total over the course of his prison stay. According to DOC data, the average stay in solitary confinement across Wisconsin prisons is two months.

Furthermore, inmates who struggle with mental illness are overrepresented in solitary confinement across U.S. prisons. Multiple inmates have committed suicide due to long stints of solitary, particularly during recent prison lockdowns.

Working conditions

Joe Verdegan, a former Green Bay correctional officer of nearly 27 years, said he and most of his coworkers “conducted (them)selves pretty professionally” and “always had a lot of respect” for inmates. This respect went both ways, he said, because guards built relationships with inmates for decades at their post.

According to Verdegan, being a correctional officer used to be a “career job” where “nobody left.” Despite the dangers and odd work hours of the post, the guards had a strong union and good benefits and could climb up the ladder as they gained seniority.

But it “all went to hell” after Act 10 was passed.

Senior staff left in droves, leaving remaining guards with 16-hour shifts and “bad attitudes” that perpetuated the worsening work culture, Verdegan said. Religious, medical and recreational time was cut for inmates due to staffing shortages, and the respect between correctional officers and prisoners dwindled.

“When you’re not getting out for chapel passes or any of that kind of stuff, it just builds that hostility,” he said.

The changes caused Verdegan to retire from corrections at 51, earlier than planned. He and many of his friends took financial penalties by retiring from the Department of Corrections early and ended up working other jobs at bars, grocery stores and factories.

They also went to funerals. Many former coworkers “drank themselves to death” due to their experiences within corrections, Verdegan said.

Coming home

In 1996, when Walker was sentenced to 60 years in prison for his role in two bank robberies, no one expected him to serve more than a third of his sentence —  not even the victims. 

But when truth-in-sentencing passed, mandating judges to impose definite, inflexible imprisonment lengths on people convicted of crimes, Walker’s hopes for an early release quickly disintegrated.

Walker was released from prison in 2018 on probation, an alternative to incarceration offered on condition of following specific court orders. He was released after being denied parole six times in the seven years since he first became eligible.

In the aftermath of Walker’s imprisonment, he and Beverly have had their “most beautiful days,” along with some trials. Walker said he has struggled to adjust to independent living, and he would have been at a “complete loss” for adapting to 20 years of technological change if he hadn’t studied it in prison.

“You are programmed and reprogrammed to depend on someone for your anything and everything, whether it be your hygiene products, the time you shower, your mail, your bed, your bedding, your food,” Baron said. “Now, suddenly, you cross out in(to) society … and you’re told now as an adult you’re responsible for your independence, your bills, your clothing, your hygiene, your everything.”

Walker has also struggled with finding employment, despite earning “a litany of certifications and degrees” in food service, plumbing, welding, forklift operating and more while incarcerated. He said the DOC’s reentry programs need “overhaul” and more companies should be encouraged to hire formerly incarcerated people.

As of 2021, Wisconsin spent $1.35 billion per year on corrections, but only $30 million on re-entry programs. Less than a third of the re-entry funding is allocated for helping ex-prisoners find jobs — even though studies show employment significantly decreases the likelihood of reoffending.

Looking ahead 

To Oliver, a significant barrier to solving issues within the prison system is changing sociopolitical attitudes.

“People imagine that if you’re punitive enough, you will have no crime,” Oliver said. “It’s really hard to get the general public to realize you ultimately reduce crime more by creating the social conditions that help people live productive lives without committing crime.”

O’Hear believes a key solution to problems within Wisconsin prisons is addressing the “mismatch” between large prison populations and available resources. He argues that “for a couple generations now, there’s been more of a focus on cutting taxes than on adequately funding public agencies” like the DOC.

O’Hear also said that judges should consider shorter prison sentences because “most people age out of their tendency to commit crimes” and that there should be “more robust mechanisms,” such as more compassionate release and parole laws for elderly inmates.

“We have people in prison in their 50s and their 60s and their 70s and even older who are really past the time when they pose a real threat to public safety,” O’Hear said. “Health care costs alone for older prisoners are a tremendous burden on the system, and they’re contributing to overcrowding.”

The Walkers are continuing their advocacy for prison reform by opening up the Integrity Center, which supports incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals with navigation, re-entry, employment assistance and more. They also advocate permanently shutting down aging prisons such as Green Bay and Waupun correctional institutions.

“All of our people who are eligible for release should be released, and people who are eligible to move into minimum facilities should be moved,” Beverly Walker said. “We don’t need any new prisons if we just utilize what we have.”

Verdegan said that he doesn’t believe the Legislature will ever pass a bill closing Green Bay in his lifetime and that “both political parties are to blame for this mess they’ve created with the Wisconsin DOC.” “Throwing money” at corrections officer positions will not fix staffing vacancies, he said, without the guarantee of eight-hour workdays and adequate job training.

He and Cauley both said supporting the mental health of prisoners before and after incarceration is key. Verdegan supports training staff to work with mentally ill prisoners. Cauley would rather see prison abolished altogether.

“Most people who end up in prisons, they have things going on mentally, these issues not getting met,” Cauley said. “Prison only makes people bitter, more angry … you know, it traumatizes them.”

This article first appeared on Wisconsin Watch and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.