Wisconsin: Prisons and politics

The prisons are very crowded, obviously, they're well over designed and we're not even close to meeting our current prison needs. We're among the nation's leaders in terms of percentage growth of imprisonment. It's all crowded but they ain't letting nobody go.

Stop sinning is out of state, we want to stay here. That you're still dealing at a situation that I think unless we do something about his near crisis proportion. Tonight I look behind bars at Wisconsin's exploding prison population. Why does Wisconsin have one of the fastest growing prison populations in the country? And you have to be punished for it because we're now putting up with drug dealers in our community. Legislators here from constituents who say, hey, we want to be safe. Truth in Sentencing, a new law that requires inmates serve a full sentence with no parole

against January 1st. Our committee has recommended new criminal penalties. What effect will truth in Sentencing have on an already overcrowded system? And we're in a position to be able to make some recommendations which will affect the criminal system for years to come. I'm better known what that cost is and if we don't, then I don't know that we make recommendations to legislate. This is not the story of one prisoner. Do I deserve to be in prison? No. For one prisoner is not representative of the entire population. Johnny, what are you in for?

I'm in for aggravated battery during a burglary. Prior to crime of drug delivery. Sexual assault. I'm robbery. First degree murder. I'm here for a party to a crime of sexual assault. I'm in for possession of marijuana and attempted delivery. I have a 20-year sentence for first degree reckless homicide. How long are you in for? I got four years just to four and a half. Six years. My sentence was five years and I've been locked up for two years, four months, and 26 days. Twenty years? Five years. Oh, life. I see the parole board in 50 years. Fifty-eight years. Four years. Hey, you're in the Southwest Cell Hall. While you're in the Cell Hall, you'll be doubled up until you reach the New Arty to get a single cell. I'll expect you to be quiet when you're in here. This is not the story of one corrections officer, because one officer's shift does not reflect all duties.

Oh, everybody's innocent, nobody did it. And this is not the story of one prison. Each is its own city within a city, a reflection of its warden. I don't think we've seen anything quite of this magnitude. The numbers are the most overwhelming thing. And is a story about numbers? The number of prisons, number of beds, number of inmates, number of taxpayer dollars, and the debate over how those dollars should be spent. I hear from my friends and colleagues around the country, they sort of look in wonderment at what's going on in Wisconsin. This is a story of prisons and politics. Will we go into P2, top off? All right, this is state versus Ramon. In a Milwaukee courtroom, a defendant is about to be sentenced for two burglaries and delivery

of heroin. You're going to do six years total at the Wisconsin State Prison, your lawyer will explain the fine points, but that length of sentence will entitle you to treatment at the prison. Good luck to you, Mr. Brown. When inmates enter the Wisconsin State Prison System, the first stop is Dodge Correction Institute. This is where prisoners are assessed and evaluated. From Dodge, they may go to any one of the state's 12 adult prisons, all of which are overcrowded. State Representative Spencer Coggs is a member of the Assembly Corrections Committee. We have a population of some 18,000 prisoners and we only have space for something like 10,600. So as you can see, we're well over the max. Attention, right, guys. Plane time is over.

19,000 prisoners and each inmate costs taxpayers $20,000 a year to keep in prison. Warpon Correctional Institution is the oldest prison in Wisconsin. It first opened its gates to prisoners before the Civil War in 1851, Warden Gary McContrey. We now have many more inmates that are higher in their propensity to violence. Over 90% of them have sentences for violence, sex crimes and drug-related offenses. We have inmates who have much longer sentences. The population that we currently has is more problematic and higher risk than it's ever been before. This high-risk population is also larger than ever before. We're rated at 825 rated capacity and we're functioning right now at about 1227 at all times.

So we're operating at about 145% of rated capacity. Warpon's overcrowding means many cells meant for one prisoner, now hold two. You can see where the room here is built for one man, one man, and I thank the federal government allows so much space, so many feasts per man, and this is smaller than the average bathroom of the American home. It puts the inmates on a short fuse. It makes things kind of tense, especially when they get cabin fever and whatnot inmates who don't like other inmates for whatever reason be it race or be it religion or whatever. They tend to get upset and they request that they don't be sold in certain areas or with certain other individuals and it makes it hard to run a cell home. You come put two beautiful fluffy puppies in this room without you know eventually getting

into it, but yet they want to run men to live in this little bitty room you know you can't you know you eventually you're gonna get frustrated and if you get frustrated and you get into it with your cell they're gonna blame you you know they're not gonna say well maybe you know it's our fault for putting them two big people in that little bitty room you know they need to take the magnifying eye off us and take a look at them you know look at this little ass from this and humane if you ask me this one you can't do shit in here but you know you gotta only one of us can walk to the toilet at a time you know we can't both walk to the damn toilet you know look at this room ain't nothing but I guess you know it's prison I guess this is what they call rehabilitation and you ain't getting this ain't no rehabilitation to me you know. Upon is a maximum security prison Captain Bob Hable is the person who oversees every

aspect of that security. We control their movement it's all done on a past system or detailed or escorted they don't have freedom of movement they're in their cells when they're when they're not at some type of structured activity. The condition in here are very stressful being in a here 23 hours a day we only go out three times a day as for meals and someone's lucky very lucky and fortunate to get a pass from the security director's office to go to school or chapel a lot of library you're fortunate to get a pass sometimes because everything is done here on a waiting list. I think where the overcrowding hits our inmate population the hardest is the waiting list and we have not been able to activate programs meaningful work activities and programs

that get inmates out of their cells. Many inmates are only allowed out of their cells three times a day for meals and meals become the most stressful time of day for the officers. Anytime there's mass movement is a time when most problems can happen because you have all the inmates out in one congregation. Prisoners eat in shifts and for many inmates afterwards it's back to their cells. Our first part of the job is dealing with the whining every day the complaints everybody has a complaint about something different and sometimes it's just out of boredom and sometimes it's a legitimate complaint and we have to decide which is which federal government told them years ago about the ventilation system look at this man this is it isn't it

isn't it it will be going to be a brief and all that stuff look at that look at this nothing but dust man this thick up in here and we said he'd bring this stuff every day 24 we lock in the cell 23 hours a day 23 hours a day here I am full foot tall and I can touch both walls man I can't stretch my arms out here. In your cell all the time I'd be the hardest thing they have what's called structured wreck here where you can lift weights and stuff and you got to wait on a waiting list for like three months before you can do that and it's just you got to wait a long time you can do anything really what's it like being in my pocket shit get up go eat breakfast come back go to sleep go to go to wrecking a couple days

a week go to nuts saying routine basically every day if you don't got a job on a sign so I don't have a job so I basically don't do nothing everything is so structured it's not a lot of leeway you know there's not a lot of room it's not a lot of flexibility it's what they say when they say it there's no exceptions I mean no exceptions most of the rules are petty did to try to try to figure dad in here and it treat you like little kids I don't feel that's right I will do eight nineteen the violation of the rules can result in an inmate being removed from the general population to temporary lock up and possible time and segregation also called the hole the cell

hall sergeant inform us that the the inmate that was taken away was observed going into another cell so what we do that is we take them on a population put them in temporary lock up is what we call it and they stay there until their their conic report for the violations heard and then from that point they could get some type of segregation time because of the violation of the institution rule there's violations that happen every day yeah not everybody gets taken a segregation because of the violation depends on what it is you know there there could be an inmate could have went in there and assaulted another inmate you know so you know it's something we can't allow to happen so that's why he's out of population most of the inmates here want to do their time and they comply with most rules we have a series of checks and balances where we do search cells we do pat downs and the people that are in violation receive conduct reports and depending on severity they do their whole time and most of the ones that want to buck the system we find those

out right away and that's where they stay until they decide they want to go with the program. You don't want to go over there if you get a ticket here I don't care how petty the rule is they locking you they locking you up over there isn't your turn I don't want to go there I don't want to see it serious puncher keeping the dog in the cage. Prison rules include how much property inmates are allowed to have in their cells radios and televisions often called electronic babysitters are popular items when they show documentaries

about prison first thing the people out in the public get to think it is look at that I see TVs in their cells I see radios in their cells and so on and so forth they get to talk about what why do they have so much why do they have so much which they don't understand they get to think that we live in like kings or they live in like paradise messing that truth you need some kind of balance in life something some kind of privilege because if we don't have some things what's the stop anybody from going off what's the keep control what's the maintain control there's a stronger influence in society now about the punitive role of prisons the fact that it inmates should be punished while they're serving their time the fact is inmates feel punished when they're serving their time. Former Department of Corrections Secretary Mike Sullivan it is the removal of freedom that is the biggest impact as it should be that is the punishment being free to make the decisions I want to make and you know just really freedom period you know freedom to really really

what the United States was was built upon those freedoms that are self-evident that's the hardest part because my my being a convicted fellow now I lose a lot of rights and you know me I miss it you know I miss it our job is not to inflict additional punishment our job is to correct what caused the criminal behavior in the first place so within a prison system within a particular prison there are opportunities for inmates to change I don't myself I'm not a big believer in rehabilitation in prisons Walter Dickie is a law professor at the University of Wisconsin and a former secretary of the Department of Corrections the idea that we're doing very much programming much in a way of education work and other kinds of things I think is that's probably fading quite substantially because of the crowding problems so in a sense I'm very sorry to say we're warehousing people much more than we used to it depends upon the motivation of the

particular offender and the quality of the prison program Supreme Court Justice Diane Sykes spent seven years as a Milwaukee County Circuit Court judge quite frankly when a judge sends somebody to the prison system it's with the hope that they will become rehabilitated but not necessarily the expectation that they will when someone has to go to the prison system and the viewpoint of a judge this one included it's because the community needs to be protected from that person and we need to essentially incapacitate that person from committing further crimes by putting him in the prison system if we want to talk about really getting rehabilitated these programs I think that they should start in the communities to the prison you know it's kind of like it's not too late but I think it should start in the community where the kids is coming up in gangs and using drugs and stuff like that don't start here start out there before they reach here we just haven't kept up with the programs that the people need you hear the inmates

and their families decrying the fact that this should be more basic education and job skills kinds of things going on in prisons so that when the prisoners do come out and 98% of all people who go into the Wisconsin prison system are going to come out that they come out to be more whole human beings and can be contributors to our society I'm going to school doing my programs that they want me to do basically that's that's what they want me to do you know I do it I do it they want me to do there's nothing good about this place but you know it gives you opportunity to you know like say vocational skills education wise when I was out on the street you know I didn't have I didn't have all of the education that I have now so the money you know I moved out with my parents and you know typical day was getting up and looking for somebody to rob you know and one day while going rob a dope dealer you know he got killed you know he got killed

and as such you know I'm paying for the I'm paying for the loss of life you know so I could say to that you know I think about that every day at Wampong there are opportunities for education and job training but because of overcrowding there's often a wait to get into a program Department of Corrections Secretary John Litcher because of our our capacity issues we have to then evaluate each offender and when is the best opportune time to provide a program for that whether that be in drug a drug offender program sex offender programming educational programming work activities development of work skills development of educational work skills all those activities as you deal with a larger population you try to focus

when is the most and most critical need to to deliver that and I think that's the biggest challenge that we see with overpopulation certainly before offenders matriculate out of the system you want to make sure the program has been done prior to them going into community corrections aspect so we do have to manage that and that means at times the persons persons are on waiting list there's no doubt about that you ain't getting no counseling you know ain't nobody talking to you about what's making you angry or you know to build up hate you got you know how to release it in a productive waiting they don't that that don't concern you concerns them and I'm not talking about these people I'm talking about society as a whole you know that concern is a lock them up throw away the key these guys can get upset that anything you say is anything you do and

and so yeah it could be dangerous you have to keep on your toes try to make them aware that at any time that's not you know if it's going to happen it's one it's going to happen anywhere that that awareness of potential danger was obvious in the segregation unit when an officer's body alarm was triggered but in this case it was a false alarm all the officers at work here the radio this radio has a individual body alarm on and obviously apparently somebody had just bumped into it and set it off but if we would have a little problem an officer can push that the control center up in the front of the institution reads which radio it isn't where it is and then people respond we're not you know we always know what we're responding to but somebody's in front it hasn't it's having a problem we respond to that

risks to officers include gang violence drug activity inside the prison and homemade weapons called shanks a shank can be just about anything that I imagine would use or that you would can think of the sharpened it could be a toothbrush it could be a pencil depending on the time that you use it a lot of times it'll take a piece of fence you get some tape and wrap on it there they made they've made shanks at a toilet paper and toothpaste I found them sometimes usually weapons are found when they're doing a group shaped down like an entire cell hall then they will find a larger number but you don't find the weapon on the person is often as you do after they use it but a major risk for guards comes not from contraband but from substances it's hard to do anything about it's called being dashed there's not a whole lot

of officers here that haven't been if they work in segregation they'll do numerous things they'll mix feces and urine and spit and sperm and everything you can imagine food and they'll put it all in one container and they'll throw it at you they'll ask you a question first so that you got your mouth open or something like that and I know that's happened to a lot of people I'm not seeing my life I just can't see it in the ship see wasted years baby

I was taking the wrong advice I know you were I know you were I was too overcrowding is also an issue for tecita correctional institution the state's major prison for women tecita opened in 1921 warden christine cranky the rated capacity of this institution is 461 and at this time we have almost 700 inmates that are presently being housed here we virtually have no single rooms anymore I think there was a time when when people looked at tecita and thought it was a country club and everybody had single rooms and it was a very pleasant place to be we virtually have no single rooms and then after we doubled most of the institution we had to go through and take any space that was available including day rooms sun porches laundry storage rooms property storage rooms and turn those into mini dormitories so we have a lot of space that was never designed to actually house inmates that that we've got beds in in response to population pressures

a barrack style housing unit was built it holds 150 female inmates the older housing units are outdated for today's population sightlines in in the old housing units I mean and not only here at tecita but in old female institutions throughout the country are nonexistent because they were designed to not provide visual surveillance so you have solid doors going into the bathrooms you have solid doors going into the showers so it it makes observation almost impossible and again with the changing population becoming much more violent here for much longer periods of time and putting many more inmates in those buildings and what they were originally designed for when I was here in the 80s we probably had 60 70 inmates in each one of our old housing units we now have 200 and everything has changed and that's why we have to take a look at how we can do business differently because of overcrowded conditions tecita contracts with a prison in

West Virginia to hold 160 inmates and women prisoners are being held at the St. Croix County jail as well we have nowhere to go I mean tecita is at its capacity and our minimum camps are at their capacity I would say once once a week we get a telephone call from our reception center at Dodge where they need to move 8 or 10 out and there's just no place for them to go and that's pretty much why the contracts were developed see one area greatly affected by overcrowding at tecita is the segregation unit our segregation unit has about 18 cells and most of the time we are absolutely doubled and there have been sometimes when even some of our rooms have to be tripled and then some people say wait a minute word and that's not that's not segregation but people who come to prison oftentimes can't handle the regular prison routine and have to be

removed from the population and if it means we can remove them and only have them to be doubled instead of having them be in a larger multiple occupancy room that might be the best we can do like other Wisconsin prisons tecita provides educational and treatment programs one job program involves computer refurbishing many of the programs are designed to meet the special needs of women offenders often that means promoting self-worth and independence a lot of the programs that's offered not only here at tecita but across the country and the female offender institutions are kind of basic programming they're drug and alcohol they're anger management they're parenting except what we do is we put a feminist spin on that

how can we present these concepts in a way that women can internalize them use them develop self-esteem develop self-concept and then make changes in their lives and more significantly in the lives of their children a lot of times people say well what's the purpose of having a parenting program maybe if somebody walks away from a prison and they're a little bit more effective parents the next generation won't come here after all life behind bars is no easier for women than it is for men miserable the women here the inmates are very miserable there's not a lot of things for them to do the overcrowding creates situations where people are just miserable there's women here of all different races ages personalities

and trying to get along and deal with that it's a challenge every day now I'm writing a book down down here in the drill I'm writing a book I've been writing this book every since I've been locked up in the county jail now I have a lot of pages typed in here but everything in these words is everything I've been through the pregnancy I had in here and everything have what I did on the streets the crime the drugs everything is in this book I'm not hoping well yeah maybe I am hoping one day that it can be published but then on the other hand if not then it's something for me to leave behind for my grandkids or something like that you know so they all know what was going on it's it's okay it's stressful at times I miss my kids I miss my family I miss being able to go out and get a burger and eating real food and talking my kids in that night and I tried to think about like what it's going to be like when I get out kind of changes I have to make in my life

to make my life happy and my kids life happy to go home and not return I'm 23 I'll be 24 in the summer and I've been locked up since I've been 20 and I miss some of my life out there but I got to learn how to redo my life so I don't come back to the same thing I was pregnant when I got locked up and I haven't seen my child since which she's over there I have a pictures of her every month but it's hard for a mother to give up her newborn child care of this baby nine months I had to give it away in 24 hours and the police is carrying you back out of the hospital handcuffs and your baby is being stroked away and you're not knowing when the next time you're going to see your child it's kind of hard it will break you down it's not easy at all I tell everybody don't come into Cheetah it's not easy thing up here it's not a game it's for real this is prison this is not a school this is prison I'll be out pretty soon you'll know the whole truth okay I'm so long so long so long so long that was oh I must again

somewhere along the way in 1991 there were a little over 7,000 inmates in the Wisconsin prison system less than 10 years later the population has doubled exploding 260 percent to over 19,000 a year ago Wisconsin correction system was the most rapidly growing system in the United States of America it's not because we've

got more crime it's because we're making different decisions about what to do about crime we're making different policy decisions at a legislative level as well as at an individual sentencing level as well as the administrative decisions within the department of corrections the answer is probably part and attitude on the part of the judiciary and this is where I can speak from personal experience of believing that there is a need to get tougher on criminal defendants because of the problem of recidivism that belief in the need to get tough on crime is shared by politicians and prosecutors Milwaukee County District Attorney Mike McCann there's no question it's politically popular but it's happened it's affected the whole state governor legislature district attorneys and judges and now it's also affected the parole release decision it's the whole system and that reflects the public desire to be tougher on crime there's

no question we are holding prisoners for longer periods of time giving more additional time at sentencing so that this reflects the public will well crime is an issue that all constituents can understand and so it becomes a high concept Madison Avenue kind of fair to make sure that you identify yourself with the crime issue and then make sure you're on the right side and I literally mean right side that you're tough on crime that you don't expect anybody who's committed a crime to get out anytime soon you have that lock them up entirely no it's not so much responding to public opinion or doing what we think is the popular thing to do it's responding to the problem of crime in our community responding to victims concerns and needs responding to communities concerns and needs and the need to be aware of and to take into strong consideration and deciding a sentence for a particular offender what the need for public safety is another factor that has led to overcrowded prisons is the war on drugs it's a tragedy in our community

that a lot young man like you have chosen to make the lousy choices that you've made and you have to be punished for it because we're now putting up with drug dealers in our community that was in our decision here locally to develop speedy trial courts for drugs and they're taking aggressive posture and sentencing because of the tremendously corrosive impact that drugs has on the entire community their shootings robberies burglaries accordingly I think the appropriate sentence is that recommended by the DA four years at the Wisconsin state prison wherever you have a drug house you have drive-by shootings you have a increase in robberies and burglaries people so that it had an impact across the board a lot more crime a lot more people being sentenced the judges finally and we took the position even a small time drug peddler should do some time behind bars that's had an impact unquestionably the war on drugs has definitely been a factor in terms of the increase on the prison population I think the question that needs to be asked I think

Einstein said the definition of insanity is if you're doing something trying to get a desired result and you keep doing it ten years later there's been no change and you continue to do it something's wrong from my view this is an area that needs to be thoroughly examined is the war on drugs especially with short-term incarceration of some offenders I'm not talking the big heavy hitter trafficker I'm talking the little guy who when removed from the community is immediately replaced with another little guy is that really accomplishing things as we listen to people in Milwaukee County they're saying and as you listen to a lot of police officers in general they will say you need to get rid of the of the small crimes you need to get rid of the drugs that are out on the street in order to make sure that you get rid of some of the bigger crimes 45% of our prisoners are coming from Milwaukee they certainly are producing wave after wave

of prisoners I think we need a different set of investments in Milwaukee and I do think that judges have lost faith in community supervision or you've been in front of me number of times in the past and we've had conversations about your drug screens before you told me before you weren't using drugs and you clearly have been using them all through this case there are many reports from WCS you were not only using heroin but also cocaine while the case was pending this is a 15 year felony and you didn't take it seriously enough to stop using while the case was going on I understand addiction and I understand that that's very difficult for you to do but because of your addiction and the level of your addiction you're a very poor candidate for probation Dickey statement that Milwaukee judges appear to have lost faith in probation is echoed by the numbers I am going to send you to two years at the Wisconsin state prison

Milwaukee County sends a greater percentage of its criminals to prison than does the rest of the state in other words we're sending a substantially higher over 70% of our felony convicteds are going into the prison system as opposed to probation and what that that's a loss of faith and I don't want to be critical of the people running the probation department well I don't know that there is no faith in probation and parole but there is clearly an attitude on the part of the judiciary here that probation and parole for the kinds of hardcore offenders that we're dealing with doesn't work very well and there's another factor in the huge number of prisoners there has been a significant drop in the use of parole after a criminal has served some time in prison you can make a huge difference in the prison population by just refusing to parole people

early or by deciding to parole them early so that has a big is a big factor in how overcrowded the prisons are in Wisconsin there are two types of parole discretionary parole where a prisoner is eligible for release after serving one quarter of the sentence and mandatory parole where a prisoner must be released after serving two thirds of the sentence John Huzz was the parole director for a number of years he's a very fine person a professionally capable individual and he was quite liberal in the grants of discretionary parole and that helped as a spigot a release spigot helped that the prison overcrowding didn't get so substantial John Huzz was nominated by the governor to continue his subject to confirmation by the legislature the legislature would not confirm John Huzz as director of parole and the only possible reason was that John was giving

too many discretionary parole was releasing people before they had reached the mandatory release time from 1991 to 1998 nearly 400 prisoners a month were released on parole since April 1998 that number has dropped to an average of 140 per month they sent a message the legislature did and the message was very simple cut back on discretionary release then the growth suddenly became explosive prisons are the growth industry of the decade the annual budget for the Wisconsin Department of Corrections was $90 million in 1988 today it has grown to 900 million former Department of Corrections Secretary Mike Sullivan today we are the largest agency and this agency is about to go beyond the University of Wisconsin which I think

if not considered a sad and tragic moment should at least give pause to policy makers what is going on in spite of five new prisons being built including this new 500 bed supermax prison in basketball the state can't build enough prisons fast enough to handle the growing inmate population one option is to continue a trend started in 1997 send inmates to facilities out of state your question is that a good policy depends upon what is the objective if the objective is not to invest more capital and a physical plant that 25 years from now they're mainly not be a useful or if your objective is to have the best cost-effective means of providing safe in your main housing for inmates then that may be the proper policy if your policy

says that a top objective means inmates need to be close to home for the rehabilitation factor that may not be a way so you have these many variables within the area of policy whether this is good or bad Wisconsin has 3,800 inmates and out of state facilities many of these are private prisons like this one in Oklahoma state representative Scott Walker is chairman of the assembly corrections committee he wants to send 4,500 more prisoners out of state the answer is no I don't prefer that we have inmates out of state the reality is you got to have somewhere to put them I think this is one of the most serious mistakes that the state of Wisconsin is making state senator Fred Risser wants to put an end to the out of state transfers the problem in part is that you're sending those prisoners that are the least problems out of state it's a disincentive a prisoner who follows the rules it's have to be sent away

from his loved ones sent out of state and put in a private prison where he's just warehoused for the rest of his term it should be the other way around but the private prisons won't take the hard to handle prisoners it's an unfortunate need policy as we speak of it is a good public policy I would articulate I am against out of state placement not only for the fact of we feel that our offenders would be best serviced in the state but we have no option right now to be very honest about it and in the next biannium the legislature has given us the opportunity for additional out of state placements which which need to safely manage the entire system the controversy over out of state transfers has resulted in demonstrations by state prison guards inmate lawsuits and a court ruling that Wisconsin can't force prisoners out of state also many question how private prisons are operated you really have no control over what's happening to them in those other states current state law does not allow private prisons to operate in Wisconsin but representative

Walker would like to change that law to me it makes some sense to change the state law so that Wisconsin isn't the only of the 50 states that we can't contract with a private prison but the other pressure that I think that that people in Southeast Wisconsin especially people from the walkie and especially African-Americans feel is that they're going to be warehousing African-American males they're going to warehousing generation of African-American males if we don't watch out so there is great amount of fear in my community about building these these private facilities and then expecting to be filled another option the state could pursue to ease prison overcrowding is to change the way non-violent criminals and drug offenders are sentenced I think we have to look for alternative sentencing patterns for just drug offenders there are some people and and we think that there are probably a number of individuals that could benefit from a security tension with intensive treatment and bring them back to the community

in a much faster way and there are those who would like to see more money spent for community treatment programs and education because community corrections is our biggest hope along with alternative sentencing I think for what I'd call drug offenders and other non-violent offenders that give us a chance to maintain incarcerated beds for those inmates that truly need incarceration advocates of prison alternatives say programs such as early childhood intervention don't mean we have to wait a generation to reduce the crime rate I think we sometimes lose sight of the fact that there are all kinds of prevention things we could do to take care of tomorrow not 15 years ago from now tomorrow there are all kinds of investments in communities and in people that we could be making that would give us safety now we don't have to think prison is the only source of safety for tomorrow any long-term solutions the state considers to prison overcrowding have to look beyond current trends to include predictions about the future and there's a big change

on the horizon a change called truth in sentencing there's a monumental piece of legislation with huge fiscal impact down the circuit I'm trying to sendencing is a two-part law first a criminal will serve a full sentence with no parole a five-year sentence means five years behind bars the new law takes effect December 31st 1999 one of the fears is that truth in sentencing will blow the lid off prison overcrowding criminal defense lawyer Steve Hurley once this goes into effect I think the numbers will be staggered the numbers of people going to prison the length of time that they'll be going for and the amount of money that it's going to cost the taxpayer Hurley is a member of the criminal penalty study committee its task is to rewrite the state's criminal code help create a sentencing commission and recommend sentencing guidelines to judges

in the new world truth in sentencing will require an expansion of prison capacity there's no question in my mind that that will be true the effect of truth in sentencing on the prison population depends on how judges sentence criminals after December 31st 1999 committee chairman judge Thomas Barland truth in sentencing could cause our prison population to explode unless we're able to control the way sentencing is carried out and that's why we have sentencing guidelines in rewriting the state's criminal code the committee took a look at sentences currently given by judges then took the mandatory release date for example six and a half years of a 10-year sentence and used that time as a starting point for what the new criminal penalty should be under truth in sentencing then sentences for some crimes were adjusted up or down even further frankly we can't know what effect it's going to have the models are insufficient I think based

on the surveys that have been done and what little work with the models we can trust it's going to balloon it I would say a conservative estimate would be a 10,000 person increase oh in the next five secures I think it depends a lot on what the judges do but my guess is it's going to be substantial the second part of the new law requires that once a criminal serves the full sentence imposed by the judge that offender still faces a period of extended supervision after being released from prison extended supervision under truth in sentencing is really just a new name for parole what we've really done with truth in sentencing is shift the parole release decision from the parole commission to the judge because now the judge is going to decide when the person gets released from prison and what the duration of community supervision is going to be we're going to need resources if the governor and the legislature wishes the Milwaukee

County judiciary to use more supervision and probation they're going to have to put a substantial increase of money into the probation and parole department here in Milwaukee County the calls to taxpayers statewide has been a frequent topic of discussion for the committee members the legislature will have some information at least some raw information to deal with in deciding how much of this it wants to pay for but it's not going to be cheap there's no question about it but against the cost of the corrections budget you have to weigh the cost of continued criminal activity on the part of the offenders if they're left in the community and so the legislature and the governor will have to take into consideration the cost of crime not just the cost of the correction budget in evaluating what they want to pay for they don't want to be concerned about costs and I've you know I've been a lone voice on the committee there regarding the judges want discretion and if you sit and listen to our discussions what you hear all the time is

discretion ought to be vested in the judge and the truth is that I believe in that you know before it was up to the parole board or the Department of Corrections now the judge is saying I want it all and I'm saying fun I think that's terrific but you get the responsibility that goes with it and the responsibility that goes with it is what does it cost do we have the resources so what will it cost it's difficult to tell the committee developed a computer model to help predict the costs of policy decisions as it turned out the computer model was a very little help to the committee that's why I've had to hedge on your cost questions in the end the data collected and the committee's time frame did not allow for precise figures their rough estimates range from four hundred million to five hundred twenty five million dollars a year that's a fifty percent increase in the current annual corrections budget but the precise impact in prisoners and in dollars probably will not be felt for many years do we know with certainty no we do not it's that's why it's so

important to educate the judges and the public about the kinds of changes that are taking place with truth and censor all committee members voted to adopt the final report except one Walter Dickie dissented the guidelines themselves are really just made out of thin air frankly we're going to be a laughing stock around the country based on what is in these grids and how they were put together in its final report the committee decided that two keys to holding down prison costs are to enhance probation and parole and alternative sentences for nonviolent offenders but even these changes will require more resources and more money there comes a time when you have to pay the piper in the this legislation is implemented on December 31st of this year and our time is coming the criminal penalties study committee finished its work it's reported in the hands of the legislature and truth and sentencing is right around the corner we're in deep

trouble right now we've got a whole large group of people who are old law people old world people who are going to be with us for a long period and we're going to be part of our resource use in the future so even before we start to think about what growth and resources we're going to need to take care of the truth and sentencing people we haven't figured out what growth and resources it's going to take to take care of the people who are already with us and will be for sometime in the future Wisconsin still has many hard decisions to make the state's prison system is operating at more than 8,000 prisoners over capacity now there are 19,000 prisoners behind bars today with the projected population of 27,000 by 2001 we've got to make a reckoning here do we want to keep up this pattern do we want to change it do we want to spend more money up front on our at-risk youth do we want to make in probation much more meaningful give it much more

resources because when you wait to the end the most expensive aspect is the imprisonment a state can either change its sentencing policies in a way that fits its resources or expand its resources to fit the policy so far Wisconsin has chosen to expand its resources but all resources have limits and the legislature now has to decide just where the line will be drawn how to create a balance between politics policies and prisons saying to some man saying it will be

well alone alone but alone I've been championed I've been out alone through these was the years we're dark dark with the air so dark here we're dark dark dark with the air I must have gained something the