April 15, 2009 – Under current trends, Wisconsin will roughly double existing funding to $2.5 billion by 2019 to finance a prison population forecasted to grow 25 percent, according to a report delivered April 7 to a special legislative committee studying the state’s criminal justice system.
This growth would be atop of the 20 percent expansion of Wisconsin’s prison population between 1998 and 2008, according to researchers from the Council of State Governments Justice Center working with numbers from the Wisconsin Department of Corrections. The CSG Justice Center is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research group that has offered similar technical assistance to Kansas and Texas in assessing their criminal justice structures.
Numbers showing a statewide 21.5 percent increase of violent crime between 2000 and 2007 suggest less return in public safety than hoped for the money spent, the researchers told the Special Committee on Justice Reinvestment Oversight. This committee includes legislators, judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and other stakeholders in the criminal justice system. The committee is chaired by Sen. Lena Taylor (D-Milwaukee).
Previously, the CSG reported that a jump in the number of supervised releases ending with revocation to prison was significantly driving the rise in the state’s prison population. In its new study, the CSG studied the factors behind the increased revocations.
Location
Tony Streveler, a DOC policy advisor and committee member, said that as a matter of policy, offenders are released to their county of conviction. And because they may lack family or other support networks elsewhere or have no other place to live, offenders often return to their old neighborhoods, he said.
But some neighborhoods are particularly distressed with high levels of poverty and unemployment, posing a serious challenge to offenders looking to successfully complete a supervised release, said committee member Frank Humphrey of the NAACP in Madison. Humphrey said current placement policies were failing to reduce recidivism and he urged the committee to consider alternatives. Committee members agreed on this point, but Taylor suggested a solution will not be easy, commenting that some communities have strenuously objected to efforts to place supervised offenders in their midst.
Taylor said that inmates need to be better trained for legitimate employment before release. However, committee member State Public Defender Nicholas Chiarkas said even more transition support than just job training may be necessary, warning that a neighborhood’s criminal culture will significantly challenge the released individual’s newly acquired values for honest work. Committee member and Marquette County District Attorney Richard Dufour said that in the long term, the neighborhoods themselves will have to change so that education is valued and parents are respected.
Substance Abuse and Mental Illness
CSG researchers cited statistics showing substance abuse and mental illness affect sizable percentages of inmates, often preventing successful completion of supervised release. The researchers reported that counties screen probationers differently for these problems, with varying ability to detect them. Likewise, methods used to accurately assess a person’s risk to society are limited and Division of Community Corrections agents do not routinely receive behavioral health information from institutions for their supervisees, they said.
Further, the researchers found some agents receive insufficient mental health training and carry caseloads too large, as measured by professional “best practices” standards. The report seeks to strengthen individualized supervision and maximize use of community-based alternatives to prison (such as drug rehab programs) that will reduce the number of revocations.
But the study authors identified problems with the criminal justice system’s treatment of an addicted or mentally ill offender even before a supervised release. For example, police in focus groups told the researchers that it is easier to deliver mentally ill individuals to a police station rather than search around for a hospital that will take them. The report calls for increased training of police and development of greater opportunities to divert troubled people to hospitals or other places suited to address their conditions.
The committee also learned of experimental efforts by courts to enhance their responsiveness, including the Assess, Inform, and Measure (AIM) program to improve the quality of information about these offenders given to the courts at sentencing. Also, researchers mentioned the Problem-Solving Courts program best known for “drug courts” addressing the issues of addiction underlying criminal behavior.
Identification of problems earlier in the criminal justice system could lead to more efficient treatment with better outcomes for the offender returning to society, the study suggests.
Unemployment
The lack of a legitimate job undermines a successful transition from prison, researchers found. Seventy-one percent of the post-release supervision population is unemployed and another 11 percent are unemployable, according to the study.
Responding to those findings, committee members discussed the roadblocks to honest work. Dufour noted that offenders released to rural communities may have lost a driver’s license because of their crimes and consequently cannot travel to hold a job. Taylor commented that employers are reluctant to hire felons.
Committee members remarked that offenders could be productive and often have misapplied their skills toward illegal ventures. Kit McNally, executive director of the Benedict Center in Milwaukee, said that other states such as Texas have financed programs to enable offenders to start their own businesses. Milwaukee District Attorney John Chisholm said offenders returning to their economically depressed neighborhoods need to find good economic opportunities to give them reason not to return to drug trafficking.
The reported mentioned existing programs such as Windows to Work, a partnership between the DOC and the Bay Area Workforce Investment Board to provide training in prison and job development in the community.
Next meeting
The committee is scheduled to meet again April 15 at 10 a.m. in Room 412 of the Capitol. At that time, the CSG researchers are expected to identify policy options and estimate the costs and savings.
Alex De Grand is the legal writer for the State Bar of Wisconsin.
