Goyke recognizes that Wisconsin's Corrections needs changes

One of the bigger budget problems in Wisconsin is the increasing costs in the Department of Corrections, and the lack of capacity at the DOC's facilities. Corrections is now the third-highest expense of state tax dollars behind only K-12 education and health care, and $145 million ABOVE what taxpayers gave to the enitre UW System in the last fiscal year.

To boot, the state's prison population is back on the rise after a few years in the 2000s when it had leveled off, as shown by this graphic from the Wisconsin State Journal.



With these realities in mind, State Rep. Evan Goyke released a document titled “Inmate 501” saying that the state needs to deal with these problems when it comes to funding and housing in the Department of Corrections. Goyke mentions that the state’s prison system is designed to have a capacity of 15,737, but has to deal with a population near 22,500.

On top of the overcrowding at the prisons , Goyke says an increasing amount of inmates are being sent to county jails as a means of dealing with this overcrowding, and that this strategy has also reached its limits.

Beginning in 2015, the use of county jails has increased, and offers a clear view on Wisconsin’s prison population growth. The use of contract beds, the cash payment to county jails for housing state inmates, has increased each of the last three years…

According to the DOC, there are only 500 available contract beds in Wisconsin. Today, we use 89% and have only 53 contract beds remaining.

When the remaining contract beds are filled, the DOC will have to find other options. One option, previously used by Wisconsin, is to contract with an out of state private prison corporation. The largest private prison group is CoreCivic (formerly Corrections Corporation of America). According to a November 2017 Washington Post article, CoreCivic charges $57.50 per day per inmate. Beyond cost, states have experienced safety and accountability concerns with private prisons.

Goyke adds that with an average need of 17 additional contract beds, that 500-bed limit will be hit in early 2018, requiring further action, and much more cost to taxpayers (hence the title “Inmate 501”)


Give a listen to the man.

Moving over the troubled Lincoln Hills juvenile facility in the Northwoods, Goyke points out that this facility has had its population cut nearly in half over the last two years (yet remarkably, the troubles seem to get worse by the week). In addition, Goyke notes that the recent state budget make counties pay an additional $102 per day over the next two years to send a juvenile to a state facility like Lincoln Hills.

Not surprisingly, with funding for all services being tight, fewer counties are willing to pay that price, and are sending their juveniles away to the state and are using their own facilities instead. Goyke says this makes the Lincoln Hills facility inefficient when it comes to handling the state’s needs in juvenile corrections.

The cost increase magnifies the disincentive for counties to send juveniles to Lincoln Hills, which will further reduce the population. This downward spiral places the future of the prison at risk.

The cost savings realized from a large facility no longer exist. A facility built for 550 inmates, but holding only a fraction of that number, is no longer an efficient use of resources.

So Goyke comes up with an obvious solution- close Lincoln Hills and disperse those inmates among “smaller need-based or regional juvenile facilities”. These facilities also can be closer to the home areas of the inmates, allowing for the stabilizers of nearby family and staff that might be more culturally in tune with the inmates’ backgrounds.

Then Goyke says the state could turn Lincoln Hills into a Earned Release treatment facility (generally for substance abuse). This would not only reduces some of the overcrowding in the state’s adult facilities, reduces the 5,900+ person waiting list for treatement, and makes a better use of the larger Lincoln Hills space, but it also reduces the need to take on the large budget cost of building and operating another prison.

In addition, Goyke calls for reforming sentencing in a couple of key ways, including:

1. Allowing more individuals to serve less time in prison, but having their extended supervision be longer.

2. Reducing or eliminating the length of time people are sent back to prison when they do certain acts that violate their probation like violating a drug test, or missing required meeting with counselors or Corrections staff. Goyke says there is a middle ground where long-term incarceration doesn’t have to be the punishment for individuals that fail to follow all aspects of their probation, but haven’t committed any additional crimes.

When you live in a state whose budget and ability to house prisoners is being threatened, and in a state that is identified as "the home of black incaraceration" for having more than 1 in 8 of the state's African-Americans locked up in 2010 (the highest rate in the country), something has to be changed. I'm glad Evan Goyke is taking an honest look and coming up with some ideas beyond the failed 1990s Century mentality of "lock THOSE PEOPLE up and throw away the key" (as shown by the prison population tripling in that decade).

We need new thinking to break the cycle of hopelessness and a lack of opportunities to be "corrected", and improve outcomes once people get out of prison so they don't come back in and add to the already past-capacity prison population. Or else we'll continue to have Corrections eating up more and more of our budget and holding back Wisconsin's economic growth in the process, and that doesn't help anyone.