Pamela Oliver
Activists in Wisconsin’s Close MSDF coalition are focusing attention on the inhumane conditions in the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility (MSDF) and the problem of crimeless revocations that send people there. The MSDF was built in 2001 to house people temporarily who had been accused of violating the terms of their
Read moreHopefully the enormous costs will dissuade legislators from passing a bill that would require the Wisconsin Department of Corrections to automatically recommend revocation of anyone “charged with a crime.” The bill literally says “charged with a crime.” Not a felony, not a violent crime, “a crime.” Although ordinances that are
Read moreA quirk in Wisconsin’s Truth in Sentencing law increases the “churning” in and out of prison via revocation and creates the possibility for massive injustice & increases costs.[i] A Wisconsin sentence has a total length that is divided into two parts, imprisonment and extended supervision in the community. If a
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I’ve written several posts trying to clarify the reasons you will get a different mix of offenders in a snapshot of who is in prison versus the flow of prison admissions. This also comes up as we compare the combination of offense type and admission type. To illustrate this,
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Key findings: Of those leaving Wisconsin prisons for the first time, Native American Indians have about a 30% higher rate of crimeless revocations than Whites, and Blacks about 20% higher (comparable to disparity ratios of 1.3 and 1.2) while Hispanic and Asian revocation rates are lower than White. For second and
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Key findings In Wisconsin, an estimated 35% of first spells in prison and 50-75% of second or later spells are crimeless revocations, depending on the criteria used for “crimeless”. A careful comparison of prison records suggests that roughly a third of prison admissions with no new sentence may have anticipated
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There’s a new campaign you can read about at sentback.org to stop sending people to prison on crimeless revocations. The campaign is sponsored by Restoring Our Communities (ROC) Wisconsin, WISDOM and EXPO (Ex-Prisoners Organizing). According to a report by Health Impact Partners (short web summary or PDF full report), about 1/3 of the
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