Friend –

For decades, the Wisconsin Department of Corrections (DOC) has illegally denied incarcerated pregnant, and postpartum mothers the opportunity to continue parenting their newborn babies – and we're taking them to court.

Today, we petitioned a Dane County Circuit Court to order the Wisconsin DOC to enforce a state statute called the mother-young child care program. This program, which was created in 1991, requires the DOC to provide programming that, among other things, allows pregnant and postpartum individuals who are incarcerated or on supervised release to retain physical custody of their infants for the first year of their child's life and be held in the least restrictive custody.

The DOC is currently violating state law by not offering the program to any incarcerated pregnant or postpartum person, and we're suing to hold DOC officials accountable for failing to provide mothers and pregnant people with the services and support to which they are legally entitled.

By neglecting this obligation, the DOC is depriving parents and their children of the chance to form meaningful relationships with one other, exacerbating the near-total separation that countless families experience when a loved one is incarcerated.

When families are able to sustain strong bonds in spite of the criminal legal system, it has been shown to benefit both the incarcerated person and their child while reducing recidivism rates. We're fighting to keep families together.

Keep up the fight,

Ryan Cox
Pronouns: He, him, his
Legal Director, ACLU of Wisconsin