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CONTACT: Mike Nichols, Badger Institute President, at 262-389-8239 or at [email protected]
By MIKE NICHOLS, PATRICK HUGHES and JULIE GRACE | July 9, 2020
Executive Summary
The racial disparities in Wisconsin’s criminal justice system are among the worst in the country. Of the 23,700 inmates confined in Wisconsin Department of Corrections facilities in December 2019, 42% were black — six times higher than black representation in the state’s population as a whole.
Many studies have been conducted in an effort to determine whether this disparity is the result of the criminal justice system and its various components — police, prosecutors, the courts or the Department of Corrections — or a reflection of gaping racial disparities that also exist in many areas outside the criminal justice system in our state.
 This policy brief is a synopsis of some of the most salient existing research in each of those areas combined with links to some of the Badger Institute’s previous work as well as some initial recommendations. This is not meant to be a comprehensive or definitive document. The extent to which racism and/or other factors contribute to existing disparities is one of the most complex and controversial areas of study in America, and we intend to be among those delving deeper into these all-important issues.
But this brief does provide a broad and impartial look at what we know thus far — and a roadmap of sorts that lays out why our ongoing focus will include corrections reform, collective bargaining and police discipline, and perhaps legal representation rather than the judiciary or prosecutors.
Corrections
On criminal justice issues, the Badger Institute at this point has spent the most time and effort researching corrections. Corrections has three main components: The Division of Adult Institutions, the Division of Juvenile Corrections and the Division of Community Corrections. The Divisions of Adult Institutions and Juvenile Corrections have no control over who is incarcerated and, ever since parole was abolished almost 20 years ago, virtually no control over when inmates are released.
The Division of Community Corrections, on the other hand, is responsible for monitoring ex-inmates under supervision and helping to determine who is revoked and sent back to a cell. As the Badger Institute pointed out in its 2019 report Ex-offenders under watch, over 5,400 people were revoked and sent back to prison in 2016 alone. It’s clear that probation and parole agent decisions — and determinations made during hearings held by administrative law judges working for the Department of Administration — have a significant impact on who is incarcerated.
There are very large racial disparities in who is being revoked. In fact, the percentage of those being revoked who are black exactly matches the percentage of the prison population who are black: 42%. This would make sense if everyone being revoked was on extended supervision and previously served time in prison, but that is not the case.
Most revocations involve people on probation, and individuals on probation are overwhelmingly white. In fact, blacks make up only 25% of all individuals under some form of supervision, including both ex-inmates under extended supervision and people on probation who may or may not have been previously incarcerated.4 All else being equal, the number of blacks being revoked should be relatively close to 25%,5 rather than 17 percentage points higher.
All else is not equal, of course.
Read the full report here.
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