Policy Brief: Racial Disparities in the Criminal Justice System in Wisconsin

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 black1 — 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.

Read full report here.

Informed communities are safer communities

The fiscal impacts of the COVID-19 shutdown on state and local governments combined with protests over police misconduct ensure that criminal justice reform will be a topic of debate in the next legislative session. Detailed, accurate and uniform data can help policymakers evaluate how tax dollars are being spent, and the reasons for and efficacy of incarceration.

Unfortunately, this information is often lacking in Wisconsin.

State budget realities make new prison construction unlikely

Severe, impending budget woes brought about by the Covid-19 crisis, limited ability to borrow money and a prison population that will begin to rise again will soon bring Wisconsin’s long-simmering corrections dilemma to a head.

If new prison construction were ever a viable option for addressing longstanding overcrowding, fiscal woes arising from the pandemic make that increasingly untenable.

To read more, click here.

The pandemic and the UW System

The freshman class in the University of Wisconsin System will almost assuredly be smaller come autumn, and it’s likely there will be fewer rising sophomores, juniors and seniors as well.

A sizable proportion may be inclined to take a year off from their education rather than deal with the uncertainty that the COVID-19 pandemic will bring to campus life.

Read more here.

Civil Society in a Time of Pandemic

The United States has the responsibility to allow civil associations and private individuals and private companies to work out these things first. We all have a role: to participate in associations, to build new ones, to come up with creative solutions to the lockdowns that strengthen community and fight individualism, and to confirm our souls in self-control, so the government doesn’t have to do it for us.

Iowa adopts model occupational licensing reform package

In June, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a sweeping, common-sense occupational licensing reform bill that grants universal recognition to out-of-state licenses. As a result, a licensed cosmetologist, social worker or landscape architect from Wisconsin (or any other state) could readily secure the same license in Iowa if he or she moves there.

As Wisconsin struggles to emerge from the COVID-19 economic shutdown, state lawmakers should follow Iowa’s lead and remove licensing obstacles that impede workers’ ability to provide for themselves and their families.