Mark Rice responds to humanitarian crisis in Wisconsin prisons

By Mark Rice (Leading with Conviction™ 2017)

Any new plan to end the humanitarian crisis in Wisconsin prisons must include an unwavering commitment to not building any new correctional facilities.

The nonprofit organization WISDOM created a blueprint for ending mass incarceration in Wisconsin over a decade ago. Tragically, the unwillingness of Wisconsin policymakers to enact many of those common sense decarceration policies has led to the current crisis.

It is time for Wisconsin policymakers to invest in care — not cages.

Instead of wasting billions of dollars to build and maintain a new prison, Wisconsin should immediately reduce the prison population by:

• Expanding treatment alternatives to incarceration.
• Commuting excessive and unreasonable sentences.
• Giving people a fair chance to be released on parole.
• Expanding opportunities for early release.
• Ending incarceration for crimeless revocations.
• Enacting these policies would enable the state to close down several prisons.

There is a growing consensus that inhumane prisons like Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility, Waupun Correctional Institution and Green Bay Correctional Institution must be closed as soon as possible. Less than 3,000 people are currently being detained at these three prisons. These facilities could be completely depopulated in a matter of months.

The resources saved should then be invested in programs to help currently incarcerated people flourish. In addition, we should invest in the communities that have been the most harmed by incarceration.

Investing resources in living wage jobs; safe, stable, and affordable housing; treatment programs; health care; violence prevention programs; and educational opportunities will contribute to building the type of safer, stronger, and healthier communities that we all deserve.

It is time for Wisconsin policymakers to invest in care — not cages. Let’s build communities, not new prisons.

Republished with permission of the author from CapTimes.com.