The student news site of Marquette University

Marquette Wire

The student news site of Marquette University

Marquette Wire

The student news site of Marquette University

Marquette Wire

11×15 plan aims to lower WI prison population using state-funded rehab programs

A coalition of several social justice groups and more than 300 religious leaders around the state are seeking to lower Wisconsin’s prison population by nearly half in three years.

The “11-by-15 For a Safer, Healthier Wisconsin” plan calls for the expansion of incarceration-alternative programs in an attempt to remove 11,000 non-violent offenders from state prisons by 2015. Wisconsin incarcerates about 23,000 people per year, roughly twice as many as neighboring Minnesota despite the two states’ comparable populations.

The plan aims to increase state funding for drug, alcohol and mental-health rehabilitation programs by $75 million per year. Currently, Wisconsin spends $1.3 billion annually on corrections, with only $1 million going to seven alternative-treatment programs since 2006. According to state officials, each dollar spent on alternative programs saves the state two dollars that would have otherwise been spent on prisons.

Such programs include drug court, in which non-violent offenders dealing with drug addiction are closely supervised and required to take random urine tests, and Winnebago County’s Safe Streets Alternative Treatment Program. The Winnebago program allows second- or third-time OWI offenders to participate in a treatment and probation program.

According to WISDOM, an umbrella organization of congregation-based groups spearheading the 11-by-15 program, the benefits of alternative treatment go beyond simple cost reduction.

Graduates of the programs return to their homes as productive members of society, and the programs have high success rates, according to the Rev. Joseph Ellwanger. He is an associate minister at Hephatha Lutheran Church in Milwaukee and an organizer for a WISDOM affiliate.

“Most of them would go back to their families and to their communities … capable of holding down a job, capable of paying taxes, capable of raising a family and capable of being a productive citizen,” Ellwanger said. “All of that benefits the community.”

Members of Marquette’s campus ministry have expressed excitement about the plan, which associate director Gerry Fischer has described as closely aligned with Catholic values.

“Jesus calls us to forgive not just seven times but seventy times seven,” Fischer said. “We often neglect our responsibility socially to address the problems that cause crime to take place. We lock away the problem without really dealing with it.”

However, Linda Eggert, the public information director for the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, said the increased funding approach sought by the “11-by-15” plan, though well intentioned, is too simplistic.

“This is a very complicated topic that simply throwing more money at isn’t going to solve,” Eggert said. “We spend tremendous money on the courts and all kinds of treatment, everything associated with criminal sentencing. There are continued efforts to look at that area by the DOC, but just getting the state to throw more money into a topic isn’t going to necessarily solve the problem. It’s a multi-faceted issue over reducing recidivism (repeated offenses), which is what the DOC is dedicated to doing.”

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    LawReformWIMar 1, 2012 at 11:49 am

    “Most of them would go back to their families and to their communities … capable of holding down a job, capable of paying taxes, capable of raising a family and capable of being a productive citizen,” Ellwanger said. “All of that benefits the community.”

    That is what the DOC forces on an offender, but it is the norm for sex offenders (even those that were only with their girlfriends consensually) are treated like lepers and many times NEVER allowed to go home to their original homes. Be it because of some residency restriction or just DOC policy being the reason. This doesn’t help an offender NOT reoffend, but is a catalyst to the re-offense. Which begs the question of whether or not the DOC really wants to rehabilitate ANYONE at all. They seem to do more holding back of a person on supervision than really helping them reintegrate back into their local community. In fact I have seen them get in the way of their charges making a new life rather than helping them achieve it.

    The reform needs to start with the people that supervise the offenders that are in our state. The DOC is allowed to make laws within themselves without representation and with little to NO oversight. It would appear that if you talk to people like Gary Hamblin that they are oblivious to what is actually going on at a local level in their TaxPayer funded postions. The DOC needs to clean their own house quite extensively.

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