Evers, GOP Wrong on Prisons

The Wisconsin State Journal ran an excellent story on Sunday about the mess that is the Green Bay prison. The 125-year old building needs a new roof, there are cracks in the floors, rodents in the cells, inadequate space for medical care and programing and all on top of a staff vacancy rate nearing 50% and a staff morale that is reported as dismal. Because of the staff shortages inmates have been in a more or less continuous lockdown since June.

And Gov. Tony Evers and his administration won’t talk about it. According to the story, “Wisconsin Department of Corrections Secretary Kevin Carr declined two requests by the Wisconsin State Journal this summer to discuss conditions at Green Bay, and the department did not respond to a series of written questions.” Evers’ office also refused comment.

That’s outrageous. This is a major state issue. Evers and Carr are obligated to answer reporters’ questions. It’s not okay to just blow them off.

Clearly what needs to happen is that the Green Bay facility has to be replaced. But Evers vetoed $5 million Republicans had put in the budget to study a new location for the prison, saying that there needed to be comprehensive criminal justice reform first. That’s ridiculous. There isn’t going to be criminal justice reform as long as Republicans run the Legislature and they’ll continue to do that as far as the eye can see, even if fairer district maps are enacted.

And anyway, if criminal justice reform means putting more bad guys on the street, I’m against it. I’m for locking up the bad guys, but locking them up in humane facilities with good services that will increase their chances of being peaceful, productive citizens when they are released, as most of them will be someday.

Evers himself has tacitly admitted that we’re going to continue to lock up people at about the current rate. He came to office promising to reduce prison populations by half, but the number is only slightly less than what it was when he took office five years ago. Since there just doesn’t seem to be much public appetite for reducing those numbers, the answer has to be to make the facilities as safe and humane as possible.

Instead, Green Bay looks to be an inhumane crime academy and resentment factory. I don’t see anyway to patch up that old facility that is worth the money and, frankly, the real estate is worth quite a bit. The state could plow the proceeds back into the new facility.

For me the clear solution is to build a new prison, probably near Milwaukee where many of the prisoners are from, where you’d have a bigger employee base to choose from and where many of those employees could be people of color. So, Evers was just dead wrong to veto the planning money for ideological reasons relating to a vague notion of some sort of magic changes in the criminal justice system that are probably politically unpalatable anyway.

On the other hand, let’s not let the Republicans off the hook. They’ve nixed money Evers has proposed to fix the building, apparently on the theory that we’d be throwing good money after bad. Actually, it’s going to take years to site, plan and build a new prison, so we couldn’t avoid making necessary repairs even if Evers had approved the money for a new prison.

What we’ve got here is a standoff between two stubborn parties with inmates and prison employees caught in the middle, a very dangerous place to be when we’re talking about maximum security prisons.