LOCKING UP WISCONSIN

There are three certainties in life: death, taxes and if a state
builds a prison, the politicians will find a way to fill it.

As Wisconsin officials pour hundreds of millions of dollars into one
of the wildest prison-building sprees in the nation's history, the
state's prison population is growing at an exponential rate. Last
year, the number of inmates in Wisconsin's prisons grew by 13.4
percent -- the third-largest growth rate in the nation.

At the end of 1997, 16,277 Wisconsinites were behind bars. At the end
of 1998, the figure had risen to 18,451 -- an increase of 2,174
inmates in just 12 months.

But those official figures from the U.S. Justice Department are
deceptive, since the state has incarcerated close to a thousand
additional wrongdoers -- taking the prison population figure to 19,398
as of Aug. 13 of this year.

By next summer, the inmate census is projected to leap to 21,937. By
the summer of 2001, state officials say it will hit 25,193.

What's going on here? Is Wisconsin experiencing an unprecedented crime
boom?

Not at all. Crime is down. Indeed, it has been down ever since the
economy started to improve in Wisconsin -- suggesting that new prisons
have less to do with the prevention of wrongdoing than new jobs.

Wisconsinites understand this fact better than the politicians. A July
poll of 1,002 Wisconsin adults found that 46 percent said the state
should "reduce (prison) spending to increase spending
elsewhere.''

So why does Wisconsin lead the nation in prison population
growth?

That's simple. When Wisconsin builds prisons at an unprecedented rate,
that enriches contractors who have donated generous sums to the
campaign funds of Gov. Tommy Thompson and his legislative allies.

Rare is the political fund-raiser these days at which prison
contractors don't show up with open checkbooks. Just this year, the
state Building Commission awarded the C.D. Smith Construction firm of
Fond du Lac a $29.5 million no-bid contract to build a sexual predator
facility at Mauston. Executives of the company then dumped $37,000
into the campaign fund of the man who chairs the Building Commission
- -- Thompson.

So we know why the prisons are being built. But why are they filling
up?

That's simple, too. While Thompson and other prison-happy politicians
know full well that thousands of the men, women and children
incarcerated by the state could be better served by alternative
sentencing and probation programs, they can't make a political buck
off sound criminal justice policy.

So they have to justify the construction of expensive new prisons.
Thus, they support mandatory sentencing, penalty enhancers, extended
prison terms, a greater emphasis on prosecution of nonviolent "drug
war'' crimes and other gimmicks designed to insure that every bed in
every prison is filled.

Judges, prosecutors and academics will tell you that these schemes do
little or nothing to make the average citizen safer. But they do serve
the purpose of filling the prisons, so they are pursued relentlessly
by the pols.

Thompson has asked the Legislature to approve an $81.6 million, or
10.8 percent, boost in the 1999-2000 fiscal year -- up from the
current $757 million-a-year spending base -- to run the Department of
Corrections. Right now, three new state prisons are under
construction. Just last week, the Building Commission approved an
additional $6.5 million to build a 125-bed maximum security addition
to the Taycheedah Correctional Institution.

The new prisons will fill up immediately. Then more will be
built.

A handful of wealthy contractors will get richer.

A lot of political campaign funds will get fatter.

And Wisconsin taxpayers will foot the bill.