IMPRISONED BY BAD POLICIES

The headlines in Wisconsin are different these days.

Too different.

Once upon a time, in the not too distant past, Wisconsin was hailed as an
innovator in criminal justice reform. This was a state that, under wise and
creative governors such as Warren Knowles, Pat Lucey, Lee Dreyfus and Tony
Earl, sought alternatives to the failed
"lock-em-up-and-throw-away-the-keys'' approach to crime. And pioneering
Department of Corrections officials such as Walter Dickey ensured that when
Wisconsin was in the news as regards crime and punishment, it was as an
innovative and forward state -- not as a reactionary backwater.

How things have changed.

Last week, the headlines in newspapers across the state read went like
this: "State's rise in inmates leads nation'' and "Wisconsin prison
population growth paces U.S.''

According to new figures from the U.S. Department of Corrections, the
number of inmates serving more than a year in Wisconsin prisons skyrocketed
19 percent last year, the largest percentage increase in the United States.

By comparison, the national increase in inmates serving more than a year --
so-called "sentenced inmates'' -- was just 5.1 percent.

Equally staggering were the numbers indicating the increase in Wisconsin's
sentenced inmates over the past five years. Between 1992 and 1997, the
number of such inmates in Wisconsin shot upward 83.7 percent. Only the
state of West Virginia, with an increase of 88.8 percent, had a greater
increase during that period.

Here's another statistic to ponder: In 1990, 3,440 offenders entered
Wisconsin prisons. In 1996, the figure was 7,019 -- a jump of 104 percent.

What's behind these dramatic numbers?

Here's a hint: It's got little to do with crime.

Indeed, many categories of violent crime statistics for Wisconsin have
actually seen significant decreases in recent years.

The explanation for the abandonment of Wisconsin's traditionally sensible
approach to crime and punishment comes from Dickey, the former state
secretary of the Department of Corrections who now teaches law at the
University of Wisconsin and recently chaired the state's corrections task
force.

"The current climate, the political culture, is one in which there's only
one kind of punishment, and it's prison,'' he suggests.

Unlike in the past, when sounder prevention and rehabilitation programs
were in place, and when an emphasis was put on finding alternatives to the
costly and ineffective policy of imprisoning large portions of the state's
population, Dickey says today's politicians are infected with a mind-set
that says: "If you're not putting offenders in prison, you're not punishing
them.''

Certainly, that is the attitude of Gov. Tommy Thompson and Assembly Speaker
Scott Jensen of the town of Brookfield, Republicans who have exploited
fears about crime to clear the way for ever-increasing state budget outlays
to build new prisons. Indeed, the Badger State is moving very close to the
day when we will be spending more on prisons than on higher education.

This is not an issue of Republicans versus Democrats, however.

In other states, which used to be Wisconsin's peers, Republican governors
are working with corrections officials to develop alternatives to a costly,
inefficient and ultimately doomed policy of building more and more prisons.
Those governors recognize that bigger and more expensive prisons don't make
people safer; they just make prison contractors richer.

In Massachusetts, New Mexico and Montana, for instance, Republican
governors are implementing policies that actually have decreased prison
populations.

It's a sad day when Wisconsin no longer ranks among the nation's
enlightened states when it comes to criminal justice issues. It's a sadder
day still when Wisconsin must admit that its claim to fame is as the state
that is moving backward more rapidly than any other.