Goal to Reduce Wisconsin's Prison Population: An Opinion
I recently attended a presentation about the 11x15 initiative to reduce the Wisconsin prison population. Since I have volunteered at Huber Facility as part of a Bible study for a few years, I was interested to learn more about this issue.
The first question that I suspect you have is what does the phrase 11x15 mean? The goal is to lower the prison population from around 22,000 to 11,000 by the end of the year 2015. This would bring our numbers closer to Minnesota and Maine which the Frequently Asked Questions sheet claims are "states with comparable crime rates and demographics."
Now, I bet someone is yelling that I am being soft on crime. We can't allow violent offenders out just to save money. I agree. We need to provide alternatives to prison such as our drug court, alcohol court, and the day report center. We can expand these programs and still manage to save money by reducing our prison population. The 11x15 website states "Alternatives to incarceration save taxpapers a great deal of money. Most save at least $2 for every dollar spent."
I suspect someone is now saying "But, does these programs work? I remember a person who was out on probation who commited another crime." The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel had an article that stated that the day report center had an 89% successful completion rate. This includes supervision by a case manager, drug testing and other services. One of my textbooks from Waukesha County Technical College (Drugs and Society: Eighth Edition by Glen Hanson, Peter Venturelli and Annette Fleckenstein) says "Jurisdictions that have implemented drug court programs also report significantly lower arrest, conviction, and drug usage rates for both drug court participants and graduates."
To learn more about this initiative, please visit PrayforJusticeinWI.org.
jbw
9:58 pm on Saturday, July 14, 2012
That sounds like a great idea, though doesn't it put you at odds with the powerful prison industry, as one of the comments on the website explains? Quite a few people would probably see a 50% reduction as a disaster for their livelihoods.
Bernard Forand
7:24 am on Sunday, July 15, 2012
Our USA has 5 times greater incarceration than the rest of the western civilized world. That speaks volumes of our judicial system.
Predatory justice may be one component that fuels this ambiguity. Consider with GPS individuals could be easily monitored to see if they are in compliance with their imposed restrictions. Reducing the need for Brick and mortar prisons that we have.
Another example; is the internal justice of prisons. If they find a cell phone on a prisoner, in a prison, they can receive an additional 5 years to their sentence! At $ 50,000 per year cost of incarceration, well the math is easy enough to follow that cost. Once again simple Technology of jamming cell phone signals would be far more effective and less costly.
Privatizing prisons is to weaken our infrastructure, that Tax payers have already paid for, and turns it into a commercially driven for profit organization. History has demonstrated the atmospheres of corruptions that produces. That is why it was under government control in the first place. To sell off our infrastructures or lease them, for a temporary surge of income to offset a negative budget is counter productive and exposes us to further corruptive measures.
Should we hold our intellectuals, leadership, bureaucrats responsible for these and other failing measures of our judicial system. Perhaps then the incarcerations will diminish…
Johnny Paycheck
9:24 am on Sunday, July 15, 2012
Welcome to America... The land of the free that imprisons more people than Stalin did. I am just glad it costs so much to keep someone in prison-- that is the only thing keeping them from writing laws to imprison the rest of us.
$$andSense
10:28 pm on Monday, July 16, 2012
In addition to imprisoning, Stalin also ordered the execution of somewhere around a million, plus or minus depending on the source, that didn’t agree with him. Does anyone want to go there?
One Teacher
2:53 pm on Monday, July 16, 2012
Are people born criminals or do they learn to be criminals, is criminality a birth defect or is it a result of the teaching environment we learn from?
CowDung
3:09 pm on Monday, July 16, 2012
Guilty conscience, One Teacher?
;-)
Johnny Paycheck
3:39 pm on Monday, July 16, 2012
I'm pretty sure criminality is not genetic... Wasn't Australia an English penal colony once?
Craig
4:55 pm on Monday, July 16, 2012
A round into the head also is very effective at reducing inmate population, it works well for China.
Bren
5:49 am on Tuesday, July 17, 2012
I think the great problem with incarceration is that it is intended to get antisocial personalities off the street at a lower cost than treatment. It often results in exacerbating the antisocial problems/behavior. Treating human beings like feral animals is illogical. There are behaviors/psychological issues that clearly need to be isolated from the community but there are other crimes that do not require it.