Justice System Reform Initiative (JSRI) Activities and Concerns 

by MOSES Publications | Jun 30, 2024 | Advocacy, Information, JSRI Justice System Reform Initiatives, MOSES activities

Justice System Reform Initiative (JSRI) Activities and Concerns 

By Tom and Jan Gilbert, Mary Anglim, and Kathy Luker

Dane County has not been actively pursuing reform initiatives that are of interest to us in the past year. This is part of the ebb and flow of county government, but here are some of the reasons for the inactivity:
• County Executive Parisi’s announcement in October 2023 that he would retire had an impact on everything in county government. His retirement took effect on May 3.

• The April election gave us a board with 10 new members, several of whom had been appointed. Patrick Miles was re-elected board chair. Miles has appointed Jamie Kuhn as interim county executive. 
• Miles is also responsible for appointing committee members. Two key director positions (Justice Reform and Equity and Human Services) have gone unfilled for over a year. Colleen Clark-Bernhardt was recently appointed director of Justice Reform and Equity; the board will need to approve the hire. We don’t know whether a Human Services director search has started. 
• Due to the lack of a Justice Reform and Equity director or other staff, the Community Justice Council (CJC) and its subcommittees, whose primary focus is reform, have not met in over six months. 

Jail Consolidation Project

On January 18, the county board approved a final addition of $21.7 million to enable the jail project to go forward. Although the jail will be larger than we wanted, it is smaller than originally proposed and comes with renewed commitment to reforms that will keep more people out of jail and out of the criminal-legal system. We have consistently pushed for a smaller jail and for more reform. We are relieved that the long debate about the jail is over; we have always recognized that the current jail in the City County Building is inhumane and must be replaced. 

The challenge now is to make sure that the new jail lives up to the promised improvements. To that end, we are reinvigorating our Jail Advocacy Group, thanks to interest and energy provided by Rachel Kincade, Jessica Jacobs, and Talib Akbar, who all joined this group. We want to advocate for improvements that can be made both before and after the Jail Consolidation Project is complete. We have had several meetings, and the group recently got a tour of the current jail.

The county board should closely examine the staffing of the new jail, which is smaller and designed to enable more efficient staffing. The Huber intake process of returning to the jail every evening has been eliminated, since no one reports to the jail overnight and needs to be checked in. Both the smaller size and the change in the Huber program (see below) should reduce staffing requirements. These staff are expensive. The 2024 adopted budget includes $38.5 million for staffing the jail for one year, not including $13 million for contracted staff. While the estimated construction cost for the new jail is over $200 million, we spend more than that on staffing every five and a half years, from a more limited budget. We hope that staff reductions will allow more funding for diversions.

Looking Ahead

Because of the many changes, we recently talked with Jeff Kostelic, Joe Parisi’s executive assistant. He gave us some key insights into what to expect:
• Interim County Executive Jamie Kuhn will be responsible for putting together the 2025 county budget. Her last official duty before the elected executive takes over will likely be to sign the budget.

• We had been concerned about the delay in implementing the Crisis/Triage Center due to issues with the state. County Legislative Liaison Carrie Springer had previously informed us about a new state statute that addresses the issues. Now that it has been signed into law, the state must write an administrative rule to implement it. The state Department of Health Services Bureau director said that an emergency rule-making process would be used, and that the administrative rule could be completed in nine months. Jeff said that operational funding issues for the Center have not been resolved. There would need to be a change in Medicaid reimbursement or more money from the county, the two reasons there were no bids for the original Request for Proposal (RFP). There is still strong support for a Crisis/Triage Center, but it is unclear how and when it will be able to move forward. 
• Kostelic thinks expansion of the CARES program will have to be incremental, as the City of Madison can’t expand to the whole county or even to all the adjacent communities. There are county matching grants available, and some county jurisdictions are interested in matching them. Further expansion of crisis workers at the 911 Center will have to wait until the 2025 budget.
• Since Resolution 320 passed, Sheriff Barrett has taken steps to change the Huber program. Significantly greater numbers of sentenced individuals are now out of jail on electronic monitoring. Supervisor Andrae (Public Protection and Judiciary Committee chair) has sent out a letter expressing interest in re-examining the whole issue. The county board may revisit the question of a formal migration of responsibility from the Sheriff’s Office to the Department of Human Services (DHS). DHS initiated discussions to re-examine what the intentions are. Kostelic sent us a copy of the letter.

We need to follow this very important area closely. Our Crisis Restoration/Huber Change Advocacy Group has been following the discussions about Huber, and we will continue to become more informed. We may be developing a white paper (about desired future conditions) that clearly states where we think this should go. This may be very complicated, because a change could involve many parts of the criminal-legal system, including the Sheriff’s Office, the DA’s Office, the judges, Human Services, and the Public Defender’s Office. The basic question is: What would it mean to move the Huber program from the Sheriff’s Office to Human Services? Could there be unintended consequences, such as a larger number of people sitting in jail because judges are reluctant to risk ordering them into a Human Services program? What would happen to individuals who don’t want to be in a Human Services program and would prefer to just be put on electronic monitoring and left alone?

• Kostelic informed us that the cost of the contract for Dane County employee health insurance is going up substantially. This will have a big impact on money available for other initiatives.

Diversion Working Group

The Diversion Advocacy Group is continuing its positive relationship with the Deferred Prosecution Program (DPP). This is important, as DPP is one of the largest diversion programs in the county, but one which has significant issues. Rebekah Jones from the DPP made a presentation at the MOSES general meeting on June 9. 

We plan to reach out to the new county supervisors. This is an opportunity to learn about them and to give them an introduction to MOSES and the issues we care about. We did this several years ago with the previous county board; our effort was well received and ultimately connected us with the Black Caucus, which was instrumental in developing the compromise that allowed the Jail Consolidation Project to move forward, while also committing to reforms that will reduce the number of people in the jail.

JSRI is looking for more folks to get involved in our important work. If you would like to learn more, get in touch with Jeanie Verschay at jeanieverschay@gmail.com or Paul Saeman at melodygab@aol.com.