Madison Organizing in Strength, Equity, and Solidarity
for Criminal Legal System Reform

Justice System Reform Initiative (JSRI) Activities and Concerns 

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.

 

Summary of JSRI Activities in 2023

JSRI spent 2023 working on the Jail (no surprise) and behavioral health.

Much of the Justice System Reform Initiative (JSRI) work in 2022 was focused on the jail. This year we had a long stretch where the jail was not an issue – but spoiler alert – it roared back in December. JSRI used the time with fewer jail decisions to continue our focus on diverting people experiencing mental/behavioral health crises from the criminal legal system.

Dane County Jail

At the end of the 2022 County Exec Parisi had vetoed the board of supervisors legislation to reduce the jail to 5 floors, a plan MOSES endorsed. This left the County with a plan to build a 6 story jail but without enough funding to build it. In late 2022 the Board of Supervisors voted down 3 methods for paying for the new jail.

Consequently 2023 started with the pressure to find more money for the jail, this legislative effort was blocked by a coalition of different groups on the Board. The coalition included a number of supervisors that are jail abolitionists that do not want any money spent on the jail, a group of supervisors that are primarily concerned about legal reform and the Black Caucus that is concerned about how jail spending limits other efforts for legal reform. This coalition was large enough to block spending proposals that required either ¾ or ⅔ majorities.

A breakthrough came April 19, 2023 when the Sheriff and the Black Caucus announced an agreement in which the Black Caucus voted for funds for the jail and the Sheriff agreed to a series of reforms. The most concrete reforms included:

  • Sheriff Barrett will support removal of federal in-transit prisoners from the current jail facility. He will work with the US Marshals to place the persons currently in the facility into other facilities in the surrounding areas by November 1, 2023. This has largely happened. On Dec 9th there were two federal prisoners in the jail.

  • Sheriff Barrett will support the transfer of Huber services to the Dane County Department of Human Services. This is a softer goal and there has been little or no action on this idea.

  • Sheriff Barrett will submit reports per Sub 1 2021 RES-320 as amended and continue current jail population reporting. This has happened indirectly. The CJC instituted an interactive dashboard that includes race, ethnicity, and sex – characteristics that were missing from other jail reports.

As mentioned, above this instituted a period of relative calm on the Jail issue. The Mead and Hunt team finished construction documents and put the project out to bid in Sept 2023.

But the bidding process concluded in Nov 2023 yielding only a single bid and that bid was $27.6 million dollars over budget.

As this article is written it seems that the County will send the exact same bid package out to bid for a second time. This is a bit of a gamble since there is no guarantee that more bids or lower bids will respond to this new bid process. We will know by midyear.

Behavioral Health and the legal system.

For the last decade, JSRI has been advocating for a crisis triage center as an alternative to incarceration for people experiencing a behavioral health crisis. More recently we have advocated for 911 to dispatch medical and crisis workers instead of police to appropriate behavioral health crisis calls. In Madison that program is called CARES and establishing CARES was a big success in 2022. This year’s budget expands on that success.

CARES

The CARES program receives about $900,000 a year. This support comes from both City of Madison and Dane County budgets.

JSRI recently met with Che Stedman, the Assistant Fire Chief who supervises the CARES program. He told us that one reason CARES does not operate 24 hours/day is that after a certain time of evening there is nowhere the CARES team can take a person except to an emergency room, one of the outcomes CARES is trying to avoid. The CARES program is not a treatment program, rather it is a crisis response team. They do not house people, so for many of their cases they need to have a place they can transport people to a stable environment. This would be the purpose of a Crisis Triage Center (see below).

Assistant Chief Stedman also mentioned that a substantial number of the calls to 911 for CARES ask that no one physically come to their residence. CARES staff do talk with the people calling, but the 911 center is itself stepping up to handle these calls.

Starting with a pilot last year and now expanded with this year’s budget, the 911 center will have five crisis workers on staff. This program is definitely part of an effort to divert behavioral health calls from police responses and entanglement with the legal system. It also has the benefit of serving all of Dane County on a 24/7 basis.

There is strong support, both from the JSRI, politicians, and the wider public to make the traditional CARES teams (one paramedic and one crisis worker) available throughout Dane County. This budget provided $200,000 in matching funds earmarked for cities and towns outside of Madison to work with the Madison Fire Department to expand CARES beyond Madison. This funding follows a year of study by Dane County Human Services Dept. examining how CARES can be expanded county wide. Hopefully, we will see initiatives in 2024.

Crisis Triage Center

The CARES unit can meet with people, but, as mentioned above, they are not a long term solution. Consequently, an important part of their service is to transport their clients to a safer location. Despite a decade of advocacy, Dane County does not have a 24/7 facility for behavioral health crises.

The way this works in other places is that there is a crisis-triage center available 24/7 that

provides a short term stay (often 23 hours) to allow someone in a behavioral health crisis to

calm down, for the helpers to discover and engage any family support, for any prescriptions to be identified, and identification of a longer term housing.

Dane County has been trying to build such a center for several years. The blockage has been that Wisconsin law does not include licensing for this type of facility, at least for involuntary stays. That means that not only is such a facility unavailable to CARES as an alternative to incarceration, it is also available neither to the police nor to the general public when they are looking for help without the threat of incarceration. The JSRI has advocated that Dane County start a crisis/triage center with voluntary admissions, as other locations facing the same problems have done.

2023 has been a good year for MOSES and the JSRI. The Dane County Budget has increased support for CARES, some, but not all, pandemic policies that decrease the jail population persist, diverting behavioral health cases from the legal system continues to be a topic of public discourse. But the wheels of justice turn slowly, and in some cases, move backwards. We hope that some of these issues will resolve in 2024 and allow us to begin advocacy for new areas of the criminal legal system.

Upcoming MOSES and WISDOM Events!

Reposted from Madison365 by Robert Chapell:

Criminal Justice Reform Community Meeting Set for Monday

“The Dane County Board of Supervisors will host a community conversation regarding potential reform of the county’s criminal justice system on Monday, October 12, from 6 until 8:30 pm on the second floor of the Alliant Energy Center.

The conversation will feature small-group discussion of more than 30 recommendations put forward recently by three community workgroups who addressed needs in the areas of: Alternatives to Arrest and Incarceration; Length of Stay; and Mental Health, Solitary Confinement and Incarceration.

“The three workgroups addressed critical issues with a great deal of dedication and commitment.  I have high expectations for criminal justice reform and furthering our unique partnerships with the criminal justice stakeholders and the Dane County community,” County Board Chair Sharon Corrigan said in a statement today. “Monday will provide an opportunity for those who have not yet been involved to join us at the table. I hope people will come together, learn the issues and help us prioritize the next steps.”

Community members are encouraged to attend, Corrigan said. The workgroup report is available here.”

ROC Wisconsin: Restoring Our Communities — Beyond 11×15

Kick-off on November 3, at 9:30 am.  We will be meeting at Bethel Lutheran Church in Madison (the same place as the Madison Action Day last April).  This will inaugurate the new phase of our criminal justice reform campaign.  We will continue to work on the same nuts and bolts areas (e.g. TAD funding, Solitary Confinement, Old Law Parole, Crimeless Revocations, etc.).  But, it will be done with an eye on the larger picture we strive for, which includes these main aims:
  1. For Wisconsin to invest in the programs and strategies that will end the racial and economic disparities that fuel mass incarceration
  2. For Wisconsin to reduce it prison population to 11,000, and to reduce the number of people on extended supervision
  3. For Wisconsinites to view people who have been convicted of a crime as human beings and members of families.
  4. For formerly-incarcerated people to be restored to full participation in our communities, our economy and our civic life.

Take Action NOW: Mobilizing to Fix the Dane County Jail System!

The MOSES Jail Task Force gave an update at the January monthly MOSES meeting about Dane County’s plans to study and invest in new jail facilities. MOSES opposes spending county money on new jail construction or on redundant studies.

ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW to act and mobilize others is available in four documents from the MOSES Jail Task Force:

  1. PowerPoint – explaining the discussion surrounding the Dane County Jail and MOSES’ position
  2. Mobilization Letter – to send to Dane County Board members and other officials
  3. MOSES Jail Task Force position statement with data
  4. Mobilization Actions List – detailed list of what you can do now

THIS TUESDAY: The Dane County Public Protection and Judiciary Committee (PP&J) will discuss several issues related to the new jail (see agenda here, items on final page) including additional funding requested by Sheriff Mahoney to expand the Mead & Hunt study (with little additional study on mental health) as well as a request from Supervisors Bayrd and Pan to study Criminal Justice Reform.

What can you do NOW?

**Be prepared to stay two hours or more, as testimonies and discussion about the jail proposals may take that amount of time.

In the news:

MOSES JAIL TASK FORCE
Meets 3rd Thursdays, 6:30 – 8:30 PM
Optional orientation for newcomers 6:00
(Sub-committee work teams have additional meetings)
St. Mark’s Church (in basement)
605 Spruce St., Madison (Off S Park St.)
Contact:  Ann Pooler, apooler@charter.net, 608-658-6847

MOSES Official Position Statement on Proposed New Jail

Recently, the Dane County Sheriff’s office released a study conducted by Mead & Hunt recommending plans for a new Dane County Jail.  The cost to taxpayers would be close to $135M. MOSES has had conversations with Sheriff Mahoney, several stakeholders, and has done thorough review and discussion of the Mead & Hunt report.  MOSES is working hard to find the best solution to these complicated issues and is committed to working collaboratively with other stakeholders toward that goal. The following is MOSES’ official position on the new jail proposal (Click here to download a pdf).


A New $130M Dane County Jail?
The Wrong Solution to the Wrong Problem

MOSES rejects the proposal for a new Dane County jail.  Data show that a large percentage of the people in Dane County jail are there unnecessarily.  Correcting outdated and misaligned policies and practices would dramatically reduce the number of jailed people, beginning in the next few months.  This is the shortest path toward closing all or part of the unsafe City-County Building jail, reducing racial disparities, and avoiding waste of lives and money.  It is also a necessary prerequisite to making credible projections about long-term jail needs. needs.

Dane county contracted with a prison design firm, Mead and Hunt, to produce a report and recommendations for a new jail.  After studying their document, the concerned citizens of MOSES reject the proposal.  We are clear that no new jail building is needed, for the following reasons:

  1. We agree that the City-County Building jail is sub-standard, and that this must be addressed immediately.
  2. The fastest and most cost-effective solution lies not in brick and mortar, but in rapidly implementing proven new systems and policy changes to immediately stop unnecessary incarceration.  With fewer people in all three jail sites, the City-County building site can be fully or partially emptied, remodeled, and put to other non-jail use.
  3. A new jail building (estimated to cost $130-$141M) would not only be wasteful and unnecessary, but may also sustain or worsen Dane County’s excessive incarceration rate and appalling racial disparities.

In MOSES’ view, the Mead and Hunt report:

  • Assumes that Dane County’s already outdated incarceration policies and practices will continue.
  • Ignores more cost-effective alternatives already implemented and proven throughout the U.S.
  • Inflates the number of beds needed, based on questionable projections of the number of people in jail.[1]
  • Creates perverse incentives to jail more people in order to maximize staffing and facility efficiency.[2]
  • Proposes to generate revenue by incarcerating people from other counties’ jails–particularly youth.[3]
  • Assumes incarcerating the same or greater number of people with mental illness.
  • Ignores new funding opportunities in BadgerCare expansion to single individuals starting April 1, 2014.

Dane County’s incarceration rates can, should, and must be lowered by implementing new standards of practice, including treatment, alternatives, and diversions in the arrest, pre-trial detention, prosecution, and incarceration stages of the criminal justice process.  These practices are well established elsewhere and proven to be more cost- effective and better for communities.  Medicaid funds are also now more available to fund treatment alternatives.

As one example: Black people are typically 48% of the Dane County jail population but only 14% of those on home electronic monitoring.  This likely relates to inability to pay the required $20/day fee to participate in electronic monitoring.  The effect is that African Americans are disproportionately incarcerated unnecessarily.

The table on reverse side shows many examples of unnecessary incarceration, and the changes that could reduce it.  MOSES is working hard for the changes needed to correct this terrible situation in our county.


[1]Despite a decline in Madison arrests since 2004, a decline in the number of new District Attorney cases since 2007, and a large decline in the average daily number of people in jail since 2006, the plan projects future jail space need by using a starting number higher than the current average daily number of jailed people, and then projects a steady increase.

[2] The plan proposes 64-bed “pods” to maximize facility/staffing efficiency.  But each pod is only efficient if at least 90% full.

[3] The plan projects only 14 youth beds needed, but proposes a 40-bed youth unit so that Dane County can make over $1 M annual revenue housing teens from other counties.


 

PEOPLE INCARCERATED IN DANE COUNTY JAIL
ADP = Average Daily Population (2012 actual or 2013 estimated);
LOS = Length of stay (in days)

 [table id=1 /]

[1] The Hoover Family Foundation has trained MOSES volunteers to help people apply for benefits, and has offered funding for other ways (e.g., bail fund) to stop unnecessary incarceration.