by Benjamin Yount
Republican lawmakers are ripping Gov. Evers after a new audit shows many former inmates are not being sent back to prison for new crimes.
The Legislative Audit Bureau released its report into the state’s Community Corrections Program on Friday. It says the Department of Corrections is not following-up on former inmates well enough, and says Department of Corrections agents are not reporting crimes that could send ex-convicts back to prison.
“Our review of the 50 case files indicated DOC agents did not consistently investigate alleged violations. Information in the case files for 21 of the 50 individuals (42 percent) indicated agents were aware of but did not investigate at least one alleged violation, such as failing to attend scheduled meetings and using alcohol or drugs,” the auditors found. “One agent did not investigate 13 alleged violations of one individual, including 10 instances when the individual did not attend scheduled meetings and three instances when the individual admitted to using methamphetamine.”
The audit also found that DOC was late in completing required risk assessment more than a third of the time.
“We found that 25,687 initial risk and needs assessments (35.8 percent) were not completed in a timely manner for individuals who began supervision from January 2019 through December 2021, including 13,270 assessments (18.5 percent) that were not completed within 60 days after the individuals began community supervision,” the authors wrote.
State Sen. Eric Wimberger, R-Green Bay, said the failures exposed by the audit show that prison managers are not telling local judges and prosecutors just how dangerous the people they are dealing with are.
“DOC Agents statewide are uniformly and significantly deviating from the model criminal risk assessments to warn courts at sentencing that the criminals they are working with are more dangerous than described on paper. Police also agree that dangerous criminals are too often being let out on the street,” said Wimberger. “All of this is happening while the DOC fails to include criminal acts leading to probation revocation in its recidivism statistics. Alarmingly the department only maintains program effectiveness data on approximately 20 percent of criminals in rehabilitative programming. The message is clear, the Evers Administration’s implementation of a soft on crime rehabilitative criminal justice model is failing.”
State Rep. Bob Wittke, R-Racine, said the audit is a “valuable tool” for change.
“I hope the DOC takes this audit seriously to ensure the community corrections program is able to fulfill its statutory responsibility to rehabilitate individuals – including sex offenders – currently under supervision throughout the state and to keep residents safe in their communities,” Wittke said.
Republican lawmakers have been critical of the governor for years, ever since he said back in 2018 that he supports the goal of cutting Wisconsin’s prison population in half.
– – –
Benjamin Yount is a regular contributor to The Center Square.
Photo “Man in Prison” by RODNAE Productions.
