Weekly Fiscal Facts are provided to Wisconsin Newspaper Association members by the Wisconsin Policy Forum, the state’s leading resource for nonpartisan state and local government research and civic education. The Wisconsin Policy Forum logo can be downloaded here.
Wisconsin continues to spend more than neighboring states and the national average on corrections, and its prison population has far greater racial disparities.
These factors — coupled with reports of conditions in some Wisconsin prisons, and a recently adopted state budget that appropriates $2.76 billion to corrections — suggest the need for renewed focus by Wisconsin policymakers on prison populations, policies, and spending.
Recent news coverage chronicled extensive restrictions on inmates’ movement inside several Wisconsin prisons, as well as “dire staffing shortages” at the facilities. Forum research also has noted high turnover and vacancy rates in state Department of Corrections (DOC) prisons and other large state institutions.
In recent years, several state and national studies have pointed to Wisconsin’s disconcerting status as an outlier in corrections. Wisconsin’s Black imprisonment rate, while declining, has been the highest in the country in each of the last three years in which data are available (2019 to 2021). In 2021, Wisconsin had the third-highest Black-white imprisonment disparity in the country, as Black Wisconsinites were imprisoned at rates just under 12 times that of white Wisconsinites. Only New Jersey (12.83) and California (15.60) had larger gaps.
We also find that Wisconsin’s overall incarceration rate, while near the U.S. average, is the highest among neighboring states. Wisconsin also budgets more on corrections than most states including its neighbors, spending $220 for each state resident in 2020 compared to the U.S. average of $182, per the National Institute of Corrections. As Figure 2 shows, Michigan ($204), Iowa ($143), Minnesota ($111), and Illinois ($93) all spent less on a per capita basis.
Historical developments, socioeconomic factors, and policy choices made over many decades have contributed to these incarceration rates and racial disparities in Wisconsin. Another substantial driver is the state’s frequent practice of revoking offenders’ supervised release and returning them to prison for rule violations, and not the commission of new crimes.
In recent years, there seemed to be growing support for efforts to reduce corrections populations from across the political spectrum. Gov. Tony Evers’ administration implemented major revisions to revocation policies at the beginning of 2021 and we can now at least begin to evaluate the results.
Given the consequences of corrections policy for Wisconsin’s state budget and public safety, the reports of dire conditions in some state prisons, and the need to address one of the state’s most glaring examples of racial inequity, a high level of attention to these issues appears warranted.
This information is a service of the Wisconsin Policy Forum, the state’s leading resource for nonpartisan state and local government research and civic education. Learn more at wispolicyforum.org.
