Open letter to new DOC Secretary Jared Hoy

We have decided to publish here an open letter from the director of Forum for Understanding Prisons, to the new Wisconsin Department of Corrections secretary Jared Hoy. Afterward, we will provide some background on FFUP and analysis of the political context. 

June 8, 2024

Greeting secretary Hoy and congratulations on your new post. I come to you with enthusiasm and great hope that this will be a time of positive change and that you will lead the DOC with courage and wisdom. All who know the inner workings of the present WI DOC want to see it embrace its true mission to rehabilitate the prisoners and keep the public safe. That mission has been largely abandoned and what we see is mere warehousing. You know all this, have been part of the decision making, and now have the opportunity to help the DOC strike out on a new healthy path.

The system has been much in the news, the latest being the Waupun Correctional Institution (WCI) warden’s arrest, the deaths, the drug rings at WCI, and of course shortage of staff. And the news carries only the tip of what is going on. In recent calls and letters from inmates I have learned that in RCI they are now tripling up in cells- the third person sleeping on the floor in boatlike vessels. More disturbing are reports that not only does WCI have no provider- neither does New Lisbon Correctional Institution; that staff in RHUs (restrictive housing units) in WCI and Green Bay Correctional Institution RHUs are not only not giving mental and physical health care, they are deliberately not intervening in emergency situations. And finally that drugs flow freely in all institutions. One inmate at RCI said when he first got there, he was approached by people he did not even know- trying to sell him drugs. They are everywhere!

All these are symptoms of greater systemic problems and tearing down buildings and chopping heads will not solve these deep problems. Governor Evers promised that he would halve the prison population when he took office. The fact that half the prison population should not be incarcerated still pollutes and stymies all attempts at reform. I ask you to be open with the public and let them know who you are incarcerating and help us debunk the lies that keep the public  afraid and hating the prisoner and make the legislature afraid of the public.  

We hope you will work with us in creating the climate that will allow the needed changes to happen. I will include the memo that started the process of holding prisoners for “as long as is legally possible.” This brought in the federal dollars but also created a self-sustaining system where money comes before people. The list of prisoners that should not be in prison is well known: the old law prisoners, eligible for parole for decades, the mentally ill (over 50 percent), those ordered deported at sentencing, the 40 percent of the population that are in for parole rule violations/non-felonies. These people are held without treatment or training and then are released to the streets, traumatized, with little or no support only to be whisked back for the slightest rule violation. And then there is the gross failure of justice for the truth in sentencing prisoners. Although attempts to tank it and install an effective parole system for all have failed in the past, now is the time to try again and do it right.

Along with population reduction, we need real mental health treatment. Most of the beds in WI and the US for the mentally ill are in prisons. We feel that following the model presented by  COLORADO is what we need. RIck Raemisch, the former head of the WI DOC, helped to transform that system and has offered to come to WI for an open seminar. Colorado prisons have no solitary confinement over 15 days and no staff shortages.

People need meaningful work. That is the core of the staffing problem and nothing is going to fix it or the other horrors until those people that are wrongly held are released and rehabilitation is again embraced. Mindless punishment forever has garnered us the mess we see. Please work with us. We are here to assist you in bringing back rehabilitation to the WI DOC.

Peg Swan

What is Forum For Understanding Prisons? 

FFUP is an organization that has been advocating for, corresponding with, and publishing the voices of incarcerated people in Wisconsin for decades. They officially incorporated as a non-profit in 2004, but were active before that. The organization is primarily led by Peg Swan of Blue River, Wisconsin. Peg corresponds with dozens of incarcerated people across the state and publishes their words at prisonforum.org.

FFUP has played a role in every one of Wisconsin’s prison-reform campaigns since the early 2000s, often collaborating with other organizations. FFUP’s priority has always been to provide incarcerated people with mutual aid and amplify their voices and perspectives against the brutal efforts of the DOC and state government to silence and disappear the people they have locked up. 

In recent years, more volunteers–including formerly incarcerated people, and their families–have stepped up, helping Peg to handle correspondence, organize and distribute research, file jailhouse lawsuits, and do what they can to meet incarcerated peoples’ most dire needs. It's easy to be overwhelmed by the many stories and issues raised within FFUP’s blogs. Their reports on solitary confinement, the DOC “money scam” and staffing are good entry points to understanding the horrible and worsening conditions in Wisconsin’s prisons. 

How did Wisconsin prisons get so bad?

When Tony Evers was running for Governor, the prison system was in full crisis. Then DOC secretary Ed Wall resigned after being caught trying to cover up the abuse at Wisconsin’s youth prisons. On the campaign trail, Evers promised to reduce Wisconsin’s prison population by half and to close prisons. Instead, he expanded the prison population and the DOC’s budget. He dodged community input to fasttrack building an expensive new prison where youth will surely be abused–because prisons are abusive by nature. He has let conditions in the prisons degrade into never-ending lockdowns and massive staff corruption and neglect. 

Initially, Evers appointed reformers to high positions, but failed to educate himself much about how the DOC operates, or to back up reform efforts. Kevin Carr, a retired U.S. Marshall and devout Catholic became secretary of the DOC. Makda Fessahaye, a DOC employment lawyer with a degree from Marquette, was promoted to head of the Division of Adult Institutions. John Tate II, a Racine alderman and social worker, became the Chair of the Parole commission. All three are African American, and all three have since quit. 

Fessahaye left first, quietly, to work for the City of Milwaukee while covid was raging through her prisons and Evers was refusing to help. Then, Tate resigned under direct pressure from Evers and Senate Republicans after enduring months of racist pushback from DOC staff. Carr left recently, retiring among steadily worsening conditions in the DOC. Evers has replaced each of them with white people, whose careers or behavior have been committed to status quo and not reform. 

What can be done?

The foundational problem with Wisconsin prisons is overpopulation. As abolitionists, we’re more hesitant than Peg and FFUP about rehabilitation in the prisons. Prisons are for hurting people. They cannot be reformed. The best way to reduce the harm prison causes is to reduce the number of people in prison. Not only does a lowered population move released people out of harm’s way, it also makes maintaining minimally humane conditions for those who remain possible. Evers can reduce the prison population quickly, without needing the Republican-controlled, gerrymandered state legislature to pass any laws. 

The fastest, easiest way to reduce the prison population, and to close at least the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility, is to change the internal policies of the Division of Community Corrections. The DCC fills Wisconsin prisons with people who they incarcerate for crimeless revocations, that is violations of community supervision or parole. Stopping this requires no law change, just changes within the DCC. Unfortunately, Evers did not appoint a reformer to head the DCC. He kept Walker-appointed Lance Wiersma. Evers also seemed to not even understand the difference between the DCC and the parole commission when asked. He also kept Neil Thoreson in charge of the DCC office in Milwaukee, where the DOC is most aggressively targeting and cycling people between supervision and incarceration. 

Evers also has the power to pardon incarcerated people, an action he refuses to consider, even for elderly and infirm people, or people held on minor charges. This is not politically difficult, governors in red states like Oklahoma have released hundreds of people using their pardon power. Evers often pats himself on the back for pardoning hundreds of people, but all of those people already completed their sentences, including parole or probation, five years before they were even considered by Evers’ pardon board. His pardons only relieve them of sentences on their records, or post-release sanctions. Tony Evers has shown no mercy to people currently in prison. 

Before we can imagine the new DOC director pursuing the kind of rehabilitation Peg Swan’s letter calls for, Governor Evers needs to make good on his campaign promises. He needs to use his pardon power and overhaul DCC leadership and policies, taking an active role in reducing revocations.