Wisconsin spends less on law enforcement and on its judicial and legal systems than the majority of states, but it’s in the top 12 for spending on its prison and corrections system, according to a new report published Tuesday.
The report, from the Wisconsin Policy Forum, investigates how the state is faring on issues like crime, racial disparities and its prison system. The 104-page report, titled “Cross Examination: A comprehensive review of Wisconsin’s criminal justice system,” tracks topics including state spending on criminal justice, crime rates over decades and a changing prison population.
State incarceration rate draws closer to national
As of Dec. 31, 2022, for every 100,000 Wisconsin residents, 311 of them were imprisoned in state or federal correctional facilities, the report says.
Although this was below the national rate of 355 people per 100,000, the difference between the state and the nation was “considerably wider” a decade earlier, the report says.
Wisconsin ranked 23rd among other states. Indiana and Michigan had higher incarceration rates, while Iowa, Illinois and Minnesota had “considerably lower” rates.
The rate of violent crime has risen in Wisconsin over time despite a decline nationwide, the report finds. Wisconsin’s rate of violent crime remains lower than the national rate. The state has followed a national trend of steadily declining property crime.
Criminal justice spending
In 2022, Wisconsin spent less than the national average on state and local law enforcement, ranking 32nd in the country, the report finds. Judicial and legal spending was also below average, at 35th.
The report says that over the last 15 years, the population of county jails in Wisconsin has declined considerably. The jail population was roughly 20% lower in the average month in 2023 compared to 2003.
However, Wisconsin’s corrections spending, which includes the prison system and monitoring people on community supervision,was above the national average and ranked 12th in the country, greater than all other Midwest states except Nebraska.
Per capita, Wisconsin spends about the same as the national average on its criminal justice system, the report finds.
Costs related to corrections are likely to go up from wage bumps for prison staff that the Legislature and Gov. Tony Evers approved to counteract persistent understaffing, and from growing medical costs of an aging prison population, the report says.
The aging prison population “likely means” increasing health care needs among prisoners, and may lead to changes in the Department of Corrections budget, the report suggests.
While people 60 or older are a minority of people arrested or incarcerated in Wisconsin, the number in that age group who have been arrested and have faced court cases “have grown considerably,” the report says. The incarceration rate for adults 60 in Wisconsin has doubled since 2010.
The report says that the prison population is getting older both because incarcerated people are aging while in the system and because more older adults are being admitted into the system.
Growth in violent crime, operating a vehicle while intoxicated and other public order offenses are among the factors that have driven these trends, the report says. The long-term impact of the truth-in-sentencing law and people serving extremely long sentences may also be a factor.
Racial disparities
The Wisconsin Policy Forum called racial disparities a “clear and persistent trend across Wisconsin’s
justice system,” with a disproportionate number of Black Wisconsinites among crime victims, among people arrested and among people who are incarcerated or on supervision in the community.
Wisconsin has the second-largest disparity of any state between Black and white incarceration rates, the report finds. High rates of poverty in the city of Milwaukee worsen these trends.
The number of Black people incarcerated in Wisconsin has decreased to 8,965 in 2023 from 9,489 in 2000, according to the report, while the number of incarcerated white adults increased to 11,627 from 9,983 in the same period, according to the report. Despite that shift, “Black residents were highly overrepresented in Wisconsin’s prisons in 2023,” the report states.
Overcrowded, understaffed prisons
The state adult prison population fell in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but it has since risen closer to pre-pandemic levels, the report states. Many criminal cases delayed during the height of the pandemic have finally been processed, leading to an increase in people being sentenced for crimes — a major factor behind recent increases in incarceration in Wisconsin, according to the report.
The average number of youth in state prisons has plummeted to 77 in 2024. County governments run 12 centers in Wisconsin for youth sentenced to secure detention for lower-level offenses. Generally, the reported number of youth housed at these facilities has remained lower since 2010 than in the preceding decade, “when their numbers often exceeded 300,” the report says.
In its conclusion, the report says that Wisconsin’s correctional system comes with “significant financial and human costs.” For example, “overcrowding, understaffing and aging infrastructure of prisons such as Green Bay and Waupun Correctional Institutions has also led to several deaths and prolonged lockdowns in recent years.”
The report says the Department of Corrections has made progress on the issues of staff turnover and vacancies.
The department’s adult facilities have an overall vacancy rate of 14.8% for correctional officers and sergeants, according to the latest data on the department’s website. However, the percentage of vacancies varies by facility; for example, at Green Bay Correctional Institution, this vacancy rate is much higher, at 42.1%.
The report says that the question of whether and when to close prisons at Green Bay and Waupun has not been settled, and that Evers’ proposed plan to make changes to the prison system was almost entirely removed from the 2025-2027 state budget.
But even if the governor’s entire proposal had been approved, “the problems of a large, increasingly expensive and increasingly elderly prison population would remain,” the report says.
The Public Welfare Foundation, which commissioned the Wisconsin Policy Forum study, provides funding for the Examiner’s Criminal Justice Reporting Project.
