two. Welcome everybody to Midday magazine for this Wednesday March 26th, 2025. Have your host James
J. Mailoff here at 430 today. We're going to hang out with our friends from the ODC. We have
Anne Ashley and David joining us looking forward to that. Right now we have in studio our friend
Wood County Board Chairman Lance Plymouth. Lance, always good to see you. Thanks James,
always great to be here. You brought in a friend. We've got we'll introduce in a second,
but I wanted to do this real quick with cons rabbits community media and our friends over there.
Do yourself a favor. Go to your search bar on YouTube. Type in there. Wisconsin Rapids Community
Media and subscribe to the work they're doing over there. Support locals, support the arts and
support our good friends over there. I want to introduce Dylan here. Dylan, go ahead and introduce
yourself to the audience. Hi, my name is Dylan Koshanak. I'm the criminal justice coordinator for
Wood County. Do you see what I did there Lance? I made him say his last name so I know how to say
at this time. I'm learning. They have that K in the S right after. It gets really difficult.
I bought my last name from Mailoff Dylan. You can mess it up all you want. But I appreciate
you being here, man. And I'm really looking forward to talking with you getting to know your job
and what you do in our community a little bit more. I'll do that in a second. Lance, I wanted to
start with you, if you don't mind. Our new courthouse area has a new entrance. One, let everybody know
about that. And James, just a lot of lead into this perfectly because we'll get up to the part of the
new construction that Dylan is going to use. So as you approach the courthouse, there's a new
entrance, new security. It's I'm not going to say North Southeast or West because my wife always
does that mean right side, left side? As you're looking at the courthouse to the right of the old
entrance is the brand new entrance. It's the glassed in area, the new security area. So when you
enter the courthouse, you're going to go in there. Don't go to the old one. That's going to be
emergency entrance or exit only. I guess not an emergency entrance. Thanks for that. So when you
walk to that new one, you're going to walk into that brand new jail facility, which we started to
occupy this weekend, which in one of the things that we looked at when we built that facility was
additional programming, the way to rehabilitate people, the way to reintroduce them into the
community. And that's Dylan's job. Yeah. And Dylan, I saw that I saw this morning that Lance was
going to be bringing you in and I got very excited. Oftentimes, I really want time to prep these
interviews so that I can do a good job for the audience and do right by our guests. With this one,
I didn't really need to do that. I've wanted to talk to you for a while and this goes back years.
We talked with Sheriff Sean Becker once a month and Sean and I have become good friends on
air, off air. And one of the reasons is because I believe Sean is the perfect man for the job
in this particular moment in time. And I felt that way for quite some time. And I say that because
the first conversation we had was about ending the revolving door of criminals and the idea of
how we do that. Now my whole life and I come from the other side of the tracks. I'll be honest with
you. With what I'm used to is oh, well, that means higher bail bonds. That means higher crop
crime punishments and these things. And if you look at the history of this, that does not add up to
ending that revolving door. But what a big part of what does is why did you commit this crime?
What are you doing? What happened here? Now for every knucklehead out there and there are just
knuckleheads. That's just life. There are people who are doing things for certain reasons.
And the only way to stop that revolving door is to find those things out. You know this better than
most I would imagine. And I want to get into that with you along with the programs you were doing
over there in the new jail and how that's, you know, developing. But before we do any of that,
can you tell us a little bit about yourself? It's the first time we're getting to know you.
And our audience is getting to know you a little bit. So tell us a little bit about yourself. You don't
mind. Sure. So I started in this field. I guess the criminal justice world. I started. I went to
school at UWSP. I'm actually from Wisconsin Rapids. I grew up south of Rapids. I went to Lincoln
high school. I graduated in 2010. I went directly to UWSP where I graduated in 2014. Got into the
criminal justice world. Kind of the community corrections world. I worked for Portage County Health
and Human Services for a little over seven years. And then I transitioned to Wood County and was
actually worked directly with the jail and with Sean as the Wood County jail discharge case
manager, I think was my official title. So I was a Wood County Human Services employee, but I
partnered with the Sheriff's Department and was helping in the jail. And then in January of this
year, I transitioned into my current role, which is the criminal justice coordinator. So still working
with the same population. I've been working with the population a little over 10 years, but my role
has changed a couple of times, but overall still working with the same folks still passionate
about helping the same people. So appreciate that. Thank you for sharing that, Dylan.
For the visual audience that is able to catch us on YouTube, you're going to notice that
Dylan is a style. You look good. You dress well, man. Given that you put it could have gone into
fashion, could have gone into a couple of different industries. You got a nice voice. I'm glad you
didn't go into radio. I need this job. All that said, why this field? Why did you choose to do
this for a living? That's honestly that's kind of a loaded question. There's there's a lot of
layers to that. I guess at a very for lack of a better term superficial level, it was because this
is a population that I care greatly about. I guess that's like the superficial is the wrong word,
but like at an entry level at the basic level. This is a population that I care very deeply about,
and this is a population that I think deserves more opportunities than they've been given
historically. I guess that's probably the easiest answer to a very complicated and difficult question.
You care. I've just met you and I can tell you care that it's genuine, that there's area,
the people in this area, you give it darn. That goes a long way. It's such a huge first step
in this process. I really, with anything we're talking about, especially this field and especially
with what you're doing. Let's talk about that a little bit. I ask you, what is your job description,
how do you describe what you do? My current job description, I guess, is to oversee the criminal
justice department at the most basic level. I guess if you dig into that a little bit, that entails
a couple of different things. Our department, the criminal justice department, is made up of a
couple of different programs at this time. I think the long-term goal is for it to expand to
include more programming, more opportunities. Right now, we are involved with the jail on a
couple of different initiatives. One of them is the medication assisted treatment program. A
couple years back, the sheriff's department, I guess, wanted to start offering medication
assisted treatment to the individuals who are housed there. That was something that my department
oversees. I have a nurse practitioner on my staff and I also have a case manager on my staff
that are responsible for that program. We also have, in this new jail and actually fairly recently,
we've gotten involved with three bridges recovery. They've been hosting a recovery pod in the
jail now for several years and we are now partnering with them as well as the sheriff's department
to offer more programming in that pod. At one time, I guess, historically, there have been
components to that and we're trying to add as much as we can to provide as many opportunities as we
can for treatment and recovery options in the jail for the folks who are committed to
either investigating or pursuing a recovery lifestyle. What do you see as the benefits of this
for our community, for our society? Again, a loaded question. There's a lot of layers. Lance warned
you. I guess what I do. I mean, because there's so many layers to this world and I guess
that there are so many benefits to offering programming to offering opportunities to individuals in the
jail. Traditionally, you go to jail, you sit in jail, you serve, say, you serve a six-month sentence,
you sit for six months and you get out and that's what you did. You serve time. Programs like this
provide an opportunity for individuals to address their needs in the jail, to pursue growth,
to pursue recovery, to pursue progress in the jail. Traditionally, someone goes to jail.
They're serving time. They're being sanctioned. They're being punished for their behavior.
If they want to improve, they have to wait six months. They have to make, I mean, there's so many
things you can do individually, personally, to improve, but there aren't opportunities within the
jail setting traditionally. What you're seeing around the state is a push to offer more programming
in jails, to offer treatment opportunities in jails, to offer, I mean, some counties including
our own are trying to get a clinical component where we're actually getting clinical providers
into jails to offer one-on-one counseling to individuals. That's one of the parts of our new
recovery residential program in the new jail that we're really excited about is we have the
opportunity to bring in folks from the community to actually provide clinical counseling to
those that we serve in the jail. James, you know, they're just, you'll prepare to return to society.
Those behaviors have not been modified, and everybody sees the cost of a jail, but you don't see
the social cost, the kids that they have, that they're raising, those other concerns, and you know,
that's where Dylan's role is so important is we try to re-acclimate, bring these people back
in his productive members of society. It's my job to be just a questioner right now, but I can't
help, but you know, be taking some of this personal and thinking about myself, my brother, my sister,
and the way we grew up in what we grew up with, and my dad, and a lot of the situations with him
and everything. I'm extremely lucky and rare in this. My father, after a lifetime of knucklehead
in this and some of those things, my dad right now, almost guaranteed, was sitting there playing
with his football and baseball cards, and he'd drive my mom crazy, and that's the worst thing he'll
do today, and probably the next 20 years. It just doesn't happen very often, but I bring him up,
and I bring him up a lot, in part because he has allowed me to, and because he wants to be that
for people. There are a few people in this world that you would look at Jim Mailoff's rap sheet,
and think that his story would end this way. But it is, in part, because the guys like Sheriff
backer, because of people that were giving him an opportunity, and showing him that there was more
to life than this. When he got, when the first time he got locked up, he went and made sure to get his
GED and some of these things. It worked out a lot, but there's more to it as you're talking about
than that. And I think when it comes to it being a loaded question, part of the reason I would
imagine it is is because there are so many benefits to this. We're not, and you know, to anybody out
there that may have a looking at this a little funny or anything like that, let's cover that right
away. This is an investment. This is smart business doing this with our society, doing this with
people. It may not be comfortable. It may not like me saying it that way, but a lot of people
like looking at the world as businesses these days. So let me talk to you that way about it.
If somebody gets through this program and those six months go by and they come out of any of these
programs that I've ever seen any of this stuff better, what are they going to do? They're going to
get a job. They're going to be a taxpayer. They're going to be doing et cetera. They may be working
on a boy on a board somewhere, be a volunteer somewhere else or something like that. That is an
investment in society that lower taxes, different things like this. Now, I would like to think that
people would just do this because it's a good thing to do and it's the right thing to do. But if I
can't reach your heart, maybe I can reach your wallet. And it's a smart financial thing to do to
have, you know, it's not help. It's doing the exact opposite. Just letting things go the way we
have been. Yeah. And most, I'm just saying the most visible part of this is probably our delta
treatment court. People see that. They see the successes. But this took buying from a lot of people.
You know, obviously, the sheriff's department, but the judges, you know, judge wolf to staff up,
you know, as we started these programs, human services and all of the other probation and parole
and all the people that sit together and are staffing it. It's a major commitment.
We, one of the, oh, did you have some there time? Did you want to catch up?
I was just going to say Lance brought up the adult drug treatment court and I didn't even
hit on that. I specifically, I specifically brought up the jail programs. But yes, we also have
our adult drug treatment court. And that is probably the most intensive programming we offer as a
department and probably in the county. That's a 15 month minimum program where folks, they start
to program, they get all the group treatment they need, all the group therapies they need,
they get their individual counseling, they get case management, they have all these different
people in the community, all these partners. So our role in that, my department's role in that is
to kind of connect all these different agencies. We work with the DA's office, the public defender's
office, the private bar. We work with the judges, we work with probation and parole, human services.
I mean, the list goes on and on and we have all these community partners and our role is to bring
everyone together and what can we offer people? What can we do to put these individuals we're
working with in this treatment court in the best position to be successful moving forward? And
that's the program, I guess that's associated with my department that, like Lance said, that's
the most visual because these folks are in the community. They come in from day one to month 15
and you can see a significant amount of progress and the people that take that program seriously and
look at it as an opportunity, they're given a lot of opportunities and a lot of people rocket
and a lot of people do great things with that with the opportunities they're given and they really
take advantage of that opportunity to be in a community program rather than in prison or in jail
for a long term jail sentence because they get to be in the community, they get to still be with
their families, they get to work, they get to do all of these positive things that, I guess,
in short, that allow them to stay in the community and that's something I'm very passionate about
is sitting in jail or sitting in prison, you don't have the opportunities you have in the community.
It's just you don't have the opportunities with your own family with your own support network
and you don't have the opportunities to grow because there's only so much that can be offered
in a jail setting. So I am also very passionate about what we're doing in the community and our
community programming and we hope to expand on that in the coming years as well.
And two quick things before we get into the space in the new jail area and how you're able to take
advantage of some of that and everything for these programs. One thing that I know just because
I've had this conversation with so many people in the community and talked about similar things like
a big first step, if not the first step in all of this is accountability. It is certainly
owning your life and owning the mistakes you've made or what have you. Nobody is skating past that
and nothing can really come without that. You've got to own your mistakes, you've got to own
your place in this world and what you were in jail for, what is. It's a big part of this.
So as far as anybody getting a pad on the back or something like that, we're talking about people
who've already been through the court system. There's no getting around that part of it.
But that part of it is one of the greatest gifts for these individuals. That realization is part
of how they grow and succeed by owning these things and by accomplishing, it's one of the first things
you are able to look at and build yourself back up with. I know this because I saw it firsthand.
It's something where, okay, I own this in my life. Yeah, I own that in my life and I can move on.
Not forgetting anything, but certainly being able to build on that. It's a big part of this.
I would imagine from your perspective, I know it is from what I've seen.
Yeah, a lot of folks get trapped. I mean, it's a very easy thing to get trapped in. We get trapped in
either denial, shame, guilt. We either feel bad about the things we've done and it's hard to get out
of that cycle, that like shame and guilt cycle or it's really hard to get out of that denial cycle.
Because it's for a lot of folks and I see this every day with in all aspects of my life.
It's really easy to minimize the things we've done. It's really easy to justify the poor decisions
that we make. But like you said, growth is not possible without that accountability, without
looking in the mirror and saying, I should have handled this better. I should have done this better.
I should have done this differently, but we as a society like to, in general, I'm speaking in
generalizations right now, but as a society in general, I feel like we like to define people by the
choices they've made and the choices they continue to make. But that's the key. We can continue to
make different choices. We can grow and we can kind of change how we're identified by society,
by the choices we're actively making. But like you said, the first step is wanting to make that
change and being self-aware enough to realize what changes need to be made and holding
ourselves accountable. And we all know that the only perfect people out there are moms.
So we can all move on. None of us are moms here. We can move on from that. Dylan, I did want to
take a moment to talk about some of the new space that is over there with the new jail and how
you're able to use some of that for some of these programs and what you're doing with them.
Yeah, so I'm not the captain of the jail. I'm not the sheriff. They probably have way more insight
into it than I do. Captain of the jail seems like an interesting title. But yeah, so there's a jail
captain and that's the, I guess, the headhunch and the jail. And then obviously Sheriff Becker is
the headhunch on the Sheriff's Department there. But they probably have more insight than I do.
But from my perspective, the old jail we had, there was a library in there. That was where most of
the group programming took place. We called it a library. And then there were two conference rooms.
And that was where a lot of your individual conversations could occur. So when I was working as the
jail just church case manager, I did a lot of stuff in both of those rooms. But that was it. That
was what you had to interact in this new facility. There, it's four stories. There are multiple
conference rooms. There are multiple interaction spaces, I guess, for lack of a better term.
And the really interesting part of it is that the fourth floor of the jail, there is space set
aside for two recovery pods. And that's kind of where my department is heavily involved. As
the fourth floor, you're going to have folks from the recovery pods, folks who are working in
the jail. So your inmate workers, those that are working in the laundry space, those that are
working in the cafeteria, but the kitchen, I guess. But these recovery pods, there's a meeting
room up there. There's actually multiple meeting spaces up there. And there's the ability to meet
with people within the pods as well. So it works out really well because now we can offer more
programming because instead of sharing one meeting space with everyone in the jail, we have
devoted meeting space for the folks that are in our recovery pods. So we can bring in more
programming. So instead of the three bridges offers a really great cognitive behavioral
group programming. But now we're able to bring in, we can bring in a just for our recovery
pod folks. We can bring in any just for our recovery pod folks. We can bring in, like I said before,
something that I'm really excited about is we can bring in a clinical provider from the community
just for our recovery pod folks. So folks who are in jail who are saying, hey, I really want to work
on my recovery. And I want to be exposed to these different opportunities. They're going to get
a chance to experience a lot of different things. And our goal was to kind of try to create a well
rounded, because not everything works for everybody. And everybody has to kind of find their own
path in life of how to be successful and how to find, especially when you talk about recovery.
Everyone has their own recovery journey. So to me, it was really important. And this is something
we're still actively working on of what can we bring into this space that's going to expose folks,
some folks have never done any treatment. They've never they've never been to counseling. They've
never done a group therapy. So how can we expose people to a group environment? How can we expose
them to like a 12 step environment? How can we get them connected to peer support? How can we
be getting connected to one-on-one counseling? How can we get them connected to either talking
about trauma and like trauma programming? How can we get them talking about mindfulness and
bringing all these different things to the table? Because for me, 12 step programming might work
great. I might really align with AA and what AA does. And that might be the biggest thing in my
recovery. But for the next person at the table, they might do they might love the individual
counseling. And now when they come out of jail, they have experienced that and they can say,
on their way out of jail, they can sit down and talk to the discharge case manager and they
can say, hey, I've been in this recovery pod and I have benefited tremendously from this individual
counseling. Can we set this up in the community? And then because of the choices that have been
made within the county, that's a possibility because there's a discharge case manager who's
then able to say, hey, what worked for you in the recovery pod? What do you want us to set up so
that when they walk out of that jail, they have immediate services in the community.
Rather than get out of jail and then they reach out and in just the nature, there's so many people
right now who are reaching out for help and who are trying to work on themselves that there are
weightless in the community. There's weightless for individual counseling. There's weightless for
group counseling. So by doing this, we're kind of we're hopefully providing them with opportunities
to experience things in the jail. But then the next person, because this is all a team,
we're all kind of working together. The next person down the line is going to then also help
them set up with services so that when they get out of jail, they can continue those services
without a gap and also get them connected to a primary care doctor, get them connected to
whatever they need, medications, whatever. And the goal is we can take folks from in the jail.
They're serving their sentences, they're serving their time, they're being held accountable for
the decisions they've made, but now they're growing and they're walking out of the jail and they're
having opportunities to continue that growth in the community uninterrupted. And I think that's
the ultimate goal. Yeah. And just so you know, this is not a soft on crime thing, James. This is a
nonviolent offender kind of thing where we can get them back into the community. I really,
really appreciate the conversation today, guys. And Dylan, you're going to have to come back.
We got plenty more to talk about. Plenty more questions for you. Thank you so much for what you're
doing in the community. Same to you, Lance. Well, James, you know, I brought him because he's a
rock star. Yeah, you're going to have him back here without me. He was a little concerned coming in.
I'm sure you'll spend a lot of time here. Yeah, we're bringing you back, man. Thank you for the time,
both of you and what you're doing in our community. We appreciate you and appreciate our friends
over as constant wrapped community media as well. We'll a more midday magazine coming up right here
at WFHR.
