After helping to bloat the state corrections system (in the 1990’s prison spending rose 246%), and taking political contributions from the for-profit private prison industry, Walker has now created a $5 million hole in Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke’s 2010 budget in his zeal to lie about raising the property tax levy. To cover this hole Clarke is proposing fewer highway patrols, more early releases, and cuts to programs to help rehabilitate inmates and reduce the numbers of re-offenses.

While Walker’s spokesperson claims he “takes a really strong stance on public safety” (and thanks to Capper, let's not forget his faux "Safety, Affordability and Pride" theme from his 2007 budget), a review of all of Walker's proposed budgets shows he actually proposed cutting the numbers of sheriff’s deputies and House of Correction officers in all but one of his proposed budgets from 2003 to 2010. And all those budget and staff cuts resulted in record-setting overtime spending. Walker also mismanaged the House of Correction so poorly that Sheriff Clarke had to take the department over.

Sure sounds like someone who takes a "really strong stance on public safety."

According to this Office of Justice Assistance report, 415,543 arrests were made in 2008, equivalent to roughly 7% of Wisconsin's 5.6 million population. About 100,000 of those arrests were of juveniles.

Based on legislation proposed by Reps. Sheila Harsdorf and Ann Hraychuck, law enforcement officials would be required to collect DNA at every one of these arrests.

Here are some of the crimes that one can be arrested for that Harsdorf and Hraychuck would require DNA collection for: murder, rape, robbery aggravated assault, arson, drug possession and sale.

So far, so good. These all are crimes that you would expect DNA to be useful in helping to convict or exonerate the person arrested.

Here are some more crimes that law enforcement would be required to collect DNA upon arrest: forgery, fraud, vandalism, weapon law violation, gambling, DWI, liquor law violations, disorderly conduct, vagrancy, family offenses, runaways.

Hmm. Your 15 year old gets busted for cutting class or staying out too late and breaking your town's curfew and suddenly the state's collecting her DNA. Or you get into an argument with your neighbor, someone calls the cops, and you're required to provide DNA. Or you're driving home after happy hour and get pulled over for speeding. Suddenly you're being booked for drunk driving and giving a DNA sample.

Setting aside the fact that this is an unnecessary privacy violation, the sheer volume of collecting and managing these samples poses serious financial and staffing challenges.

Van Hollen's DOJ couldn't keep track of all the DNA samples they currently have. How are they going to manage over 400,000 samples? Can the WI crime labs even handle such a volume?

I can see police, DOJ and crime lab budgets growing as I write.

I guess this is good news for those seeking jobs in law enforcement. Not so good news for tax payers.

In one breath Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clark is calling for tax cuts and a smaller government and in the next he's calling for the collection of DNA before a person is even charged with a crime.

More from the Illusory Tenant here.

So all those drunk frat boys, high school pickpockets, trespassers and happy hour goers who drive home better make sure they don't get caught. Whether they're guilty or not, their DNA will belong to the government if Sheriff Clark gets his way.

Two Madison college professors with religious backgrounds, who have worked tirelessly to change the world, will be honored for their lifetimes of activism on Oct. 3 by the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice (WNPJ), a statewide network of 170 organizations working for social change.

Joe Elder, a Quaker peace activist who is a University of Wisconsin professor of sociology and Asian studies, and Esther Heffernan, O. P., a Dominican nun who is emerita professor of social science at Edgewood College, and a widely respected leader on prison reform and criminal justice issues, will receive Lifetime Achievement Awards at a reception following WNPJ’s annual fall assembly at the Goodman Community Center in Madison.

Seven others will be honored with Peacemakers of the Year awards. Two veterans, Iraq veteran Jason Moon, of Milwaukee, and Vietnam veteran Will Williams, of DeForest, won in the adult category.  Senior citizen winners are Elaine Kinch of the Racine Coalition for Peace and Justice and Don Hoffman of Rapids Citizens for Peace in Wisconsin Rapids. Youth awards will go to Dartanian Lewis of Milwaukee and Josh Bartz and Jannett Arenas, both of Madison, for volunteer work with WNPJ member organizations.

Esther Heffernan, 80, began her lifelong social activism in the 1940s as a University of Chicago student working for interracial justice.  She describes her research in a Washington, DC women’s prison as “life-changing.”  It resulted in, Making It in Prison: The “Square,” the “Cool” and “The Life,” published in 1972”, a book considered a seminal work in the field, which continues to serve as a resource to those who set corrections policy.

Her promise to the women in the Washington, DC prison to make their lives visible to others has shaped her deep involvement in criminal justice reform over the last several decades, especially on issues of women in prison and rehabilitation upon their release.

She is currently chair of the Task Force on Money, Education and Prisons, seeking change in Wisconsin’s criminal justice system; a board member of Family Connections that brings children monthly to visit their mothers at Taycheedah Correctional Facility; and a member of the Dane County Task Forces on Disproportionate Juvenile Minority Confinement and on Racial Discrimination in the Criminal Justice System.

Joe Elder, 79, informed his draft board during the Korean war that he would go to jail rather than be inducted. Two years later he became a Quaker. With other Quakers, he has carried secret messages between authorities in conflict in India and Pakistan; North Vietnam and Washington; North Korea and Washington; and Tamil Tiger militants and the government of Sri Lanka. 

During the Vietnam War, he delivered medical supplies a hospital in Hanoi, and after the war helped organize Madison Quakers, Inc. which has built a peace park and a school in My Lai, and provides micro-loans to village and ethnic women in Vietnam.

Deeply committed to internationalism, as a UW professor in Sociology and Languages and Cultures of Asia he has encouraged countless students to broaden their horizons, learn languages and live and study in other countries.  He has long served on Wisconsin's Governor's Commission on the United Nations.

Elder, also committed to inter-faith dialogue, in 1995 was one of the founders of the International Committee for the Peace Council that includes Nobel Peace Prize Laureates Mairead Maguire and the Dalai Lama. During the past decade the Peace Council has met in world trouble spots such as Chiapas and Jerusalem to listen, learn and provide an interfaith presence.

Peacemaker of the Year winners:

Jason Moon, 35, is a leader in Milwaukee’s chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), Veterans for Peace (VFP) and the board of VFP’s Homeless Veterans Initiative to find and assist homeless veterans in the Milwaukee area.  He testified at the national Winter Soldier hearings in 2008, at which Iraq and Afghanistan veterans told of their experiences.

Will Williams, 65, a member of Madison’s Veterans for Peace chapter, uses his own experience in Vietnam to speak and counsel young people about the realities of military service and challenge promises of recruiters.  He has spoken across the state, linking peace, prison reform, and immigrant rights.  

Elaine Kinch, 70, Elaine was one of the founders of the Racine Coalition for Peace and Justice, and a member of the Central America Solidarity Coalition..She has traveled on peace missions to Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Chiapas and last winter to the Middle East, where she lived with a Palestinian family in Israel and helped harvest olives, to learn more about the situation there.

Don Hoffman, 70, a retired probation and parole officer, became a leader of Rapids Citizens for Peace in 2006, establishing monthly peace vigils on the bridge in Wisconsin Rapids.  .One of his projects was to get Democracy Now! on a local cable television station.

Dartanian Lewis, 13, a student at Blessed Savior Catholic School in Milwaukee, has been volunteering at Casa Maria Catholic Worker house for homeless families.  He has worked on a wide range of social justice issues – peace, worker rights, firearms violence, medical supplies for Cuba, protection of the rainforests, and help for Darfur. He sells fair trade chocolate at churches and events to raise money for those projects. 

Josh Bartz, 28, a board member of OutReach, Madison’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community center, created a program (OutThere) to address the need for youth programming and social and support opportunities for LGBT people ages 18-24. It has become  a weekly program of outings, games, discussion groups and movie nights.

Jannett Arenas, 22, a Madison Area Technical College and UW-Madison student, is a co-founder and organizer for Alcance, a student organization focused on supporting access to higher education for Madison area Latino youth.  She has helped to build the Madison Chapter of Voces de la Frontera, working on immigrant rights issues of in-state tuition, drivers cards, and the national DREAM Act to provide undocumented students a path to citizenship. 

The Peacemakers of the Year presentations will be at 3:15 p.m. on Oct. 3 at Goodman Community Center, 149 Waubesa St., Madison, at the conclusion of WNPJ’s annual Fall Assembly, which begins at 10 a.m.  A special reception to honor Joe Elder and Esther Heffernan will be held from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. at the same location, with speakers and music and Capital Times columnist John Nichols as emcee.  All events are open to the public.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is reporting that a man has been charged for registering to vote and trying to register others after being convicted of a felony. While this specific case may not directly apply, it does bring up some very important questions that we should be asking ourselves. In Wisconsin convicted felons are not allowed to vote until after they have completed the terms of their sentence. That could mean a prison term in addition to a long extended period of supervision.

Convicted felons often have to serve very long periods of probation and/or parole after they leave prison. One of the major goals of this supervision is that they become productive and fully integrate back into society. Exactly how are they supposed to do that if they are barred from voting, one of the most basic rights/responsibilities that we have as citizens? Many of them hold down jobs, pay taxes, provide for their families but still Wisconsin law refuses their right to vote.

According to an ACLU study, 62,324 people with felony convictions in Wisconsin are not allowed to vote; however, 61% of these people are no longer incarcerated. By not allowing them to vote, we are hindering their ability to reinstate themselves as active members of the community. According to Senator Russ Feingold, “…the more doors we close on people trying to rejoin society, the more likely it is we will drive them back to the behaviors we want them to leave behind.”

Wisconsin ’s felony disfranchisement laws are more severe than those of several of its neighboring states. Michigan , Illinois , Indiana and Ohio all automatically restore voting rights upon release from incarceration. Disenfranchisement in Wisconsin also disproportionately affects African American males and other minority populations. The ACLU study found that one out of nine African Americans males are disenfranchised because of Wisconsin ’s ex-offender laws. This statistic places Wisconsin 11th in the nation for the disenfranchisement of African American voters. This is obviously unacceptable and some might even call it Jim Crow, Wisconsin style. It is a disgrace and the current law should be changed.

Wispolitics.com reported that the as-yet-unfrogmarched Karl Rove, apologized to Wisconsin's delegates at a Republican National Convention event this morning for "getting weepy."

He wasn't crying to atone to God and man for being the hack architect for this god awful endless war in Iraq that has caused so many deaths and so much misery. And it wasn't because he violated the law by compromising the security of an undercover CIA agent to punish her husband. And it wasn't for debasing our national discourse with his slash-and-burn character assassination brand of politics.

After weeks of silence, Guzmán is meeting criticism of his campaign by finally speaking to the press, and accusing one of his opponents, incumbent Democratic State Rep. Pedro Colón (Eighth Assembly District, Milwaukee), of being "anti-catholic" for his vote for the Compassionate Care for Rape Victims bill, signed into law by Gov. Doyle in March.

The Department of Corrections has decided it is just too risky to allow a non-profit, in-state group to send free books to inmates in Wisconsin prisons.

Citing security concerns that the books somehow might contain contraband, Corrections has informed Wisconsin Books to Prisoners that it will no longer allow the group to send books to prisoners.   Read More »

Marquette Professor John McAdams might be too busy silencing speech to comment, but two more studies have determined that Wisconsin leads the nation in yet another dubious category. The studies found that African Americans in Wisconsin are 42 times more likely than whites to receive prison terms for drug convictions. The stat is the highest racial disparity in drug sentencing in the nation. The studies also found that the City of Milwaukee has the second-highest racial disparity for drug arrests among all major U.S. cities.

The new national studies largely validate an analysis done by the Wisconsin Sentencing Commission last year. At that time, by “creative” use of numbers, John McAdams was able to crow bar his preconceived notions into the data. It was his confused attempt to belittle what are clear disparities in our criminal justice system. When he finally finishes his crusade against a comedian, McAdams will likely turn his biased analysis back to why these racial disparities are no big deal. While he is in the mood to censor stuff, that would be one presentation that I would like to nominate.

Yesterday a coalition of groups, including the Institute for One Wisconsin, formally launched an effort to restore voting rights to felons that have served their time in prison. Under current law, convicted felons can’t vote until after they are off probation. In some cases this disenfranchises people for decades even after they have already served their time in prison.

Even though they work, pay taxes, and raise families in our community, they are barred from fully participating. Even though the goal is that they become productive members of society, our outdated law forbids them from taking part in the most fundamental responsibility that we have as citizens. The estimate is that some 40,000 people in Wisconsin are blocked from voting because of our current law.

In early debates and speeches, Michael Gableman has continually suggested that he has gone toe to toe with arsonists and other criminals. It has been very clear that Gableman and his corporate supporters are trying to make him into a crime fighting super hero. Even though the high court does not exist to lock up criminals, they are using this tactic because it has worked for them in the past. With that being said, the image that they are painting of Gableman is not accurate. It seems that Michael Gableman is prone to exaggerating about his record and padding his resume.

The first ad supporting Gableman was from the Club for Growth. It is the same type of ad that the corporate interests used last year to drown out the ethical problems of Annette Ziegler. Although the ad is by Club for Growth it sounds like it came right out of Michael Gableman’s stump speech. The ad says that he has “gone toe to toe with the arsonists, sexual predators, domestic abusers and white-collar criminals who belong in jail.” Milwaukee’s Shepherd Express is reporting this week, that after an exhaustive search of online records Gableman’s record does not match his tough rhetoric.