Eau Claire Leader-Telegram. February 1, 2022.
Editorial: Prison education initiative a tough, but right, call
The new plan to offer more college classes to inmates in Wisconsin’s prison system is a little surprising. Virtually everyone acknowledges education’s role in giving people hope of a better life, but there’s usually little interest in offering those opportunities to those who have transgressed against society’s rules to the point they’re placed behind bars.
No less surprising is the source of this initiative: outgoing University of Wisconsin System President Tommy Thompson.
Thompson’s long tenure as governor saw significant increases in the size of the state’s prison system. He’s not an outlier for that time. Statistics from the Bureau of Justice shows there were slightly more than 250,000 people in state or federal prisons in the mid-1980s, shortly before Thompson became governor. By the early years of this century the population was more than 1.5 million.
“I built too many prisons. I think we need to be much more interested in rehabilitation,” Thompson told the Wisconsin State Journal.
Education must be a component of that shift. Thanks to a $5.7 million grant from the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., it will be.
The grant, given to the UW System and the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, allows a pilot program for inmates to begin at five campuses. Neither UW-Eau Claire nor UW-Stout is part of that initial effort, but administrators at both locations will undoubtedly be watching the results closely.
Contrary to popular perception, most inmates in Wisconsin have an educational foundation to build on. Approximately 70% have a high school degree or the equivalent. Wisconsin’s prison system has some two-year programs in partnership with technical colleges. Finishing off a bachelor’s degree generally waits until after release, and that’s no small hurdle for someone readjusting after years in prison.
At its base, this really isn’t all that different from what we wrote about last October, when we put a spotlight on the financial literacy class taught at the Chippewa Valley Correctional treatment Facility. A degree is more formal, but the fundamental goal of preparing people to re-enter society and become productive is the same.
There are those who object to such efforts. We understand the concerns. When people with clean records are struggling to afford education, offering it to people whose own actions resulted in prison sentences feels off. It seems like rewarding bad behavior at the expense of those who stay within the law.
But lifetime incarceration is, and always has been, the exception. The vast majority of people sent to prison are released at some point, and it’s usually not as long as people think. Only 10% of Wisconsin inmates serve sentences of five years or more. Two-thirds of inmates being released are between the ages of 20 and 39. That means they have decades to live.
It is in the best of interests of society and the inmate if the person being released is better prepared for life outside prison walls. Returning to prison is a failure for both. It means that, rather than the person holding down a job and contributing, society is once again footing the entire bill for the person’s needs.
Simply put, would you rather your tax dollars go to feed, house and clothe inmates, or that former inmates work and pay taxes to help support society?
Working toward that end also fulfils the mandate of the system itself. Prison systems aren’t usually called that. They’re far more often labeled as a state’s department of corrections. That’s the case for Wisconsin as well. Implicit in that title is the goal of correction and rehabilitation. True, that requires willingness on the part of the inmate as well. But words matter. The words used by society to describe this system focus on the potential for correction, not the requirement of punishment.
Shifting, as Thompson suggests, to an approach focused on helping people find restoration as productive members of society is realization of the department’s purpose. In the long run it’s more likely to produce people with an incentive to live within society’s constraints, rather than serve as a finishing school for criminality.
This work won’t be finished quickly. Results will take time. But this is a step in the right direction for Wisconsin.
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Kenosha News, January 31, 2022.
Editorial: Governor should veto extended work hours for kids 14 and 15
Two years into COVID, businesses are continuing to struggle to fill open positions.
We’ve seen lots of businesses opt to close early and others decide to close on certain days of the week.
To help struggling businesses, Republican legislators proposed to extend the hours that teens ages 14 and 15 could work at some jobs.
The bill passed through the state Senate in October and through the Assembly on Jan. 20 and now it’s waiting the governor’s action. While it’s good to see the Senate and Assembly are able to pass a bill, this is one that the governor should veto.
The law currently stipulates 14 and 15 year olds cannot work beyond 9 p.m. during the summer and 7 p.m. during the school year.
Legislators proposed to expand the allowable work hours for 14 and 15 year olds to between 6 a.m. and 9:30 p.m. on a day preceding a school day, and between 6 a.m. and 11 p.m. on a day preceding a non-school day, as long as the employer and employee are not covered by the federal Fair Labor Standards Act.
The idea was that would allow businesses to stay open longer.
But today’s worker shortage crisis shouldn’t be put on the backs of 14 and 15 year olds.
When youth are just starting their first jobs they are still learning, they shouldn’t be in charge of things like locking up a business. It’s also a matter of safety for those young people, if they are working late into the night.
9 p.m. is late enough for teens 14 and 15 to be working. It doesn’t need to be extended into 11 p.m.
If it’s moved to 11 p.m., that pushes the time the worker gets out the door even later. Before you know it, it could be midnight or later.
Once the teen turns 16, then let the work time extend a little. By that point they are older and have more experience.
If anything it could have made sense to allow shifts to go longer on the weekend during the school year – to 9 p.m. instead of 7 p.m. But 11 p.m. is too late.
Changing the state law, as the bill proposes, would also add confusion. The law would only apply to small businesses not covered by the federal Fair Labor Standards Act – businesses with annual sales under $500,000.
Larger businesses covered by the federal Fair Labor Standards would still have to cut hours for 14 and 15 year olds at the earlier times.
It’s great now that teens now can so easily get jobs – and high paying jobs at that. They can make $15 to wash dishes in some places. They should take advantage of the market and parents should encourage their young teens to get job experience especially in the summer.
But at the same time, laws need to be in effect to protect those young workers.
Gov. Tony Evers should veto this bill to protect those just starting out in the workforce.
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Wisconsin State Journal. January 30, 2022.
Editorial: Iowa Republicans adopt fair maps, proving Robin Vos wrong
It might sound far-fetched here in Wisconsin, with Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, running the state Assembly.
But it actually happened in Iowa recently — for the fifth time in as many decades.
Lawmakers in power approved new voting maps that treat all voters fairly. No gerrymandering allowed.
Iowa’s continuing success as a model for nonpartisan redistricting exposes the thin excuses Vos and his GOP colleagues keep making for partisan-skewed districts in Wisconsin. It also shows that principled politicians (which shouldn’t be an oxymoron) can still do the right thing for our democracy when they want to, rather than constantly fighting for more power and tearing others down.
Here’s the most remarkable thing: Republicans in Iowa control both the governor’s office and the legislature. So if they had wanted to, they could have passed just about any maps they wanted.
Instead, Iowa Republicans followed their time-tested process of assigning the once-every-decade task of reshaping legislative and congressional voting districts to a nonpartisan legislative agency that’s insulated from politics. Iowa’s nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency is forbidden from using election results or the addresses of incumbents when drawing new districts. Instead, the agency is instructed by law to create districts with a narrow focus: To adjust the lines, based on census data, so each district has the same number of people. The agency also must strive to keep its districts compact while following municipal and county lines as much as possible.
The Iowa Legislative Services Agency draws that state’s maps at virtually no expense to taxpayers because its squeaky clean process doesn’t invite lawsuits. Pretty much everybody accepts the maps. The agency holds public hearings across the state to get citizen input. Then the Iowa Legislature can ask for different versions of the maps — though not for political reasons — before they are finalized.
The Iowa Legislature last fall approved Iowa’s new maps with near-unanimous votes of 48-1 in the Senate and 93-2 in the House. In sharp contrast, Wisconsin’s gerrymandered maps cleared the Legislature last fall on party-line votes, with expensive lawsuits filed even before any new districts were proposed. Court battles over Wisconsin’s maps continue today and could take months if not years to resolve.
Iowa voters of all stripes will enjoy far more competitive elections for their statehouse and congressional seats than Wisconsin. That’s because Iowa’s process doesn’t allow its mapmakers to protect incumbents or pack like-minded voters into the same districts for partisan advantage.
In Iowa, 58 incumbents will have to square off against each other if they seek reelection this fall, creating more turnover and choice for voters. In Wisconsin, just six incumbents in the Assembly will have to run against fellow incumbents if they seek reelection under the maps drawn by our Legislature. The Wisconsin maps that Vos and Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, oversaw are nothing short of an incumbent-protection program that thwarts the power of the people to hold their elected officials accountable.
Marquette Law School researcher John D. Johnson has calculated that just 7 of 99 Wisconsin Assembly districts would be competitive under Vos’ version of his house’s new map. And just 2 of 33 Senate seats would be competitive (meaning they favor one party’s candidates by 5 percentage points or less).
Vos loves to claim that Wisconsin’s constitution requires the Legislature here to be in charge of drawing the lines. He and others use this as an excuse for using election data and sophisticated computer software to draw the lines to the GOP’s advantage, keeping Vos in power.
But Iowa’s constitution similarly assigns redistricting to its legislature, which must approve the maps. Yet that hasn’t stopped the Iowa Legislature from assigning the actual remapping work to a nonpartisan agency. If Iowa can do that, Wisconsin can, too.
No fewer than 56 of 72 Wisconsin counties — including many that lean heavily for Republicans — have endorsed nonpartisan redistricting in advisory referendums or resolutions. So the public is solidly behind fair maps here, if only Vos and Co. would listen.
Congratulations to Iowa Republicans — and to Iowa Democrats, when they have been in charge — for the Hawkeye State’s commitment to good government. Instead of wasting millions of dollars on lawsuits that will distract Wisconsin lawmakers for months if not years and disenfranchise voters of all political persuasions, Iowa is showing the rest of the nation how to get redistricting right.
Neutral maps aren’t impossible, as Vos likes to profess. They’re only impossible as long as Vos is Assembly speaker and our courts defer to partisan power over the will of the people.
