Issue Position: Prisons and the Criminal Justice System

Issue Position

Wisconsin spends about $1.3B per year on corrections (about $250 on a per capita basis). This per-capita spending level is higher than that of Michigan, Iowa, Minnesota, and Illinois. Additionally, incarceration is a sunk cost. We are paying almost $30,000 per year to imprison one person in a medium-security prison, and this spending is only worth it if we are keeping truly dangerous people out of open society. We cannot afford to imprison people who are not a danger to others. If we reduced spending to Iowa levels, we would save about $600M per year.

The criminal justice system should seek to keep people and their property safe and secure. In some cases, incarceration is a fitting solution, but it should also be seen as a last resort. Given that prison time diminishes convicts' future economic outcomes and makes it harder for them to escape the poverty that makes crime more appealing, criminal justice solutions that keep the state safe while focusing on rehabilitation and restitution are best.

We can take several steps to reduce corrections costs and improve the criminal justice system:

* Prisons should only be used to keep those who are a danger to the state out of open society (i.e. murderers)
* For those facing sentencing for nonviolent crimes like theft or vandalism, our priority should be to restore the victims and prevent re-offending. To do this, we can:
* Assess fines that cover the damage done and add a punitive element
* Determine the cause of the crime
* Economic hardship?
* Political protest?
* Mental illness?
* Other?
* Address the root cause and resolve it to prevent further crime
* Help individuals find jobs
* Show them alternative ways to achieve their goals (e.g. peaceful protest instead of vandalism)

The growth in incarceration and corrections spending over the last few decades can largely be attributed to the drug war. It is simply useless to spend thousands of dollars to incarcerate someone for possession of a drug - especially marijuana. There is nothing inherently wrong with simply possessing a substance, so our focus with drugs should not be to criminalize and heavily prosecute supposedly "evil" people with drugs; rather, those who would like to break addiction and live a clean life should get the help they need. It will be much cheaper and more beneficial than simply throwing them in prison. To rectify issues associated with the drug war, we can:

* Completely decriminalize marijuana
* Offer those with a hard drug problem the medical assistance they need
* Shift policing resources away from catching anyone and everyone with drugs and towards solving both violent crime and property crimes

Drug distribution is a more difficult issue. Some drug dealers certainly fit the stereotype of hardened criminals involved in a violent cartel; however, others technically guilty of distribution are simply people selling a bit of marijuana to their buddies. When looking at laws on the distribution of drugs, we have to consider the nature of the distribution. Is it a peaceful transaction among consenting adults with no deception involved, or is it a component of a large criminal organization predicated on theft, violence, and destruction? While we should have no problem fervently prosecuting a drug dealer involved in a whole host of other criminal activity, we should worry about drug laws that incarcerate completely peaceful people.

We also must be aware of the fact that drug laws do not affect everyone equally. Both the wealthy white kid distributing marijuana in the suburbs and the African-American doing the same in the inner city are technically guilty of the same crime, but one is far more likely to be caught and prosecuted: the black kid. People in safe communities where it seems like the police focus on speed traps are doing perfectly fine without being caught and prosecuted for drugs. Those in inner cities or other disadvantage areas are most likely doing drugs at very similar rates, but they are far more likely to bear the negative consequences of the drug war. This is particularly true in Dane County, and we can work to help our impoverished people and communities of color by reforming the criminal justice system.

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