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Prison planners caught between projections, reality

Published: December 28, 2009
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By Paul Snyder

The Wisconsin Department of Corrections is trying to set a construction strategy based on what likely will be conflicting inmate population projections.

The first estimate predicts more inmates and recommends major renovation projects. The second projection, though not yet released, is expected to forecast the opposite.

“It’s one of the struggles we face,” said Earl Fischer, administrator of the department’s Division of Management Services. “We don’t have advance knowledge of what’s coming down the pike and with the fiscal challenges the state faces, we don’t have much flexibility in terms of growth.”

The Corrections Department next year will finish new projections based on legislation designed to reduce inmate populations at state prisons. If those projections show no growth or a decline in the population, Fischer said, the department can request less construction money in future state budgets.

But those projections would contradict a statewide, 10-year facility development plan Madison-based Mead & Hunt Inc. completed earlier this year. That plan recommends, among other things, $142 million worth of renovation work at the Green Bay Correctional Institution in Allouez. The renovation would add 250 cells to the complex.

“A good deal of the 10-year plan that was done for us was premised on a growing population,” Fischer said. “We’re working with the assumption that sentence reduction will put all plans to increase capacity” on hold.

It still is just an assumption based on inmate-related bills and an early-release provision in the 2009-11 state budget that could reduce the prison population statewide by about 3,000 inmates, said state Sen. Rob Cowles, R-Green Bay.

But, he said, there is no guarantee the inmate population will decline. It also is possible, he said, that future legislation could increase the population.

“We’re going to have to watch this carefully,” he said. “There are so many moving parts to this.”

A new governor could bring a new attitude toward prison population or Corrections Department spending, Fischer said, so the numbers the department can work with in 2010 might be meaningless in 2011.

“It would be safer to just go with the higher projections in the Mead & Hunt report,” he said. “But whether the state has the funds to support that is another issue. Right now, no one feels we have the luxury of doing expansions.”

Right now, the department is receiving only a fraction of the money it requests.

In the 2009-11 budget, Fischer said, the department requested about $250 million to finance projects at all of its prisons. The department, he said, received $30 million.

The lack of money, no matter what projections might show, illustrates the problem, Cowles said.

“How do we know we even have the money for the maintenance work they need?” he said. “The next couple budgets are going to be pure misery.”

Former judge state Rep. Fred Kessler, D-Milwaukee, said it behooves the Corrections Department to project a decline in population.

“So many of the decisions I made as a judge were based on what kind of offenders should be put in jail,” he said. “The thing is prisons and jails are self-fulfilling prophecies. The state has the power to control exiting, and now that we have a release mechanism, there are ways of dealing with overcrowding.”

But even without expansion there will be maintenance issues to deal with in Allouez and other prisons. Whether the prisons get that money, Fischer said, is up to lawmakers.

“It’s politics,” he said. “And it’s constantly subject to change.”

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