Volunteers,
organizers and supporters of people sentenced under the old law (and
thus eligible for parole) have been attending the monthly meetings of
the parole commission since last August. There we have seen evidence of
active efforts to sabotage and obstruct the long overdue releases of our
loved ones.
The
racism and signs of manipulation we witnessed at January's meeting were
particularly intolerable. We will not sit and watch this injustice any
longer. From now on we will follow the monthly meetings with a rally supporting reform and releases.
We're asking you to join us on February 5 and on the first Wednesday of every month thereafter until they LET OUR PEOPLE GO!
We're asking you to join us on February 5 and on the first Wednesday of every month thereafter until they LET OUR PEOPLE GO!
Agenda
- 9:30 am- attend the public portion of the parole commission meeting. Public is not welcomed to speak during the meeting, but the more people we have bearing witness, the more pressure for reform will be felt.
- Unknown- the meeting will go to closed session and we will have to leave the room, but will gather outside near the staff parking lot on the south side of the building.
- 12:00- rally and press conference, outside the DOC building on the south side. We will have speeches, signs and chants demanding release of our loved ones as the parole commissioners leave the building.
Speakers include:
Talib Akbar- survivor of Wisconsin prison system, sentenced under the old law and released in 2013. Organizer with MOSES.
Davina Jones- fiance and advocate for Anton C. Hudson, currently trapped in Wisconsin prison under the old law.
Tiffany Hollimon- fiance and advocate for Marshawn Venzant , currently trapped in Wisconsin prison under the old law.
More TBA
If you cannot attend, please support this effort by signing and sharing our petition demanding accelerated releases and reformed criteria.
Also, please share and invite friends using the facebook event.
Background
Governor
Tony Evers appointed John Tate II, a social worker from Racine to Chair
the Commission. Tate is the second black man in this role, and the first
person coming from a social work and helping profession (typically
commissioners come from the DOC or prosecutor's offices). He came in
with a stated intention to increase releases and help reduce mass
incarceration in Wisconsin.
In
response, Tate has seen extraordinary obstruction from the DOC, the
legislature, and even the rest of the commission.
At the meetings and
through communication with incarcerated people, we have witnessed or learned about the
following:
- 100% of Tate's office staff left to work for the DOC.
- Steven Landreman, one of three commissioners, who had been there 18 years quit abruptly and now works for the DOC.
- Danielle LaCost announced an intention to resign, but has stuck around for months, making it harder for Tate to hire a replacement and get to work.
- Prison guards and wardens have systematically targeted people before their hearings, giving them unusually strict or harsh conduct reports to jeopardize their release.
- Senator Fitzgerald and other legislators have so far failed to schedule a senate vote to confirm Tate's appointment to parole chair, seven months since he was appointed.
- the DOC's Bureau of Classification and Management (BOCM) has also prevented parole eligible people from gaining security level qualifying them for release
- the DOC's program review committee (PRC) has denied parole eligible people access to programs that qualify them for release.
- The DOC's Division of Community Corrections (DCC) has denied people placement in counties where they have family and a solid re-entry plan, undermining their prospects at parole.
- The DOC and Parole commission have not implemented Executive Directive 31, which allowed the Parole Chair to consider releases for extraordinary circumstances like heath issues or overly long sentences.
- People have been routinely and repeatedly deferred and held in prison for arbitrary and subjective reasons. Deferral reasons such as "not serving enough time for the crime committed" are common, as well as "serving too much time to be suitable for release".
- At the January meeting, Danielle LaCost indulged in repeating insults that her DOC friends had directed at Tate. "Our department has been called a shit-show", she said to Tate, and "you've been called a dipshit."
- Commissioner Douglas Drankiewicz implied he was also considering quitting, saying "I don't want it to be 100% commissioner turnover, too. I don't want to leave, I think I’m good at this job, but..." He warned Tate not to hire from outside the DOC. We expect DOC employees will continue the obstruction and decades-long tradition of confining people as long as possible.
The
sabotage of the Parole Commission started before Tate's appointment.
Under the previous Chairman Daniel Gabler, releases had all but ceased.
There were so few paroles granted that Scott Walker considered abolishing the parole commission to "streamline" the process by not bothering with routine hearings anymore. Opposition efforts prevented this change from officially occurring, but Gabler and Walker did
allow the commission to shrink at the end of their terms. After losing
the 2018 election, Walker appointed Gabler to be a Milwaukee County Judge. He
is up for re-election on April 7, 2020.
The
parole commission went from 8 Commissioners and 13 staff in 2014 to
three commissioners and two staff by the time Tate took over. Those two
staff left in his first six months. The commission was 6 months behind
on correspondence on Tate's first day, and is now more than 12 months
behind. Family members write support letters and make calls to the
commission, but they are never answered. Letters announcing details that
would qualify people for release, like housing and job offers do not
get into their files. The commission is so understaffed that they are
giving out automatic 2 month defers without holding a hearing at all.
Rather than letting Tate give people fair hearings and more frequent
releases, Wisconsin's parole system has made itself completely
dysfunctional.
The roots of
this problem lie in the law change that occurred in January of 2000.
That's when Wisconsin implemented its Truth In Sentencing Law,
eliminating parole as a sentencing option in favor of a bifurcated
sentence (X years in prison and Y years on community supervision with no
evaluations, reviews or options for early release). This law change
abandoned the people sentenced before Jan 1, 2000 to a legal limbo where they
went before the parole commission with a clear conflict of interest. Without new people being sentenced to parole, the commission's budget and commissioner's paychecks are based on holding hearings for a limited group of people that can only grow more
limited with every release. Eventually, if the parole commission continued to operate as it had before 2000, parole
commissioners would completely eliminate the pool of people they were reviewing. Their personal financial interest is thus protected by deferring releases.
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