Here & Now

Wisconsin's 2026 Governor Candidates Consider State Prisons

Frederica Freyberg:
Governor Tony Evers’ $500 million plan to revamp the state prison system is underway, but only in the most modest fashion. Earlier this year, a bipartisan group at the State Building Commission released $15 million to start the years long process to eventually close down Green Bay Correctional. Tonight, as we continue our look at some of the biggest issues in the race for governor, “Here & Now” senior political reporter Zac Schultz asks the leading candidates for governor if they would carry through Governor Evers’ corrections overhaul.

Zac Schultz:
Green Bay Correctional and Waupun Correctional are two of the oldest prisons in the country still holding inmates, and studies have shown time and again the buildings are not safe for staff or prisoners. But building new prisons is expensive, and closing down prisons is not politically expedient when every election cycle can quickly shift focus to law and order. So we asked nine of the leading candidates if they would continue Governor Evers’ plans to reform Wisconsin’s prison system.

Missy Hughes:
I watched that plan be developed. I have great, great respect for the team at the Department of Corrections who has put that plan together, along with Governor Evers’ administration, and we need to get moving on that. You know, it might not be perfect, but nothing ever is when it comes to corrections. It’s a very difficult situation. And but we need to make improvements on that. We need to modernize that system. It is costing us more now to keep the old system in place than it would be to build a new system and get that rolling.

Mandela Barnes:
Yeah. So with Green Bay, I know that there are a number of safety concerns, structural concerns. Of course, I mean, we can’t have people or even — whether you’re a person who’s housed at that facility or a person who’s working at that facility, we can’t have people in substandard conditions. So the overhaul of smaller facilities, more regional facilities, I think that might get us to a place where we can more effectively rehabilitate people. And that has to be our baseline as well, ensuring that rehabilitation actually happens.

Francesca Hong:
I think it’s important to look at reducing our prison population, while also ensuring that those who are at the Department of Corrections have opportunities to be able to transition and be safe in their work environments. And so I will certainly look at some of the plans that the governor has now. But overall, it’s important that we look at transition programs and ways that we can keep those who are incarcerated and those who are working in our prisons safe.

Sara Rodriguez:
Absolutely. We have to absolutely have to make sure that we are doing what’s best for people within our prison system and corrections system, and it needs an overhaul.

Joel Brennan:
And I think we need to continually try to create that balance where, where there is need for secure detention and where there is need for employees of the corrections system to have the right tools at their disposal. We need to create those because we have these 150-year-old prisons and things that we need to do to make investments on. But at the same time, I think we also need and I think the governor has done this too, we need to look at the alternatives to incarceration. We need to work with our partners at the local level to ensure that there is a pathway that doesn’t just ensure that what we have is the last resort, which is where we’re putting people in prison and locking them up.

Tom Tiffany:
We have to reform the Department of Corrections. Governor Evers, when he ran against Governor Walker, he said, “I am going to take care of that including Lincoln Hills,” and he has not followed through on it. And when you look at the debacle over in Waupun with, I think there’s been a couple deaths over there, I mean, that’s unacceptable. We need reform in the Department of Corrections, and I will — I don’t know that I’ll go in the same direction as Governor Evers, but clearly we have to reform our correctional system.

David Crowley:
We absolutely need to revisit how we do corrections here in the state of Wisconsin. When I served in the state Legislature years ago, you know, Grover Norquist came to Wisconsin to talk about how we needed to do criminal justice reform. And there’s not many times where I can say I agree with Grover Norquist. And so we should be looking at how do we make sure that those, those, those, those less violent offenders aren’t just spending as much time in our care, which costs us a lot more money to have them in prison.

Kelda Roys:
I think we need to rightsize the corrections system, and we have to get serious about safety. In this state, we have pursued policies that are not only not evidence based, but that really undermine public safety. It is how we incarcerate people. It is how long, and it is the lack of services and training to help people succeed when they actually reenter society. We spend an ocean of money on this, and we are not getting the safety return that we deserve.

Frederica Freyberg:
Reporting from Madison, I’m Zac Schultz for “Here & Now.”