early release – ABOLISHmke

Ep. 21- Governor Tony Evers Could:

This is an audio version of “Governor Tony Evers could:” published at ABOLISHmke.com on October 10, 2021.

Governor Tony Evers could:

The governor, surrounded by his prisons.

…solve Wisconsin’s spiraling prison population crisis!

On the campaign trail, Tony said he would cut Wisconsin’s prison population in half. Instead, it slowly, but steadily rose under his administration until the courts closed due to COVID19. Now it’s rising again, and faster.

…pardon and release elderly and low risk people from prison!

The Wisconsin state constitution gives the governor very broad pardon power. Tony loves to talk about how he’s pardoned so many people, but NONE of those pardons are of people currently serving sentences. A fact that he cowers away from. He chose pardon criteria that exclude everyone until 5 years after they completed their sentence. That will restores some rights to some individuals, but do nothing to reduce incarceration.

Parole commission update

Wisconsin’s parole system is a corrupt and harmful charade. Reform progress under the new chair, John Tate II has been achingly slow, and the parole commission engages in convoluted logic and willful ignorance to justify deeply unjust practices. At their recent staff meeting on August 4, Tate shed some light on early release through executive directive 31 and other parole practices.

The meeting started 30 minutes late, and lasted about 25 minutes. It was held at the DOC headquarters in Madison, but the public was only invited to attend online. The full staff was present, except commissioner Doug Drankiewicz, who attended via zoom. The late start seemed to be due to technical difficulties with the zoom meeting, seemingly because they changed the format to better restrict public participation. Tate has always been very concerned about possible disruption from people at the meetings, though none has ever occurred.