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Audit: 40 felons employed by System

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Also by Kate Maternowski:

In-Depth: United by the outcome, divided by the process (September 21, 2006)
In-Depth: 'We Conserve' shines light on campus conservation issues (September 28, 2006)

by Kate Maternowski

Wednesday, March 1, 2006

An audit of the University of Wisconsin System released Tuesday revealed 40 felons were employed within the system as of late last year.

The Joint Legislative Audit Committee compared the Sept. 2005 payroll to the Department of Corrections' list of convicted felons, including only those who have been convicted of one or more felonies and remain under supervision because courts have determined they "may continue to pose a risk to others," according to the audit.

According to David Walsh, president of the UW Board of Regents, the findings of the audit are welcome as part of an ongoing process of personnel policies and practices in the UW System.

"We asked for this audit," he said. "We're looking for all the facts and we're going to follow up on this."

The audit also noted some felons may have been missed, as criminal records from jurisdictions in other states were not included in the investigation.

UW-Madison was found to have employed 27 of the reported felons, amounting to two-thirds of the total and numbering 23 more than next highest campus, UW-Milwaukee.

While some, such as Rep. Scott Suder, R-Abbottsford, believe this number is "shocking," UW law professor Walter Dickey noted "in a school as large as this, for us to have 27 doesn't seem like an extremely large number."

Following UW-Madison, the next largest concentration, four, was at UWM; and the remaining came from UW campuses at Oshkosh, Stevens Point, Eau Claire, Green Bay and Extension campuses. One employee who had been convicted of a felony was from UW System administration, but has since been removed from her position for performance reasons, according to UW System spokesperson Doug Bradley.

Twenty-five of the felons were convicted prior to their employment with UW.

A UW System release yesterday noted the total number of convicted felons reported in the audit amount to less than one-tenth of one percent of the system's 41,000-plus employees, and that 12 of those identified in the audit are no longer employed by the university system.

The audit was commissioned by the Legislative Audit Bureau in November at the request of UW System President Kevin Reilly; it came in direct response to the revelation that three convicted felons were employed at UW-Madison.

Medical school professor Roberto Coronado, currently serving eight years in prison for child molestation, was released from employment at UW-Madison last month.

In addition to Coronado, medical school professor Steven Clark is serving a one-year sentence for stalking.

And Lewis Keith Cohen, a comparative literature professor, was sentenced to 30 days in jail and eight years probation in the summer for child enticement and using the Internet to send explicit material to a child.

Controversy flared last fall when it was revealed that Cohen had returned to work at the university, commuting from jail to campus for work release.

Clark and Cohen have not yet been terminated from their positions, but the university has taken steps to fire them, and is currently awaiting completion of appeals processes in both cases.

Additionally, the Board of Regents recently completed a proposal which would expedite the process of terminating felons found to pose risk to students or other staff in their position at the university.

According to Darrell Bazzell, vice chancellor for administration at UW-Madison, the university has looked into all 27 Madison employees mentioned in the audit and all but two of the felons committed crimes that did not relate to their positions at the university. The other two, he said, "do not pose health or safety concerns" but are performing other work now as the investigation continues.

Bazzell noted there are a large number of convicted felons working in the state of Wisconsin, and the university, like other state institutions, is careful to allow these people to be employed in only safe positions.

"We would not do anything to put our campus at risk," he said. "But we cannot deny [former felons] positions if they do not pose a risk in those positions."

Walsh expressed a similar outlook, noting there must be a nexus between the felon's crime and its relation to the person's job at the university for that person's employment to be terminated.

"It would be very cavalier of me to say no one should be nervous [with the audit's findings]," he said. "But we have a responsibility to make people safe and to rehabilitate convicts in this state."

On the other hand, Suder said he believes the UW System is "not an institution for rehabilitating murders and child sex offenders."

Suder said he will be pushing for the termination of some of the listed felons, most specifically those with violent felonies who have "no reason to be on the payroll."

The 40 employees reported by the audit combined for a total of 54 felony convictions, nine of which were categorized as violent felonies. Two of these counts were homicide, which date to the 1970s; The Badger Herald has learned that these employees were from UW-Madison.

Other violent felonies included five counts of sexual assault of a child by four employees; two were convicted in the 1990s, and the other two were convicted since 2004.

Robbery, battery, theft, drug possession, operating a vehicle while intoxicated, fraud and forgery were among the other felonies listed in the audit.

"The magnitude of the crimes as well as the number should be alarming," Suder said. "If I was a university student, I would want to know where they are and whether they're working with students."

Yet Dickey said the audit's findings shouldn't make those at the university feel unsafe.

"This tag [of convicted felon] covers such a broad swath of territory," he said. "To assume that automatically means people are at risk is an unwarranted assumption."

The felons listed in the audit comprise varied employment categories; the 40 total felons include four academic staff, three faculty members, one graduate assistant and 32 classified staff.

According to Bradley, classified staff members are state civil service employees, working in areas such as food service, janitorial work and office support personnel. Because they are state represented, classified employees fall under the jurisdiction of the Office of State Employment Relations.

Among the recommendations made by the audit was that UW should conduct internal investigations to determine if the convictions are substantially job-related, and to determine the types of university jobs for which background checks should be conducted.

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Anonymous (March 1, 2006 @ 9:06am):

Why do I feel like this is a witch hunt? Ok, so a Medical School prof was convicted of stalking. Does this make him any less qualified to teach some field of Medicine? I sincerely doubt it. Critics of the UW are trying to portray it as a haven for perverts and deviants, however out of such a large staff there are bound to be persons with criminal history. The chief test for whether someone should be able to hold a teaching position at UW-Madison is not their criminal record, but rather their academic one.

Anonymous (March 1, 2006 @ 12:18pm):

It IS a witch hunt and an attempt to defame the UW.

People with felony convictions in their past will be using "taxpayer dollars" whereever they are: in jail; unemployed and relying on Medicaid, Food Stamps, and/or emergency room care; using the public library; driving on public, TAX-PAYER-FUNDED roads; taking the taxpayer-funded bus; etc. etc.

If they want the UW run more like a business, they need to stop exempting it from requirements on other businesses and restricting from engaging in activities other businesses can engage in.

Memo to the Legislature: ADULTERY is a felony. I want to see some convictions in that area, not just no-fault divorces....

Adrian Lomax (March 1, 2006 @ 10:11pm):

Representative Scott Suder
69th Assembly District
State Capital, 21 North
Madison, WI 53701

Dear Representative Suder:

You were quoted in an article in yesterday's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
saying it is "shocking" and "dangerous" that 40 UW employees (one tenth of
one percent of the total) have felony records. I find your statement
perplexing. When people are released from prison after paying their debts
to society, what do we, as a community, want them to do? We want,
desperately, for them to get jobs, support themselves through honest work,
and become productive members of society rather than resume criminal
behavior.

It appears that is just what these UW employees did (25 of the 40 were
convicted before they started their UW jobs). Since they've maintained
employment at the university, they are apparently fulfilling the demands
of their jobs, which is to say they are good workers and productive
members of society. If they'd been getting thrown back in jail for
committing new crimes, they wouldn't have kept their UW jobs long. These
UW employees are the model for what we want ex-felons to do, and here you
are blasting the UW for employing them.

Talk of murderers and child molesters working at the university sparks
sensationalism, but it is not clear to me that these employees should not
have been hired. There are no children at the UW. And the fact that
someone was convicted of murder in the 1970s says nothing about his or her
ability to perform a UW job now. The legislature has created a structure
of laws that allows these ex-felons to eventually be released from prison;
it must necessarily have contemplated that they should be allowed to earn
a living after their release.

Discriminating against ex-felons in the labor market makes none of us
safer. In fact, it is counterproductive. If ex-felons are not able to
obtain employment they will be all the less likely to transform themselves
into productive members of our communities. If a given ex-felon is able
to adequately carry out the duties of a UW job, he or she should have the
same opportunity as anyone else to get that job.

Sincerely yours,

Adrian Lomax
adrianlomax@mcleodusa.net

Anonymous (March 2, 2006 @ 8:29am):

In theory Adrian I don't know many people who would argue with you. I also feel as you about felons having the ability to support themselves. But in today's penal system, most people feel as if the felon did not do the appropriate amount of time in relation to their crime. Over-crowding, budget issues, etc...and the always revolving door of sexual offenders being released with out the proper or funded needed treatment. In a perfect world Adrian, you would have a great point. There are some who see the dilemma as they think it should be, there are others who see it as it is.God help us ALL...