County jails throughout Wisconsin could soon be forced to move a portion of their inmates if the state budget is not passed shortly, according to a letter from the Department of Corrections Tuesday.
Rick Raemisch, Secretary for the Department of Corrections, sent a letter Tuesday to county sheriffs throughout Wisconsin, alerting them that if Wisconsin legislators do not pass a budget by Dec. 2007, inmates from county jails will be transferred to one of 20 state-run prisons.
Currently, the DOC and sheriffs from county prisons operate by a jail bed contract where the DOC pays sheriffs to hold inmates the state prisons do not have room for.
The DOC is currently operating on $4.5 million for jail bed contracts from the 2005-07 budget, but according to Raemisch, they have almost exhausted those funds.
Wisconsin state prisons house about 23,000 inmates, and lately, they have been at full capacity. In the past, the DOC sent convicted felons from Wisconsin to out-of-state prisons to cope with the abundance of inmates.
When Gov. Doyle took office, in Jan. 2003, the 3,000 Wisconsin felons serving their sentences in out-of-state prisons were brought back into Wisconsin jails in an attempt to save tax dollars, according to Raemisch. But since Wisconsin state prisons were at capacity, the newly arrived felons were housed in county prisons run by county sheriffs.
This jail bed contract between the sheriffs and the DOC will be broken if a budget does not pass, but currently provides sheriffs with additional revenues to supplement their budget, and it helps fund operating costs to lift some of the burden off county taxpayers. According to Raemisch’s letter, Sheriffs collected $10.8 million in the 2007 fiscal year from these jail bed contracts.
"We have a great relationship with the sheriffs," Raemisch said. "The county gets revenue from [the DOC] that they depend on for their budget, and it helps us better manage our prison population."
The relationship between the DOC and the sheriffs will be jeopardized, Raemisch said, if the budget stalemate continues.
"The fact that we don’t have a budget is harming not only the Department of Corrections, but counties are losing millions of dollars that they depend on," Raemisch said. "I hope the Republican legislators that are refusing to pass a budget can go to these counties, look the sheriffs in the eye and explain why they are losing millions of dollars."
State Rep. Scott Suder, R-Abbotsford, calls the situation "Chicken Little politics."
"[The DOC] wants to instill fear in the public to achieve a political statement which I think is unfortunate and very disappointing," Suder said. "Constituents and taxpayers realize the games being played by the Doyle administration. The Department of Corrections had become one of those tools in Doyle’s political games against Assembly Republicans."
In order to make room for the 600 inmates who would be moved to state prisons, the DOC is deciding which rooms they can convert into dorm-like spaces with bunk beds to house inmates.
Not only would the absorption of inmates take money away from sheriffs, Raemisch added, it would also create a more dangerous situation for DOC employees, the public and inmates themselves.
"We are bringing more inmates into an already full system," Raemisch said. "There would be an increased chance of inmates assaulting staff or inmates assaulting other inmates."
