U.S. Prison Population Continues Slow Decline; Wisconsin’s Inches Up

Ringing in the new year, the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics recently released its data on prisoners in the United States in 2015. After rising consistently for about four decades, the U.S. prison population (state and federal combined) peaked at a little over 1.6 million in 2009. Since then, the population has declined steadily, but very slowly. For 2015, the total was a little over 1.5 million, or about 35,000 less than 2014. The continued reductions are encouraging, but must be kept in perspective: the population remains many times above its historic norms. The current rate of 458 prisoners per 100,000 U.S. residents is over four times greater than the long-term rate of about 100 per 100,000 from before the imprisonment boom. We are still very much in the era of mass incarceration.

The Wisconsin numbers continue to be lower than the national norms, but are moving in the opposite direction. At yearend 2015, Wisconsin’s prison population numbered 22,975, up 1.7 percent from 2014. This amounts to 377 prisoners per 100,000. By comparison, Minnesota’s rate was just 196 per 100,000.

Here are a few additional observations:  

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Big Dreams and Hidden Harms

One of the first choices that the Trump Administration will face after the upcoming inauguration is what to do about the “Dreamers.”  The name Dreamer has been used both to refer specifically to the young adults currently participating in the Deferred Action Childhood Arrival program (DACA) and, more generally, to any undocumented residents of the United States who were brought to this country by their parents when they were minors.

It is not difficult to be sympathetic to the plight of the Dreamers.  As undocumented residents of the United States, they were subject to immediate deportation under the law as it existed prior to 2012.  However, these longtime residents of the United States often had little memory of their birth country and may not have spoken any language other than English.  They grew up in the United States, and attended U.S. schools, and as a result they share the same hopes and dreams of any native born young adult.  Moreover, they were not morally complicit in their parents’ decision to enter the United States.  Prior to 2012, approximately 2 million people essentially found themselves trapped in a form of limbo – feeling American, unconnected to any foreign country, and yet unable to work lawfully in the United States or to plan for their future.

Legislation was first introduced in Congress in 2001 to resolve this situation and to permit these persons to obtain legal residence in the United States.  Titled the Development Relief and Education of Alien Minors Act (or DREAM Act), this first bill and similar versions introduced in subsequent years were designed to create a 6-year pathway to permanent legal residency.  To be eligible under the DREAM Act, a young adult had to have been brought to the United States at a young age, was required to be a college graduate or a military veteran (or be currently enrolled or enlisted), and could not have a criminal record.  The DREAM Act and its successor bills boasted bipartisan support but never passed both houses of Congress, either as a standalone bill or as a component part of a comprehensive immigration reform package.

Frustrated by congressional inaction, President Obama chose to extend relief to the Dreamers in the form of a Presidential Directive.

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That Extra Incentive

Most of us are familiar with wellness programs—programs sponsored by our employer or health plan that try to incentivize us to eat healthier, sleep well, and get more exercise.  If you’re anything like me, it helps to have that extra push or incentive, especially around the holidays when sweets abound, to stay on track—or at least, to not stray too far from health goals. Most of these programs have the added advantage of lowering health care costs, both by providing financial incentives to reduce immediate costs to the individual employees and by boosting the overall health of the employees as a whole, which could reduce future health care costs.   However, extensive technical regulations and recent litigation by the AARP make implementing health and wellness programs increasingly tricky for employers.

Title II of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (“GINA”) and the regulations promulgated by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (the “EEOC”) thereunder, generally prohibit “an employer [from] request[ing], require[ing], or purchas[ing] genetic information [which includes an individual’s family medical history] with respect to an employee or a family member of the employee.”  42 U.S.C. § 2000ff–1(b). However, there is an exception for wellness programs, as long as employers jump through a set of hoops. 29 CFR § 1635.8(b)(2).  While not without its own problems and excesses, the exception in the EEOC regulations at least allows employers to provide incentives to those employees willing to participate in employer-sponsored wellness programs.

The AARP doesn’t like this whole “incentive” idea to begin with. It recently filed a lawsuit against the EEOC in an attempt to vacate the regulations entirely.  AARP v. U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, No. 1:16-cv-02113 (D. D.C. 2016) (hereafter the “AARP Complaint”).  This actually might not be a bad idea, except for the fact that the AARP thinks that the regulations do not have enough hoops.  In fact, the AARP would prefer that the regulations abolish any permission for any incentives or penalties to induce participation in employer-sponsored wellness programs. The AARP alleges in its complaint that all employer incentives or penalties to induce participation in employer-sponsored wellness programs violate Title I of the ADA and Title II of GINA.  AARP Complaint at 3. 

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