Wisconsin Law & Legal System – Page 18 – Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

Decline in Wisconsin Prison Population Results From Fewer Drug Offenders Behind Bars

Post author:Michael M. O'Hear
Post published:March 17, 2015
Post category:Criminal Law & Process Public Wisconsin Criminal Law & Process

As I discussed in this post, Wisconsin has achieved one of the nation’s higher rates of reduction in imprisonment over the past decade. To be sure, New York, California, and a few other states have far outpaced Wisconsin in this regard, and Wisconsin’s prison population remains nearly ten times larger than it was in the early 1970s. Still, we may appreciate some overall net progress in the Badger State’s numbers since the mid-2000s. As indicated in the chart after the jump, reduced imprisonment of drug offenders has played a central role in driving this trend.

New Article on Good Conduct Time

Post author:Michael M. O'Hear
Post published:March 12, 2015
Post category:Criminal Law & Process Legal Scholarship Public Wisconsin Criminal Law & Process

I have a new article in the Wisconsin Lawyer about good conduct time, a program that permits prisoners to earn accelerated release based on how well they do behind bars. Most states offer GCT to their prison inmates, but Wisconsin does not. (Inmates in local jail facilities here may earn GCT, but not the 20,000+ longer-term inmates in state prisons.) In the new article, I argue that Wisconsin policymakers should consider adopting a GCT program for prisoners as part of their ongoing efforts to reduce the size of the state prison population, which remains near historic highs. For readers interested in more on this topic, I’ve created a page on my personal blog that collects my writings on GCT.

Wisconsin: The Final Firework in the Antislavery Legal Movement

Post author:Joseph A. Ranney
Post published:March 4, 2015
Post category:Legal History Public Wisconsin Law & Legal System

This is the fourth in a series of Schoone Fellowship Field Notes.

Putting Wisconsin’s antislavery heritage in perspective. Wisconsin takes great pride in its antislavery heritage, particularly the Northwest Ordinance (1787), which ensured that Wisconsin would be a free state, and the Booth Cases (1854, 1859), in which Wisconsin stood alone in defying the federal government’s attempt to turn northerners into slavecatchers. This pride is justified but needs perspective. When Wisconsin arrived on the American stage as a new state (1848), American slavery was two centuries old and the legal reaction against slavery had been underway for 70 years. The Booth Cases were important, but they were merely the final fireworks in the drama of American law and slavery.