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- Barely one bill in 10 becomes law in Madison
- The many ways Wisconsinites will pay and pay for other people’s student debt
- UW tenure hysteria was unwarranted
- Wisconsin voters approved majority of school tax-hike requests last Tuesday
- Will government’s heavy hand make business “Go Galt”?
- Chronic Absenteeism remains extremely high in districts across Wisconsin
- Settled: Pandemic school lockdowns hurt Wisconsin kids badly and were pointless
- Residents of Glidden and Jacobs a rare breed — and getting rarer
Browsing: Corrections and Public Safety
The Badger Institute summarizes relevant findings related to medical marijuana given the arrival of legislation that would allow its use in Wisconsin.
Cannabis legalization might be a policy that many would assume is a negative for a state’s workforce, but Badger Institute analysis of the limited available research paints a much more complex and positive picture.
The research shows that more adults will use cannabis if it is legal to use in any form. When it comes to youth use of cannabis, the research is still highly disputed, but the available research and data indicate there have not been dramatic increases in youth use of the substance when it becomes legal.
There is a real possibility for cannabis reform to result in public safety gains for the Badger State but the tradeoffs that must be accepted are a significant reduction in safety on the state’s highways and roads and an increase in minor property and nuisance crimes near cannabis dispensaries if the state were to establish a commercial market for either medical or adult-use products.
According to a Marquette Law School poll last fall, 64% of registered Wisconsin voters, and 43% of Republicans, favor full legalization. Thirty percent of Wisconsinites and 50% of Republicans think it should remain illegal. Only 6% of registered voters say they just don’t know.
Many counties in Wisconsin have essentially decriminalized the possession or sale of marijuana, or cannabis, as it now often is known, and the relatively few people who are charged criminally in other counties are ever incarcerated.
Governor Evers signed a budget passed by the Legislature that includes a more than 30% starting pay raise for assistant district attorneys and assistant public defenders and more flexibility for merit-based pay raises for attorneys currently in those roles. This makes the compensation for these roles more competitive and should reduce the high rates of turnover currently existing in District Attorney and public defender offices.
The Badger Institute on Wednesday praised action by the Legislature’s budget writing committee to raise pay for prosecutors and public defenders, a move the Institute has been advocating for nearly a year.
Progressive city councils across the country are being forced by violence in and near their public schools to rethink their bans on stationing police officers on those campuses.
Assembly Republicans have proposed a sales tax plan for the city of Milwaukee that would put police officers back in Milwaukee Public Schools for the first time since 2016. The plan would allow the financially hobbled city to levy a local 2% sales tax with the promise of state shared revenue to help pay down on its ballooning pension debt.
Public safety is a foundational requirement for prosperity in our communities. This means that fully funding the various systems that ensure public safety is a requirement, not a political preference. That’s why individuals from the most progressive to the most conservative agree these agencies should function effectively.
Milwaukee is significantly less safe than it was a short time ago. In fact, compared to 2019, overall crime in Milwaukee is up 22.6%, with violent crime up 15.6% and property crime up 26% from three years ago.
A spokesman for Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson has told the Badger Institute it is “likely that Milwaukee police officers will have a renewed presence in some Milwaukee Public Schools in 2023.” Should Milwaukee Public Schools and the Milwaukee Police Department follow through, it would be the first time officers have been posted in schools since 2016. The School Board allowed officers to patrol around schools for four years after that but voted unanimously to prohibit that as well in June 2020 after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Know what puts a crimp in any effort to fight crime? Not being able to do anything with suspects once the cops catch them.
Wisconsin’s criminal justice system must first and foremost work to reduce crime, improve public safety and achieve justice for victims.
The Badger State remains, on the whole, a safe place that’s been getting safer. But Wisconsinites who live and work in Milwaukee have seen dramatic increases in homicide, auto theft and aggravated assault. For some specific offenses, other Wisconsin cities are also seeing worsening trends.
The cops have had enough, says Kennedy, and the long lines that have stretched across generations in some families, grandfathers to fathers to sons who all were eager to serve and sacrifice – are being severed.
It now takes, on average, more than 15 months to fully resolve, from arrest to closed case, a homicide charge in Wisconsin. Armed robbery takes a year and sexual assault cases average 14 months.
The new age of electronic monitoring
A majority of voters believe the state’s criminal justice system needs significant improvements, nearly three-quarters believe expungement law needs reform, among other findings.
Incarceration is rare for pot-only convictions; coupled with municipal policies, Wisconsin has, in effect, decriminalized marijuana.