Browsing: Courts

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.

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.

Of the convicted criminals Wisconsin imprisons, most will serve a sentence and be released. Then what?

Wisconsin’s court system is plagued by massive delays and a growing backlog of criminal cases. It now takes more than a year for a court to resolve an armed robbery charge, 14 months to resolve a sexual assault case and more than 15 months to resolve an allegation that someone committed a murder.

The Badger Institute today released four new reports as part of a Mandate for Madison crime and public safety package.

For the people who need it most — poor residents of Milwaukee, families and victims of particularly violent crimes like homicide and aggravated assault throughout the state, children in schools where politicians won’t allow police, and almost anyone awaiting a verdict — Wisconsin’s criminal justice system is failing.

Criminals are emboldened if they think they won’t get caught

Neither secret or unprecedented, business dispute docket helps all Wisconsinites.

Pandemic made the problem of delayed justice worse in Wisconsin

Pulling cops out of public schools was a crazy idea.

Pretrial risk assessment should be expanded, not scrapped, advocates say

State Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Dallet wrote recently, according to a story in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, that a study on race and prison sentencing in Wisconsin “confirms what I and many others have been saying, which is that we have a long way yet to go to have a system that truly treats all equally.

State needs better crime data to get an accurate picture of who’s incarcerated here and why

Move would stress support and health care systems throughout the state

Home detention one option for helping prevent virus’ spread while maintaining public safety

The current system is vulnerable to politics and perverse incentives

Meet Daniel Kelly, the most improbable candidate to land a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
A Colorado boy, Kelly did not grow up in Wisconsin. He didn’t attend either of the state’s two law schools, the legal factories that stamp out most of the top judges in Wisconsin. In the two decades that Kelly worked as a lawyer in the Badger State, it was largely out of the public spotlight on complex commercial litigation.
And when his name surfaced last year as one of three finalists to replace retiring Justice David Prosser, Kelly was excoriated as an extremist by lefties horrified at the high court’s rightward tilt. He was far from the odds-on favorite to earn the governor’s appointment.

On Aug. 12, 2015, Christina Traub’s boyfriend forced her to the ground and put his hands around her neck. On a Madison street in broad daylight, he slammed her head against the sidewalk and strangled her, his thumbs over her throat.

Twenty-two states provide for election of the chief justice by the court, and none seem to have faced the divisiveness that Wisconsin has experienced.