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- Wisconsin Scouts increasingly running into closed school doors
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- Five surprising facts about the Wisconsin economy: Experiencing the benefits of free market reforms
- Minnesotans fleeing to western Wisconsin
- 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
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Browsing: Crime and Justice
Know what puts a crimp in any effort to fight crime? Not being able to do anything with suspects once the cops catch them.
Students in Milwaukee’s public high schools who want a better life and know that school is their only way up are being battered, assaulted and exposed to gunfire or other reckless conduct on a daily basis. The school board ignores that and listens to activists, who think cops are bullies.
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.
Of the convicted criminals Wisconsin imprisons, most will serve a sentence and be released. Then what?
Milwaukee is among the cities that have repeatedly cut law enforcement positions in recent years.
Not only has the city reduced the number of authorized police positions, it has fewer officers to fill them, leading to higher vacancy rates. This inability to fill what remaining positions the city is funding includes leadership ranks: The Milwaukee Police Department is facing a damaging loss of institutional knowledge and practical skills, a loss that could worsen policing just when Milwaukee needs its force to perform at its peak.
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.
Wisconsin’s crime trends in essence reveal two different states: the city of Milwaukee (and other select urban areas) and the “Rest of Wisconsin.” While most of the state is relatively safe in comparison to five years ago, troubling trends in Milwaukee — one of the primary economic engines of the Badger State and home to 10% of its citizens — are undermining the health and safety of the state in general.
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.
Wisconsin, like most states, allows individuals who have been convicted of a one-time, low-level offense to ask a judge to have the record of that conviction expunged once they’ve served their sentence and demonstrated they pose no risk to public safety
Students in Milwaukee’s public high schools who want a better life and know that school is their only way up are being battered, assaulted and exposed to gunfire or other reckless conduct on a daily basis.
The Milwaukee Police Department responded to 1,310 calls for service at 34 MPS-controlled high schools in the 2021-’22 school year,
Like all government programs, the criminal justice system must be evaluated on the basis of cost-effectiveness and outcomes. Wisconsin’s current…
Who wins and who loses?
May 25, 2022aStudent debt forgiveness schemes are both inefficient and unfair policies for helping low-income families.
Criminals are emboldened if they think they won’t get caught
Survey solicits opinions on health care, crime, occupational licensing, and other issues.
Neither secret or unprecedented, business dispute docket helps all Wisconsinites.
Pandemic made the problem of delayed justice worse in Wisconsin