Despite budget hole state needs to upgrade prisons says consulting firm

Talk about it

A consulting firm says Wisconsin is in dire need of a more modern prison system.

Mead and Hunt says the state should spend $1.2 billion in the next decade to add almost 9,000 new prison beds and replace 2,700 old ones.

Corrections Secretary Rick Raemisch says the proposals will be used as a future guide. But with the next budget over $5 billion in the hole, Raemisch says there’s no way the state could afford everything.

He says they’ll need to do something, though, because the demand and the cost for prison space both keep growing. Wisconsin started the year with almost 23,000 prisoners, 27 percent more than its facilities were made for.

Raemisch says it would cost $160 million to build just one new medium-security lock-up for 2,000 inmates, and that doesn’t include the maintenance. But Mead and Hunt says taxpayers are already spending way more than they should on its facilities.

It says the Waupun, Green Bay, Fox Lake, Kettle Moraine and Oak Hill prisons are so old they cause major problems in maintaining and staffing them. And the consultants say there’s way too much overcrowding with two inmates now in cells meant for one at Waupun and Green Bay.

Mead and Hunt says that’s far below accepted correctional standards and it’s a practice that needs to be discontinued.

Tags: wisconsin news, mead and hunt, prison, conditions