AUSTIN—Today, the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Right on Crime initiative published the policy brief, Community Supervision in Wisconsin.

“Wisconsin is third in the nation for the amount of time imposed by post-prison sentences despite the fact that re-offense rates plummet after a three-year period,” said Tom Lyons, Wisconsin State Director of Right on Crime. “Truth-in-sentencing mandates the sentencing court to determine the entirety of a person’s sentence and to divide the sentence by time to be spent in custody and time to be spent on community supervision. There is no mechanism to reduce the amount of time and the average amount of time spent on supervision post-prison is likely to increase over the next several years.”

Key Points:

  • Length of time on parole adds costs to our criminal justice system with no benefit to safety.
  • Conditions of release include standard rules that often are not related to the underlying offense.
  • Revocation of extended supervision results in a total sentence longer than ordered by the court.
  • Probation holds are disruptive and are not independently reviewed by anyone outside of the Department of Corrections.
  • An absence of a clear policy related to crimeless violations of conditions can create uneven results.

To read the policy brief in full, please visit:

https://www.texaspolicy.com/community-supervision-in-wisconsin/