Justice Reinvestment: Care Not Cages

Wisconsin has an opportunity to make our communities safer by investing in people—not more prisons. WISDOM’s Justice Reinvestment Campaign, Care Not Cages, calls on state leaders to safely reduce Wisconsin’s prison population, stop new prison construction, and redirect public resources toward the conditions that help communities thrive.

Our vision is rooted in a simple principle: true public safety is built on human dignity, accessible healthcare, quality public education, stable housing, and meaningful economic opportunity. Rather than continuing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on prison construction, renovations, and incarceration, Wisconsin can invest those resources in solutions that address the root causes of incarceration.

WISDOM has identified a set of common-sense decarceration strategies—including expanding treatment alternatives and diversions, restoring meaningful opportunities for commutation and parole, expanding compassionate and earned release, ending incarceration for technical revocations, and reducing the use of prolonged solitary confinement. These strategies can safely reduce prison populations and create a pathway to permanently close Green Bay Correctional Institution, Waupun Correctional Institution, and Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility without building new prison beds.

Our Care Not Cages vision also calls for redirecting savings from incarceration into community-directed investments in housing, healthcare, workforce development, education, and violence prevention.

Read the full Care Not Cages roadmap to learn more about WISDOM’s vision for safely reducing mass incarceration and reinvesting in Wisconsin communities.