Letter | Evers is partly to blame for prison crisis | Letters to the editor

Dear Editor, Kudos and thanks to Nicholas Garton and his staff for their excellent editorial on Wisconsin’s overcrowded prisons (“Why Wisconsin’s prisons are filling well beyond capacity and keep filling up,” August 21).

More than any other journalist I've read, this team has managed to tell the full story behind the current prison crisis, the historical context and everything else, and also explain the best way to solve it. Great reporting!

And this article was not unfair to Governor Tony Evers, as a previous letter writer claimed, in suggesting that he bears some of the responsibility for our failure to reduce the prison population. The governor has the constitutional authority to use his clemency power not only to grant pardons (which only benefit people who were released from prison at least five years ago) but also to commute excessively long sentences of current inmates and to release elderly or sick inmates on humanitarian grounds.

He does not need legislative approval for such actions. Other governors have used their clemency powers to right many injustices and save many lives, especially during the COVID pandemic.

Evers has sometimes hinted that he would do the same, but despite repeated appeals from WISDOM and other organizations, he has not yet done so.

Sherry Reames

Madison

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