News & Commentary

We did not quite make it through the legislative maze to get the 2nd Chance Bill passed this session, but we will bring it back next year. The bill would reverse some changes enacted in 1995, which reduced the age at which a person is considered an adult for purposes of prosecution from 18 to 17. Currently, only about one in 20 arrests of 17-year-olds are for a serious crime, and only about one in 50 arrests are for offenses classified as violent. “The vast majority of arrests of 17-year-olds are for rela

The U.S. remains the only country in the world that imposes LWOP on children. The international community has long recognized that people who committed crimes as children deserve a second chance. It's time for the U.S. to follow suit.   This piece was reblogged from ACLU.org.

 

On Thursday, January 24, 2013, the City of Milwaukee Common Council’s Public Safety Committee held an open public hearing. The subject of the hearing was Mayor Tom Barrett’s appointment of Ms. Ann Wilson to the Milwaukee Board of Fire and Police Commissioners.   Dozens of Milwaukeeans came to the City Hall Council Chamber that afternoon, including ACLU members and our community allies. 

Young people are held in solitary confinement in jails and prisons in across the United States, often for weeks or months at a time, the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

Today, the Milwaukee County district attorney’s office charged four Milwaukee police officers with crimes for conducting illegal body cavity and strip searches.  Allegations against officers in police District 5 caused the Milwaukee Police Department to reassign at least seven officers and a supervisor in March 2012. The American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin filed a public records request with the department on March 28, 2012 in an attempt to assess whether the department is following its own strip search and body cavity search procedures. The department has been largely unresponsive to the ACLU of Wisconsin’s repeated requests.

When people are arrested and taken to jail, they don’t expect it to be easy. But a stay at the jail shouldn’t include being denied basic treatment for physical or mental health problems. This is why the ACLU of Wisconsin Foundation and Legal Aid Society of Milwaukee have been working through the courts on behalf of all prisoners in the Milwaukee County Jail and County Correctional Facility-South.

Last month, the Madison City Council voted to ban anyone from asking for donations of money or goods in large parts of the city, including all of the Central Business District. Although an ordinance barring “aggressive panhandling” has been on the books for some time, city officials claimed that stopping panhandlers – and many others – from asking for money is needed to create a more “pleasant” experience for Madison residents and visitors.

Wisconsin and Minnesota are very similar states with very different approaches to marijuana possession. The two states have roughly the same number of people and similar demographics, but Wisconsin arrests twice as many people for marijuana possession. Which makes for an interesting question: what might happen if Wisconsin cut its marijuana possession arrests in half?