News & Commentary

In honor of Second Chance Month, Melissa Ludin and James Stein – two staff members of the ACLU of Wisconsin – bravely shared their personal experiences of what returning home after incarceration was actually like, and their feelings about what a second chance means to them.

National Fair Housing Month highlights how Milwaukee’s eviction crisis disproportionately restricts housing options for Black women.

The Wisconsin State Assembly passed AB 69 in 2021, a bill that would expand eligibility for the expungement of past criminal records and begin chipping away at the vast array of obstacles constructed to lock people with past convictions out of mainstream life. Unfortunately, the bill failed to pass in the Wisconsin State Senate in March 2022. 

Placing a blanket ban on pepper spray prohibitions will only create more avenues for unchecked abuse and increased excessive force. Incarcerated youth are long-owed a focus on actual rehabilitation practices and the State Assembly has no business contradicting that.

On Jan. 4, lawmakers in the Wisconsin legislature proposed bills that would require people with felony convictions to pay all fines imposed as part of their sentence before regaining their voting rights.

Wisconsin has the highest incarceration rate of Black people in the country -- a reality rooted in a racist criminal legal system.

We sued the City of Milwaukee to demand unbiased and constitutional policing by the Milwaukee Police Department. According to a recent report, we see that Black and Latinx Milwaukeeans continue to be stopped and frisked at alarming, worsening rates.

We’ve accomplished great things in the past few years in our Smart Justice campaign, and now, we’re switching gears and refocusing on our new goal — ending the harmful practice of crimeless revocation.

In the run up to the 2020 elections, the ACLU of Wisconsin embarked on an unprecedented effort to protect voting rights, defend democracy, and encourage all Wisconsinites - particularly those who are typically less likely to vote - to turn out and cast their ballots.