Bill Reforms Sentencing for Youth Offenders

A new bipartisan bill in the Wisconsin Assembly would prevent courts from sentencing people under the age of 18 to life in prison without options for parole or extended supervision. Supporters of the bill said Wednesday many of the individuals incarcerated at young ages have changed since their sentencings.

The legislation, AB856, allows what it calls “youthful offenders” to petition for an adjustment of their sentence after 15 years in prison. That increases to 20 years if the sentence is a result of a person’s death or sexual assault of a child.

If the court denies an incarcerated person’s petition or sets a release date more than three years after a hearing, that person would be eligible to petition again after three years have passed.

State Rep. David Bowen, D-Milwaukee, is a main sponsor of the bill. He said incarcerated people who often aren’t seen as human deserve the chance to contribute to their communities.

“It is easy for us to have a mindset that people just can’t be redeemed, people can’t get access to another chance out of fear that they will commit another act that will hurt someone else,” said Bowen.

Bowen said it costs more than $30,000 a year to incarcerate a single person to a Wisconsin prison. According to the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, the cost was even higher in 2021, reaching more than $50,000 a year in some cases.

“That’s real money that we could be spending on the needs of our state,” said Bowen. “These are individuals that we need in our workforce, folks that we need to be a part of our economy. They deserve that chance. Wisconsin deserves that chance, and our future depends on it.”

Preston Shipp, a senior policy counsel for the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth, said he saw the impacts of juvenile incarceration firsthand as a former prosecutor in Tennessee.

“They were told that they have no hope,” said Shipp. “They were put away and forgotten about when they were too young, in some instances, to drive a car, and they had invested heavily in their own rehabilitation. They were just waiting and praying for a chance to prove it to somebody, and that’s what we have here in Wisconsin.”

Dominee Meek served 27 years in prison after killing who he called “an innocent man” as a juvenile.

“I killed my victim in an attempt to become a man,” said Meek on Wednesday. “After killing my victim, I turned myself in and I started to become that man.”

He said he hates that his victim had to lose his life for that evolution to happen.

“There are men that are left behind in prison who could do just as much, if not more, than what I am doing out here right now,” said Meek. “All we ask is to be given the opportunity to demonstrate to you that we have changed.”

The bill also creates a list of factors for courts to take into account when sentencing people under 18 or hearing a petition for a sentence adjustment for someone under 18 at their original sentencing.

Those factors include, but are not limited to:

• The incarcerated person’s age at the time of the offense;
• Family and community environment;
• Intellectual capacity;
• Peer or family pressure;
• Rehabilitation capacity;
• School records;
• Trauma history;
• Involvement in the child welfare system.

As a bipartisan bill, the legislation stands some chance of passing out of the Republican-led Assembly. It’s unclear at this stage what its prospects would be in the Senate, where a parallel bill, SB862, was introduced last week.

Wisconsin is one of a small number of states to charge 17-year-olds as adults for criminal offenses.

Listen to the WPR link here. 

New Wisconsin bill requires parole, extended supervision options for people sentenced before age 18 was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.