Wisconsin’s Prisons Receiving Third-Party Review

A consulting and management firm will begin on-site visits to Wisconsin prisons next week, the next step in a third-party review of the state’s prison system.

Falcon Correctional and Community Services, Inc. “exists to elevate mental health services in jails and prisons” for incarcerated Americans with mental illness, according to the firm’s website. Amidst concerns over the conditions of confinement in state facilities, Falcon is studying some aspects of life inside Wisconsin prisons to find areas for improvement.

The Wisconsin Department of Corrections recognized the value of a third party reviewing policies and procedures and providing recommendations for improvement, DOC Secretary Jared Hoy said in a July 9 letter to lawmakers on Wisconsin’s 2023 Assembly Committee on Corrections.

On the same day, prison reform advocates spoke in front of the committee, giving testimony about solitary confinement and other issues. The Department of Corrections has received scrutiny after deaths of incarcerated people and criminal charges against staff at Waupun Correctional Institution.

“This is just one step of many that we at the department are taking to make improvements at our facilities to help keep staff safe and improve the conditions for those in our care,” Hoy said of the review in the letter.

Falcon teams have been deployed to review restrictive housing practices in at least four states, according to the firm’s proposal: Washington, Connecticut, Louisiana and Massachusetts.

Bringing in Falcon is an acknowledgement of serious problems in the department, said Mark Rice, the transformational justice campaign coordinator at the nonprofit WISDOM. Rice hopes the study will lead to change, but he also thinks the department should make improvements based on information that is already available.

“Solitary confinement is being used far too frequently,” Rice said. “People have been dying. People have not been able to get access to medications that they need in some situations. People have not had adequate health care during emergency situations. And so certainly [there have] been several deaths that were preventable.”

What will Falcon do?

In November, the DOC and Falcon signed a contract. The Examiner received the contract and accompanying documents through public records requests to the DOC.

The partnership includes a comprehensive study of the Division of Adult Institutions’ health care program, behavioral health program, correctional practices and restrictive housing practices.

The study was projected to take six months, the documents say, with a cost of about half a million dollars.

Currently, the Falcon team is on the fourth stage of the study, according to Beth Hardtke, director of communications for the Department of Corrections. This involves beginning group workshops, according to the contract documents.

The fifth stage is titled “Onsite Visits and Facility Studies,” and it is scheduled for weeks eight through ten of the partnership. The Falcon team will begin on-site visits next week, Hardtke said.

Some priorities listed in the plan focus directly on incarcerated people. These include timely emergency treatment, access to and administration of necessary medication, psychiatric services and access to recreation.

Other priorities are focused on employees. These include facility leadership culture, staff wellness and safety and behavioral health and health care staffing.

The second part of the partnership is labeled as optional. It involves technical assistance for implementing the study recommendations and includes Falcon measuring the impact of the changes after 30, 90 and 180 days.

Hardtke said the DOC plans to release recommendations from Falcon after the project concludes.

One section of the proposal covers six areas of focus for Falcon’s experts. It tasks Falcon’s experts with conducting analyses related to training, recruitment, culture and retention of staff, as well as restrictive housing and initiatives aiming to reform it.

One of the other areas of focus is a report with “actionable recommendations and a roadmap for addressing behavioral health, health care and correctional practices, including restrictive housing, and their impact on [incarcerated people] and staff.”

The report should include a timeline for execution and proposed ways to evaluate and adjust the implementation of the recommendations, the section says.

Analyzing restrictive housing

In a section about restrictive housing, the proposal says the DOC is “engaged in an agency-wide culture change” to more rehabilitative practices. Restrictive housing includes disciplinary separation — when an incarcerated person has committed a violation. It also includes instances when staff remove an incarcerated person from the general population for reasons such as their own safety.

The state limits when incarcerated people in disciplinary separation can leave their cells. They may do so “as needed for urgent medical or psychological attention, showers, visits, recreation and emergencies endangering their safety in the cell or other reasons as authorized by the warden.”

For November 2024, 3.4% of incarcerated people tracked were in disciplinary separation, according to the DOC.

Also for November, the average sentence to disciplinary separation was 37.4 days, while the average time spent there was 23.6 days. The average time spent in disciplinary separation declined overall from January to November.

The most common reasons for disciplinary separation are disobeying orders, disruptive conduct, disrespect, threats and assault, according to DOC data from November 2019 to November 2024.

Advocates have called for reform of solitary confinement in Wisconsin, which can be defined as confining a prisoner for 22 or more hours a day without meaningful human contact. In 2011, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture said indefinite and prolonged solitary confinement in excess of 15 days should be prohibited, citing the mental damage caused by social isolation.

The Falcon team hopes  “to reduce reliance on restrictive housing as a tool.” The group’s analysis will cover prevention of restrictive housing when possible and alternatives and modifications to restrictive housing time. It will also focus on the return of incarcerated people to other housing after leaving restrictive housing.

To substantially decrease reliance on restrictive housing, “the scope of systemic change must reach far beyond the restrictive housing areas,” the proposal says.

Advocates want to see reform, independent oversight

When the Examiner shared the contract documents with WISDOM’s Mark Rice, the focus on solitary confinement reform drew his attention. He hopes the publication of a report will lead to the end of long-term solitary confinement in Wisconsin.

“We’ve really been leading the charge on that issue for over a decade, and have seen not a huge amount of progress, not the progress that we want to see,” Rice said.

Susan Franzen told the Examiner that she’s encouraged by the focus on behavioral health and restrictive housing. Franzen is the director of operations for Ladies of SCI, another prison reform advocacy group. She said she’d like to see incarcerated people have the opportunity to share what it’s like trying to get mental health care in prison.

“They mention that they’re going to partner with all relevant stakeholders [for the study],” Franzen said. “But there is no mention of speaking to or engaging with inmates or their family members.”

Falcon experts will gather information through staff interviews, workshops, site visits and existing documents, forms and data, according to the proposal document. The Falcon Method of analysis “relies heavily” on interpreting quantifiable data instead of using “only subjective testimonies,” the proposal states.

“DOC values input from friends and family and while they won’t be engaging directly with Falcon consultants, the department is certainly considering their viewpoints as leadership makes decisions on this project,” Hardtke said.

The consultants will continue to interact with “a wide variety of staff” throughout the DOC and during the site visits, she said.

Franzen pointed to unfilled positions for DOC psychological services, where the agency has a vacancy rate of 21.6%. She hopes the Falcon partnership will benefit incarcerated people who need psychological services.

In October, the Examiner reported on the Falcon partnership and the idea of creating an independent ombudsman to increase oversight of the prison system. Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine), chair of the 2025 Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety, and Rep. Jerry O’Connor (R-Fond Du Lac), vice chair of the 2025 Assembly Committee on Corrections, weighed in.

Rice doesn’t see the Falcon partnership as a substitute for independent oversight, but he thinks “lives can be saved” if it leads to improvements in the prison system.

Third-party review underway for Wisconsin prisons  was originally published by Wisconsin Examiner.