State Still Has Deep Backload of Criminal Cases
Despite increased funding still a shortage of prosecutors and public defenders.
Courtesy calinjurylawyer/Public Domain
For years, Wisconsin has faced a backlog of cases stemming from a shortage of legal staff. Raises and new positions in the state budget are the latest effort to tackle that backlog.
Wisconsin Court System data shows only around half of all criminal cases statewide were resolved within six months last year. In 2023, it took an average of 259 days for a Wisconsin felony case to be resolved — five days faster than in 2022 but months longer than before the COVID-19 pandemic.
In one egregious example, Brown County had a backlog of roughly 5,000 cases earlier this year. State Sen. Jamie Wall, D-Green Bay, told WBAY in June the county has the biggest backlog of court cases in the state.
A big reason for the statewide backlog is a persistent shortage of both prosecutors and public defenders to handle criminal cases. The new state budget approved by the governor and the Legislature could speed things up, but advocates say more resources are needed.
“This budget provided us with a little more in terms of getting to where we need to be, but our need is greater than the number of positions that we received in this budget,” Jennifer Bias, the state’s public defender, recently told “Wisconsin Today.”
Funding help
The 2025-26 state budget allocated funding for 42 new prosecutor positions statewide, including seven new prosecutor positions for Brown County. But the last state budget funded 29 positions using money from the American Rescue Plan Act. Those funds — and those positions — expired last month.
The budget also outlined pay raises for public defenders and district attorneys for each of the next two years. Bias said that while the raises for public defenders were significant, her office requested 50 positions, and the budget is funding 12 new spots for the office.
Bias said her office has had to recruit lawyers from out of state — saying in-state law schools can’t fill the state’s demand.
“Right now, as we sit here, I have about 30 vacancies in public defender offices across the state of Wisconsin,” Bias said.
Bias said workloads for public defenders are heavy, despite crime declining statewide in recent years. One reason is that prosecutors are increasingly charging defendants for violating court-ordered release conditions, also called “bail jumping.”
An investigation from Wisconsin Watch found that these charges have quadrupled statewide from 2000 to 2024 with the charges being applied to one in every four felony cases last year. Neighboring Minnesota issues the types of charges for a narrower set of violations, resulting in fewer charges.
Bias said prosecutors inconsistently apply the charge to suspects around the state.
“Some prosecutors charge a lot of bail jumping — like more than 200 (charges) to a single individual for a course of conduct in one day. Other prosecutors don’t charge bail jumping at all,” Bias said. “We have a very difficult time finding defense lawyers to represent those individuals and many of them sit in our jails for months and months and months waiting for a lawyer willing to take on their (cases).”
Bias said criminal justice reforms are badly needed in Wisconsin. “Wisconsin is at the highest point of incarcerating its citizens as compared to other states and compared to the United States,” Bias said. “I think that’s an incredible tax burden and it should be pulled back.”
Demand for lawyers in civil cases also high
The backlog of cases doesn’t just exist for criminal cases. Civil court cases — which include evictions, foreclosures, domestic abuse restraining orders, child custody — also have deep backlogs.
Wisconsin Court System data shows that only 57 percent of civil cases statewide were resolved in under three months in 2024.
Megan Lee is the communications and development director for Judicare Legal Aid, a federally-funded, nonprofit law firm based in Wausau that offers free legal services to people who are considered low income across Northern Wisconsin.
Lee said her firm has to deny three out of every five people who apply for its services.
“It’s difficult to find attorneys to take pro bono cases even in Madison and Milwaukee,” Lee said. “So if you zoom out and look at the remainder of the state where there are already shortages of attorneys … it’s not realistic for everyone who needs an attorney to be able to get one, even if they could afford it.”
Lee said Judicare Legal Aid is seeing grant programs her federally-funded law firm relies on being eliminated — limiting its ability to seek additional funding.
Cuts to funding from the federal Victims of Crime Act, also known as VOCA, has eliminated a project Judicare Legal Aid worked on with Legal Action of Wisconsin to provide statewide victims’ rights and elder rights projects.
“Because of VOCA cuts, our projects basically disappeared,” Lee said. “It changed the face of the work that we were able to do.”
Criminal case backlog still deep despite state investment in legal offices was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.
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