Under Wisconsin law, the state Department of Corrections is supposed to make an effort to avoid re-incarcerating people who violate minor terms of their probation, parole or deferred prosecution agreements. But advocates say DOC has not made an adequate effort to create a system of short-term sanctions that allows people it releases to maintain contact with their families and hold onto their jobs. A rule solidifying DOC’s short-term sanctions policy, which advocates have criticized, goes into effect next month.
Act 196, passed in 2013, laid the groundwork for creating a system of short-term sanctions for people who violate the terms of their release into the community. The sanctions are supposed to provide accountability and address bad behavior without returning the person to prison. Roughly one-third of those entering prison each year in Wisconsin are returning because they have violated the terms of community supervision and therefore received a “technical revocation”.
The 2013 law states that short-term sanctions should “ensure that efforts to minimize the impact on the offender’s employment… and family are made when applying sanctions,” or the sanction, whatever it may be, such as increased requirements to meet with a probation or parole officer, has the minimum impact on the person’s employment and family.
After the law passed, the Department of Corrections was charged with coming up with a framework for the new system of sanctions in the form of an administrative rule.
However, the final draft of a rule approved by Gov. Tony Evers in January, which will become part of the administrative code on July 1, states that the “impact on an offender’s employment… and family” are only “factors (that) may be considered when applying sanctions.”
The final rule provides more flexibility for probation and parole officers in the sanctions they impose. Critics say it fails to meet the law’s intent to ensure those sanctions have minimal impact on employment and family, as explicitly stated in Act 196. In particular, critics say, as long as lengthy jail holds are an approved short-term sanction, up to 90 days for very high level violations, the sanctions could have significant negative effects on both employment and family life.
A 2025 proposed rule, which was the subject of a July 2025 public hearing, contained some of the same language as Act 196, including “ensures that efforts to minimize the impact on an offender’s employment” and “family,” but the final rule removed that language.
Tom Gilbert, a WISDOM volunteer whose son has been in community supervision, has been one of the leading voices urging the DOC to implement the 2013 law. He sent a letter in 2024 to the former Secretary of the DOC, Kevin Carr, and later the current secretary, Jared Hoy, and offered input at the July 2025 public hearing. Gilbert, along with others, criticized the 2025 proposed rule for not capturing the spirit of the law and not offering “new revised policies and practices.”
He also criticized the DOC, saying it had implemented Act 196 by issuing a one-sentence rule in 2019, citing its use of evidence-based response to violations, a system of issuing appropriate sanctions based on the severity of the violation.
“In 2019, the Department quietly promulgated a one-sentence rule that it alleged implemented Act 196,” said Gilbert. “That one sentence did not even begin to address all of the features Act 196 intended to inject into the community corrections operations.” In effect, he added, “the rule did not commit the DOC to do anything new or different.”
The Wisconsin Examiner made several requests to the DOC to explain why the final rule was written as it is, but received no response.
In a Feb. 27 letter to Hoy, Gilbert criticized the final rule for modifying language protecting ex-offenders’ contact with employment and family, and noting that the “short-term sanctions” in the rule includes 90 days of incarceration.
He also points out that the rule’s stated responses for different levels of violations comes directly from the DOC’s manual on evidence-based response to violations.
“What they’ve done here is just pulled the status quo into the rule to make it sound like they’re now responding and they’ve got something new, but it’s nothing new,” Gilbert told the Examiner.
He noted that 90 days of jail incarceration, while described as a short-term sanction, has a major impact on employment and families. He suggested if DOC needs a custodial hold, it could be considered for over a weekend, when it wouldn’t disrupt employment and family life as much.
How ‘short term sanctions’ affect people in real life
JenAnn Bauer of West Bend, who is on extended supervision, said even a weekend in jail can have a negative impact. Back in December, she was placed on a weekend hold after she reported to her PO on Wednesday the termination of her employment at a homeless shelter on Tuesday based on an allegation of using excessive physical force on a minor, which reportedly was on videotape. After spending the weekend in jail on a “hold” pending an investigation, and giving a statement to police on a Monday, she was released within hours without being charged.
“I have a little small business and this was around Christmas,” she said. “I had an order that needed to be made and packaged and labeled. I am fortunate that my son got on it for me. I don’t like to say traumatizing because I sometimes feel that that word gets overused, but for lack of a better word it was traumatizing, and I look at it like this — between five and six hours after you took my statement, you did not feel that I was an issue, that I was going to be a problem to the public, so, can I just ask, why didn’t we do that on Wednesday or Thursday? Did I really need to go sit in the county jail for the weekend?”
During the 2025 public hearing a member of MOSES, a nonpartisan interfaith group that promotes social justice and racial equality, submitted an unsigned written comment stating that the 2025 proposed rule “leaves the door open to revocation for minor violations like substance use. Individuals with minor violations are needlessly filling our jails and prisons. They do not receive treatment that could help them. They are prevented from continued employment and support for their families.”
In a report to the Legislature, the DOC provided a response to several of the written comments, saying that the department “strives to use the least restrictive alternative when responding to violations, which holds clients accountable while reducing the likelihood of future violations and criminal behavior. The DOC uses evidence-based response approaches equipping clients to be successful in the community to resolve issues at the lowest level because of the known impact jail sanctions have on employment, school and family responsibilities.”
The DOC’s Evidence-Based Response to Violation (EBRV) manual, which the DOC currently uses to determine sanctions, allows up to 90 days of jail time for those who have a “very high” violation and up to 20 days for a “medium” violation.
A 2024 report by the Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs, University of Wisconsin-Madison noted the number of revocations began to decline in 2021 after the EBRV had been fully implemented in 2019. However, a 2023 Legislative Audit Bureau report of the Community Correction Program revealed that of 79 individuals in community supervision interviewed, 59% said the short-term sanctions they received didn’t consider their employment needs, and 64.7 % said sanctions didn’t consider family obligations.
Sean Wilson, a senior director of organizing and partnership at Dream.Org, a national social justice advocacy group, also spoke at the 2025 public hearing and is critical of the final rule.
“While the proposed rules introduce categories of violations and outline possible responses, they still fall short of what the Legislature required under Act 196,” Wilson said. “The law was intended to create a clear, structured system of short-term sanctions that would reduce reliance on incarceration. Instead, these guidelines present options without establishing standards. They do not ensure that the Department of Corrections errs on the side of protecting employment, supporting family stability, or reducing unnecessary incarceration. As written, the rules create alternatives to revocation but do not require their use.”
Jeremy Dings, who was in community supervision and experienced two revocations, also spoke at the 2025 public hearing. While in community supervision in 2007, he was sent back to prison because of a violation and was still locked up when his mother passed away.
“If there were considerations about how that’s my family, it would have allowed me to stay with my loved ones and mom, who was suffering with these cancer issues,” he said
Ding acknowledges that over the years, he has witnessed how the DOC has given more consideration to employment for those in community corrections than it used to. “It used to be your problem if you lost your employment,” he said. “In fact, back in 2010, 2011, 2012, it was common practice and almost seen as this is how we get back at you, by you losing your employment.”
But Ding also agrees with Gilbert that as long as the DOC considers 90 days in jail a short-term sanction it will result in major ramification for those in community supervision.
“And so it’s obvious that a 90-day sanction is going to end somebody’s employment almost no matter what, and it would be great if those who are in probation and parole would consider someone’s employment and also their connection to their family and the responsibilities they have for their family, too,” he said.
Mark Rice, transformational justice coordinator for WISDOM, is also critical of the language in the final rule.
“The new rule still enables the DOC to utilize the response of up to 90 days in jail,” said Rice, “and then they changed the language from the original Act 196 when the original Act 196 uses the word ‘ensures’ that efforts would minimize the impact on a person’s employment and ‘ensures’ that the sanction would minimize the impact on a person’s family and employment, and they’ve changed that to me, so that it’s optional.”
Two holds, 17 days of jail, employment and family life impacted
In April and then later in May, Segdrick Leslie Farley, 46, of Eau Claire, who is on parole after serving 21 years in prison for second-degree intentional homicide, said he spent 17 cumulative days in jail while investigations were pending that later cleared him. The holds harmed his business, Brighter than Sunshine, he said, interrupted his education and disrupted his family life. He questions why other measures couldn’t have been taken to address the allegations instead of disrupting his life.
Farley, a college graduate who is pursuing graduate school, said he was put on a seven-day hold in April based on what he describes as a baseless allegation that he threatened another person.
“My mental health was declining,” he said about his hold. “I was just worried, you know, worrying about my kids. I couldn’t talk to my kids because I didn’t want them to know that I was in jail.”
He said on the sixth day in jail his PO came to talk to him. Farley said he was angry because he had missed an opportunity to participate in summer research and missed an opportunity to secure educational funding.
“What I said to my agent at the time is just, ‘Did you really need to lock me up like, corrupt my life, interrupt my life, and cause all of this, when you could have simply just asked me the question?’”
And then on May 27, he was placed on hold again, this time for 10 days, after he made a report to police of a man trespassing on his property. The man arrested claimed Farley had waved a firearm, which, as a felon, Farley is not allowed to possess.
Farley was again put in a hold while his residence was searched. He said it could have been resolved by asking him for his key to search his house, even if he was put in hold for a day, instead of for 10 days and his landlord having to open his residence.
“It was embarrassing because my landlord had to come down and I might lose my place. He might think I’m some type of thug,” he said. “Nothing was found because I don’t have firearms, I don’t do things like that,” and added, “I was fortunate enough to have somebody pay my rent for me. I was fortunate enough to have someone pay them (the employees), but my kids had to go without me. I lost income. I lost time that I should have spent preparing for my summer research in school, which is going to get me into graduate school and law school. I was supposed to be studying for the LSAT. I can’t take those days back. Even when I come home, there’s no apology that restores any of that.”
