ALLOUEZ, Wis. (WFRV) – At an Allouez village board meeting on Tuesday night, state lawmakers laid out what it’s going to take to finally shut down the Green Bay Correctional Institution (GBCI).
“We’re working hard to try to get this done and I really believe that this is hard work from both sides of the aisle,” said state representative Benjamin Franklin at the meeting.
In their budget last month, state lawmakers allocated $15 million to the Wisconsin Department of Corrections for planning projects related to overhauling the state’s prison system. State Representative David Steffen and state senator Jamie Wall both told Local 5 News that whatever Department of Corrections officials come up with, it will likely be similar to Governor Tony Evers $500 million prison overhaul plan.
The plan shuffles around the state’s prison population by repurposing or expanding juvenile detention centers and prisons across the state. The plan includes closing GBCI.
This prison reshuffling plan is an alternative to building a new adult prison, which would cost the state over a billion dollars.
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Senator Wall told Local 5 News that once the Department of Corrections develops plans for the state prison overhaul project, those plans will then go to the state’s building commission. From there, the state legislature would have an opportunity to give the green light to parts of the project.
“Some of these elements are relatively basic, the expansion at Sanger Powers Correctional Center that isn’t that expensive in the grand scheme of things,” Wall said. “Converting these prisons is pretty cheap, it just amounts to putting some more fences and extra cameras for a facility that will have a higher security rating. I’d be optimistic that at least some of those physical changes in the prison system we can get worked out in the next six months.”
“The good news is that we are generally in agreement with what to do with the buildings,” representative David Steffen said. “Expansion at other facilities and closure at GBCI. The one thing is that there are about 700 inmates that we need to find a home for.”
Democrats have floated the idea of expanding early release opportunities for some inmates at the end of their sentences if they have nonviolent offenses. Steffen said Republicans don’t like this idea and would prefer seeing the extra prisoners go to county jails, where he says there is room for them.
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Senator Wall said state lawmakers missed an opportunity when they didn’t approve more elements of the governor’s prison overhaul plan in the budget last month.
“It would have been better if the budget writing committee and the legislature would have taken this a bit more seriously,” Wall told Local 5 News. “Everything that was outside of the topics negotiated between the governor and legislative leaders pretty much just got pencil whipped out of the budget and the prison system was one of them.”
Governor Tony Evers had used his line-item veto power to strike a provision in the state budget that would have created a 2029 deadline for closing GBCI. He said at the time that a deadline without a plan in place was pointless.
Senator Jamie Wall, who is also a Democrat, said he agrees with Evers. However, Franklin and Steffen, who are both Republicans, said that a deadline will help keep the project on track.
At the Allouez village board meeting on Tuesday night, Franklin announced that he’s working on a standalone bill related to the prison overhaul project. It will include a 2029 deadline to shut down GBCI, hold the state accountable to meet certain milestones as the project progresses, and also ask the village of Allouez officials to provide comprehensive plans of what they will do with the GBCI site once the prison has closed.
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Allouez officials have had talks about turning the GBCI site into a multi-use development that includes recreation opportunities, housing, and small businesses.
State lawmakers said they’re also working hard to ensure that all those who work at GBCI will be offered new jobs elsewhere in the corrections system.
GBCI is a maximum security prison built in 1898. Critics of the prison say it’s overcrowded and dangerous to both prisoners and the people who work there.
All three state lawmakers at the meeting on Tuesday night say they’re confident that they’re on track to finally close GBCI.
“One hundred percent, I am absolutely confident that this will be happening,” Steffen said.
“I think it’s going to happen, but it might take several years,” Wall said. “There’s been no investment in the facility in quite a while. It’s showing its age, pretty much everybody in both parties in this part of the state agree that this should happen (that it should close).”
“A lot of hard work has gone into this and we’re just trying to get this across the finish line,” Franklin added.
