From the pages of In Business magazine.
Wisconsin’s new governor has an answer for the labor shortage. Tony Evers campaigned on significantly reducing Wisconsin’s prison population, and based on recent remarks, he intends to ramp up efforts to put ex-inmates on a career path. That should be of more than passing interest to people who run businesses and can’t find workers. When your state’s prison population exceeds 23,000, and not all of them are violent offenders, there is a potential pool of trainees that shouldn’t be ignored, especially if you want to reduce recidivism rates.
Asked if the state is doing enough to ensure soon-to-be released inmates have marketable job skills, Evers issued an emphatic no and notes that he has at least one Republican ally. “No, we’re not doing enough, and that’s something actually that former Gov. [Tommy] Thompson has talked about,” Evers states. “We need to help people be productive members of society. That means finding ways for them, if they are nonviolent offenders, to get training and preparation and skills to be part of society, but we also have to do more training and preparation in those [correctional] institutions.”
Evers has talked of his intention to fully fund K-12, career pathways, and apprenticeships, but he also talks of “connecting the dots” with criminal justice reform. Any number of studies have shown what common sense tells us — namely, that people who are employed and earning a decent wage soon after release from incarceration are less likely to recidivate, and that individuals who receive correctional education are more likely to obtain employment in the community than those who do not receive correctional education.
The Wisconsin Department of Corrections is well aware that subsidized employment programs targeting people recently released from prison, as well as wrap-around programs that provide pre-release interventions with post-release services, have been shown to boost employment and earnings while reducing recidivism. Toward that end, Oakhill Correctional Institution, a minimum-security prison in the Dane County community of Oregon, recently opened a job center to help inmates prepare for job interviews upon their release. More importantly, Oakhill also provides some skills training to help people get their foot in the door.
With an ex-inmate unemployment rate of 27 percent, and with no end to the labor shortage in sight, it’s worth using some of the state surplus to expand this idea beyond Oakhill to other Wisconsin correctional institutions.
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