Scott Walker Cannot Defend His Racist Corrections Disaster

MADISON, Wis. — One Wisconsin Now Executive Director Scot Ross released the following statements about Gov. Scott Walker’s disastrous record on corrections in Wisconsin. Walker who was first elected in 1993, is returning to Milwaukee today to talk about prisons to stroke racial division in the hopes of getting four more years in office. His turn to negative campaigning comes after recent public opinion polls have found his electoral prospects grim, despite $3 million in television advertising spent on his behalf since May.

“On Corrections, Scott Walker always makes the wrong decision and always for the wrong reason.

“Gov. Scott Walker has spent 25 years charting a dangerous, racist course on corrections policy in the state of Wisconsin, singularly serving as the politician most responsible for the catastrophe the adult and juvenile incarcerations have become.

“In the 1990s, newly-elected Scott Walker was the lead soldier in the Assembly for the explosion of Corrections spending. As Governor, his budget spends more on prisons than universities. As a candidate Walker seeks to defend his policies by peddling racism and fear.”

Walker’s responsibility for the current corrections nightmare includes:

• Did nothing as juveniles were abused, assaulted and tortured at Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake;
• As chair of the Corrections Committee, presided over policies that emphasized locking people up instead of helping them get an education, overseeing a Corrections Department budget that for the first time ever topped $1 billion;
• Supporting draconian ‘truth in sentencing’ legislation that is not only racially biased, but also structurally unsound;
• Taking political contributions from the private prison industry;
• Attacking the ability of corrections officers to negotiate for workplace safety;
• Refuses to issue a single pardon because he is afraid it could hurt him politically;
• Supporting draconian sentences for low-level drug offenders for almost his entire career that unfairly targeted African Americans until the white people began having issues with opioids;
• Refused to condemn, or even comment on, Donald Trump’s “baby jails.”

A full accounting of Walker’s 25-year record on Corrections is available at One Wisconsin Now’s warehouse of research: The Scott Walker Failure Files.