by Baylor Spears, Wisconsin Examiner
March 14, 2025
The Wisconsin Assembly passed a slate of criminal justice related bills Thursday, including a requirement to revoke probation or parole for people charged with crimes and implementing financial penalties if Milwaukee Public Schools doesn’t return police officers to school buildings.
Republican lawmakers said the bills were necessary to improve public safety in Wisconsin.
“Wisconsinites in almost every part of our state have seen that there are areas of our state that have sincere and real concerns,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) said during a press conference.
Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer (D-Racine) said during floor debate that lawmakers should be crafting “smart” legislation to ensure people are safe across the state, but that the bills fall short of that goal. She said lawmakers should be focused on investing in safety.
“We can use evidence based, data driven practices to lower recidivism, to save taxpayer dollars and invest in rehabilitation and treatment to keep our communities safe,” Neubauer said. “Democrats are serious about safety, but the majority of bills in front of us today are not.”
Rep. Ryan Clancy said in a statement after the session that lawmakers spent the day on “considering badly written, badly conceived bills that will harm people and waste public resources” and said Republicans were refusing to acknowledge that mass incarceration and prison overcrowding are problems for the state.
“It’s wildly irresponsible to even consider increasing penalties and interfering with the very few tools of leniency we have with a prison system holding 5,000 more people than intended,” Clancy said. “But here we are.”
A couple of the bills would implement stricter requirements for dealing with criminal charges for people released from prison.
AB 85 would require supervising corrections officials to recommend revoking extended supervision, parole or probation for formerly incarcerated people who are charged with a new crime after their release. It passed 53-43.
The Department of Corrections found in a fiscal estimate that the bill would result in approximately 6,280 additional revocation cases each year. It also found that there would be an increase in operations costs by $85 million in the first year of enactment and a permanent increased operations cost of about $245 million after the population is annualized in the second year.
Vos said that the bill should be simple. He said that people who are out on parole have been given the “privilege” of being released from prison.
“Do you stand with the victim and the public or do you stand with the criminal who has reoffended and given up the privilege that he was briefly granted?” Vos rhetorically asked. “I think the price is worth it — $300 million to keep the people safe.”
Jacobson said the bill is necessary to address the “revolving door” in the prison system and ensure criminals don’t have the opportunity to victimize people. He said that extended supervision, probation and parole are tools that give people a second chance with the expectation that they will not commit other crimes.
“In far too many cases, a person released under state supervision continues the behavior that resulted in them going to prison in the first place,” Jacobson said. “It seems like common sense that someone who’s been convicted of a crime, is released under state supervision and returns to committing crimes, should have their release revoked. Far too often that is not the case.”
Clancy said in his statement that Republicans were “openly misleading the public and their colleagues about the contents and impacts of those bills.” He noted that the bill would be “triggered when someone is merely charged with a crime” but not found guilty.
AB 66 would require prosecutors to get a court’s approval to dismiss certain criminal charges. It passed 53-44.
Rep. Alex Joers (D-Middleton) said the bill would “remove prosecutorial discretion” and impose limits on those trying to uphold the law.
Jacobson, who authored the bill, argued it would support law enforcement and protect Wisconsinites from being victimized. He noted that Wisconsin law allows prosecutors to dismiss or amend charges or enter into deferred prosecution agreements.
“In the Legislature, we can pass all the penalties we like. It won’t matter if the justice system won’t apply those penalties,” Jacobson said. The bill, he said, would add an additional layer of oversight and transparency by requiring prosecutors to get court approval to dismiss or amend charges in cases involving one of seven serious crimes. Those include sexual assault, crimes against a child, theft of an automobile, reckless driving resulting in great bodily harm and illegal possession of a firearm by a felon.
“These crimes leave lasting impacts and it’s our job as officials to take these seriously,” Jacobson said.
Lawmakers also passed a couple of bills that would increase penalties for certain crimes.
AB 61, which would increase penalties for injuring or killing an animal used by police or firefighters, passed in a voice vote.
Specifically, the bill would increase injuring an animal to a Class H felony, which is punishable by a fine of up to $10,000 or imprisonment for up to six years. Killing an animal would be increased to a Class G felony, which is punishable by a fine of up to $25,000 or imprisonment for up to 10 years.
AB 86 passed in a voice vote. The bill would increase the penalty for child sex trafficking if the crime involved at least three victims who were children at the time the crime was committed from a Class C felony to a Class A felony. As a Class A felony, the crime could be punished with life imprisonment.
AB 89 would allow multiple acts of theft or retail theft committed by the same person to be prosecuted as a single crime, and the value of the thefts to be combined in determining the penalty. It passed 71-26, with 18 Democrats joining Republicans in support.
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