Tom Moore
At around 3 a.m. on March 14, Rudy Bankston lay still in his Milwaukee County Jail cell anxiously listening to noises: doors clanking open then slamming shut, footsteps approaching and dissolving into the distance. Bankston’s release was imminent, but exactly when was uncertain. Every sound triggered heightened anticipation.
It’s sometimes impossible for inmates to know the actual day or time they’ll be released from a county jail. The moment is often sprung on them. It can happen at any hour of the day or night.
Bankston had been agonizing about his release for days since being transferred out of the state’s Fox Lake Correctional Institution.
He was sentenced, at 19, to life in prison for first-degree homicide, the result of a shooting in Milwaukee that left one young man dead and a second injured. From 1995 to 2014, it looked as if Bankston would die behind bars. But in 2015, Bankston had a new lawyer who presented new evidence pointing towards his innocence. After reviewing it, the district attorney’s office offered to resolve the case. Bankston was offered a plea deal that guaranteed his immediate release. Going home was only a matter of time. Exactly when was a crapshoot.
Finally, at 3:30 a.m. Bankston stood a free man in the jail lobby, wearing clothes left behind by other inmates and holding $25, a portion of the canteen funds that his loved ones had sent during his short stay in the county jail.
With no means to contact his family or friends, Bankston approached a man seated in the lobby to borrow a cell phone. But once it was in his hands, Bankston realized he had no idea how to use it — he’d spent so many years behind bars, the device was alien to him.
This was just the first of many complications Bankston, who eventually moved to Dane County, would have to cope with after 20 years in prison.
Wisconsin holds an estimated 22,000 people behind bars — including the highest percentage of African American males in the country. Many of these people were locked up as part of the government’s War on Drugs in the ’80s and ’90s, which brought about mandatory sentencing laws for people convicted of even nonviolent drug-related offenses.
There’s now a national push to rethink those sentencing mandates. President Barack Obama has commuted the sentences of 89 nonviolent felons. Thousands more may be released through the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2015, legislation that reassesses severe mandatory minimum penalties in the federal criminal justice system.
In Dane County alone, 500 to 700 inmates are released annually. Some have support systems waiting to help find housing, jobs and services. Many do not.
Dane County Executive Joe Parisi and some area nonprofits are trying to fill in the service gaps to keep people from ending up back behind bars.
For those getting out of prison, the challenges are numerous: finding housing and work, coping with mental illnesses and drug addictions, adjusting to a world that has changed, as well as tuning out the lure of criminal life.
Some individuals will do the work and acclimate. Others will founder.
State Department of Corrections communications director Joy Staab did not make anyone from DOC available to talk to Isthmus about the department’s efforts to aid prisoner reentry and reduce recidivism.
Staab did provide literature outlining several of the department’s initiatives. Windows to Work is an employment program geared at helping inmates find jobs and reducing recidivism. According to the literature, “471 different program participants obtained 661 episodes of employment” during fiscal year 2015 through this program.
Opening Avenues to Reentry Success, or OARS, provides mentally ill inmates case management services to aid in providing housing and services when they’re released. It served 147 people last year.
The state also contracts with Michigan-based Northpointe Inc. to provide assessments of both risk and needs of inmates released. “Risk scores of general and violent recidivism enable staff to operationalize the risk principle, targeting medium- and high-risk offenders for service,” the state’s literature states. “Likewise, criminogenic need profiles allow staff to prioritize and focus on the driving need factors behind criminal behavior.”
A 2014 corrections department report found that 14% of the people who leave Wisconsin’s prisons are convicted of another crime and return to prison within a year; 30% return after three years. But that does not account for people who return to prison for parole violations. Recidivism rates specifically for Madison and Dane County are not available.
State Rep. David Bowen (D-Milwaukee) says the state needs to do more to help those reentering society get their lives back on track.
“The quicker the state can get its act together the better,” says Bowen, who sits on the Assembly’s Committee on Corrections. “We have lives on the line and need to make sure that we can save those individuals who want to get back on the path of opportunity, and we don’t always do that.”
Bowen says problems are deeply systematic and start while people are still in prison. The corrections facilities are simply too far away from most inmates’ loved ones as well as community programs and services, isolating those who are locked up.
“If they don’t have access to the community programs’ facilities, it’s difficult to provide that link,” Bowen says. “We make it very hard for the community programs to work with us when our facilities are so far away.”
Bowen wishes the state would allocate more money for rehabilitation. Of the state’s $1.1 billion annual corrections budget, less than 1% goes toward the Transform Milwaukee Program, which houses the Transitional Jobs Program, the state’s most significant program that links ex-offenders to jobs.
But Bowen sees little political will to reform or invest in programming.
Parisi, who chaired the Assembly’s Corrections Committee when he was in the Legislature, says the other problem is what happens after inmates are released. Many struggle and eventually end up back in prison.
“We need to look at what the reasons for failure are, and there are many,” Parisi says. “When we break it down and look at what the issues are and how to address and do something about them, we see things like inability to find housing, challenges finding employment, challenges people have with alcohol and drug addiction, and mental health issues.”
When Bankston got out of prison last spring, he moved into his mom’s house in northwest Milwaukee. Within hours, some bad influences came calling.
“I’m standing in front of a barber shop...and he pulls up in a slick car, jumps out and says, ‘Man, what’s up,’ hugs me, goes in his pocket for cash, peels off a few bills, slaps them into my hand and says, ‘Welcome home, G, I need your leadership.’”
The old friend told him he had a lead on where they could get heroin to sell. Bankston quickly replied: “You done lost your mind.” The encounter made Bankston realize he had to get out of his old neighborhood.
Through a cousin, he met Carolyn Moynihan Bradt, who lives in Verona. She offered her home up to Bankston and also gave him a job managing her rental units.
Many others are less fortunate. If they don’t have family to take them in, those returning from prison often struggle to find a place to live. This is especially true in a city like Madison, with scarce affordable housing and a very low apartment vacancy rate. Criminal convictions often disqualify people for housing assistance programs.
“We see people come out of prison who have...a couple thousand dollars because they had a job inside, but they can’t find housing because of their criminal conviction,” says Linda Ketchum, executive director of Madison Urban Ministry (MUM), which offers programming for the recently released. “If it’s available it’s not within their price range because they usually get jobs that are minimum wage, maybe $9 an hour.”
Jenny Hanson, a YWCA Housing First coordinator, helps find housing for people facing challenges, including mental illness, disability and poverty. Having a criminal record makes it nearly impossible. Even the financial backing of the YWCA fails to sway most landlords.
“I can offer a landlord to sign the lease and pay rent in full for the duration of the lease, give the security deposit, but still, because of criminal backgrounds, I’ll get denied over and over and over,” says Hanson. “I can even offer more than rent; I can offer to landlords that the agency will assume full responsibility for all the lease terms, damages to the apartment, etc., and essentially we’re talking very little risk to the landlord.”
She adds: “What I’m seeing is having a criminal record as being the single biggest barrier to my families getting housing.”
In his 2015 budget, Parisi set aside $500,000 to purchase permanent housing specifically for people reentering in Dane County. This past October, the county awarded that money to Nehemiah Center for Urban Leadership Development, a faith-based organization that works to empower African American residents. The center currently owns two transitional housing units for reentering men, says Anthony Cooper, director of reentry services at Nehemiah.
One facility is emergency or temporary housing and one can be used as permanent housing. Nehemiah housing programs are for men only, with 32 currently enrolled.
The county funds will be used to purchase two additional multi-unit buildings for permanent housing. This year’s county budget includes another $500,000 to fund additional housing for those reentering.
Frank Davis, who was released in 2007 after 19 years in prison, now attends college and works full time. Above, on his wedding day with bride, Felicia, and his mother-in-law, Brenda Hodges.
Frank Davis spent months preparing for his reentry in 2007 after 19 years in prison.
Unlike the county jail Bankston was released from, the Department of Corrections releases most prisoners on a Tuesday, giving some measure of predictability. But while inmates may know their day of release, many don’t know where they’re headed. Davis was first told he’d be relocated from Wisconsin to Kansas City where he had family, and far from Madison’s street influences that had landed him in prison.
While working in the Columbia Correctional Institution’s library, Davis painstakingly researched jobs in Kansas City. Without the benefit of the Internet, he set up job interviews and arranged for housing. But it was all for naught — three weeks before his release date, the DOC decided to release him to a halfway house in Madison. He was forced to devise a new plan.
“I was determined to succeed,” says Davis, who served 19 years for a conviction of first degree sexual assault at the age of 18.
The day after his release, he took a bus to Madison’s far west side to interview for a job he found in the paper. When they handed him an application and told him to come back, he pleaded to have the interview that day. He explained his recent release and his need for housing, and promised he’d outperform the rest of the company’s employees. He was hired. Today Davis is a full-time Madison College student, works in the tool and die industry and is a devoted husband and father.
Davis sees himself as one of the lucky ones. There just aren’t that many employers willing to hire convicted felons.
The trouble starts when applicants come across a question asking them to check a box if they’ve ever been convicted of a felony.
Even if employers don’t ask the question, it’s very easy to find out if someone has committed a crime in Wisconsin. Landlords and employers routinely check Wisconsin’s Circuit Court Access Website, or CCAP, when screening applicants.
“CCAP makes it so easy to discriminate against people who have prior criminal records,” says Jerry Hancock, a former director of the Wisconsin Crime Lab and Dane County deputy district attorney, and current director of the Prison Ministry Project, a restorative justice program that brings crime victims into prisons to share stories that build empathy.
Hancock adds: “You can go on it and get a three-word description of someone that does not tell you the whole story, but those three words are often used to deny them a job or a place to live.”
Bankston was overwhelmed by “the box” when he first filled out job applications last year.
“First you write all of this positive stuff about yourself, college credits and good things you’ve done,” Bankston says. “Then you get to that box and it can knock the wind out of you.”
Bankston persevered. Last month he was hired by the Madison school district as community liaison for James Madison Memorial High School. In the school’s “Peace Center,” Bankston oversees a relaxed, communal-style room where students can work through conflicts that in the past could have resulted in suspension.
His years in prison, when he worked as a mentor to other inmates and trained in restorative justice conflict resolution, gave him experience for the job.
Several states have banned employers from asking questions about criminal history — a growing movement known as “Ban the Box.” Wisconsin has not yet signed on, but there has been some movement on this front. The state Legislature is now considering a bill that would ban the box from applications for state employment.
One of Parisi’s first initiatives as county executive was to ban the box on county job applications. In 2014 he created a county jail reentry coordinator position to help newly released people find work, housing and services. Jerome Dillard, a prison reform advocate, is the first to hold the position.
The county is also taking steps to address mental illness among inmates at the Dane County Jail — illnesses that may have led them there and often lead them back because of a lack of continuity in prison to community care.
Dane County Sheriff Dave Mahoney says that 80% of the inmates at the Dane County Jail struggle with drug or alcohol addiction. He says only recently has the county begun to connect services within the jail with services on the outside.
Lynn Green, director of Dane County Human Services, says the county now funds continuing treatment for both mental illnesses and addictions for inmates after they’re released.
“We [already had] programs that are targeted specifically to the jail population,” Green says. “But one of the concerns is that you identify people with mental health and substance abuse issues, and when they get released back into the community, the progress they made while they were in jail doesn’t stick.”
To assist the transition from jail to work, the county got a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Labor to develop a Jail Based Job Center.
Funds in the 2016 budget expand the existing reentry program. Part of the program is an assessment tool that matches job services to inmates. Those job services will continue once they’re released.
Parisi explains “We’re looking at what they need to be successful so each sentenced inmate will have an individualized plan of action to be worked on, both while they’re in the jail and when they get out.”
When Bankston was in prison, he would routinely see inmates get released, only to return a short time later. He started chatting up these returnees, trying to understand what went wrong for them.
Now that he’s out, Bankston knows that the allure of street life is often the toughest part of readjusting. While leaving a parole officer meeting recently, he met a newly released man and agreed to give him a lift.
“He’d been out less than a week, up for the last five days hustling in the streets any way he could, from robbing to selling drugs,” Bankston says. “I felt a strong sense of hopelessness for him. He confessed to having no support whatsoever. It seemed like he was mentally ill-equipped to transition back on his own. The man was lost, just 26 and had done eight-plus years with no guidance.”
Bankston adds: “I hate to say it, but he was clearly on his way back to prison.”
There are nonprofit organizations that offer help. John Givens runs a reentry program at Madison Urban Ministry that he says has a 93% success rate. Formerly incarcerated himself, Givens travels to area prisons with community volunteers and briefs soon-to-be released inmates about MUM’s services. He guarantees to his clients that MUM can find anyone a job if they want one and will even buy each job-seeker three new suits in which to interview.
One of the program’s most successful components is its Circle of Support group, where volunteer community members commit to supporting a person getting out of prison — referred to as a “core member.” Each group meets once a week for six months. (Editor’s note: the author has volunteered with MUM as a Circle of Support member, although she is not currently active with the program.)
One core member, Samantha Southward, is on the road to success. Last February, Southward was released from the Dane County Jail after committing check fraud. She took advantage of the resources offered to her. Southward found daycare for her 3-year-old daughter, learned how to search and apply for jobs, and secured tuition donations to enroll at Madison College. The job hunt has been slow.
Southward was accepted into the YWCA’s Third Street Program, recommended by Circle of Support members, where she receives wrap-around services for herself and her daughter.
The community support has been invaluable. “Because of the Circle of Support,” Southward says, “All of the goals I wanted to get done, I’ve gotten done.”
In 2011, then-Police Chief Noble Wray announced with much fanfare a new get-tough-on-crime effort, which emphasized that a relatively small group of people, through repeat offenses, was responsible for a high number of serious crimes.
“It’s clear that under the current system, many are arrested time and time again with no significant change in criminal behavior,” Wray said.
The idea was to have those recently released inmates at high risk for committing more violent crimes meet with a group of Madison’s most senior law enforcement officers at a “notification” meeting.
The Special Investigation Unit’s record on these interventions has been mixed. Since 2011, there have been nine notification meetings with 99 participants. Of those, 47 have been convicted of new crimes and 66 have been arrested though not necessarily charged.
John Patterson, Special Investigation Unit supervisor with the Madison Police Department, says the experience has taught the department more about the hurdles former prisoners face when released. He says the focus at meetings has shifted from bold intimidation toward support.
“We have the policing down pat, but when we work with such a high-risk group of individuals with such a wide range of criminogenic needs, it exposes the need for improved case management, an overall social worker-type look on each individual case,” Patterson says. “It feels like we’re doing good but always feels like we could be doing better.”
A notification meeting was held on Oct. 13, with nine men, recently released from prison, ordered to attend the gathering at United Way. Each had been tagged with a serious criminal background, collectively contributing to more than 279 charges with 57 victims. Eight of the nine were men of color.
Several family members and friends of the participants attended the meeting. Bankston went out of curiosity. Although agreeing that these people needed intervention, he watched the meeting in a more critical light.
“I just thought that it was too stereotypically made-for-TV and that most of the government characters read from scripts instead of spoke from the heart,” he says. “One talked about wanting to see the guys do well and turn their lives around, but then he turned around and assured them that his agency would do anything and everything in its power to take them down if they continued on the criminal path.”
“What if that was reversed?” he adds. “What if the agency set out to do everything in its power to make sure the men succeeded?”