Gov. Walker’s plan to close Lincoln Hills youth prison closely mirrors the proposal previously put forth by Goyke, above.
Let’s start with his glasses.
He sports eyewear that is pure nerd. Not the faux nerd big black frames worn by Willy Street hipsters, but rather the “I got two pairs for the price of one and a free eye exam!” frames purchased by practical people who use their glasses to see more than to be seen.
But whether he intends it or not, state Rep. Evan Goyke (D-Milwaukee) wears glasses that are windows into his soul. He is a policy wonk nerd of a state legislator and he embodies the persona. The question for state Democrats might be whether the 35 year-old Goyke’s earnest approach to politics and public policy is the party’s roadmap back to power or just a quaint side trip into a foggy past where facts could make a difference.
Goyke, the son of longtime lobbyist Gary Goyke, made news in the last few weeks with his proposal to close the long-troubled Lincoln Hills youth prison, convert it to a medium security adult facility, and create smaller geographically dispersed youth lockups around the state.
The road that got Goyke into the news is worth travelling. After law school at Marquette he became a public defender in Milwaukee. During his three-year stint in the Milwaukee courts he noticed that “everybody on one side of the room was white and everybody on the other side was black.”
Now, in his third term in the state Assembly representing a poor and mostly minority district once home to the famous activist Father James Groppi, Goyke has maintained his interest in the criminal justice system, asking for and getting appointed to committees overseeing that system.
“I spent five years studying this issue,” Goyke tells me one afternoon in his Capitol office, tucked away in the rafters where Democrats are sent to be forgotten.
But Goyke wouldn’t be ignored. Instead, last fall he personally wrote an 11-page paper outlining his blueprint for criminal justice reform. On Nov. 29, he reserved a Capitol hearing room and presented his paper in a 45-minute presentation. He says that about 80 people, mostly legislative staff and a few reporters, showed up to listen to him wonk out. But immediately afterwards, some Republican legislators signed on to Goyke’s bills, which he introduced the same day.
Goyke followed up with a handwritten note to Gov. Scott Walker, along with a copy of his paper, asking for the governor’s help in implementing his reforms. He got a Dec. 13 meeting with the governor’s staff, but not with Walker himself.
But in early January the governor announced that he would close Lincoln Hills, repurpose it as an adult prison and build five new youth facilities around the state. He even mentioned Goyke in his announcement though stopped short of fully crediting him with the idea.
I pressed Goyke to voice his outrage at the slight, but he wouldn’t take the bait. “Let’s just try something different,” he said. He meant that we should try a different approach to adult and juvenile justice, but he might just as well have been talking about politics.
He did express frustration that the governor planned to delay adoption of the plan until 2019, but soon after I met with Goyke, Walker announced that he would seek approval of the plan in 2018, according to Goyke’s faster time frame.
Goyke believes that Democrats can fight their way back by becoming experts in various policy arenas. “How does the minority party declare its relevance?” he asks and then answers his own question. “We need to win the battle of the big ideas,” he says.
And, in fact, if anybody bothers to read it, Goyke’s paper, which he titled Inmate 501, is convincing. As of November, the state’s prison system was over capacity by 450 adult inmates. Those inmates are housed in Wisconsin county jails, but the 501st inmate who is over the limit will also exhaust county jail options and will need to be placed elsewhere.
The state budget already contains $8.6 million a year to pay counties to house its adult inmates at $51.50 per day per inmate. But Goyke claims that when the state is forced to start sending prisoners to private facilities it will pay even more, about $57.50 per inmate per day. “The difference could be tens of millions in additional contract bed payments by 2019,” he writes in Inmate 501.
Goyke’s plan would avoid that by converting Lincoln Hills not just to another adult prison, but to a special facility designed to treat inmates suffering from alcohol or other drug abuse. That existing program, called the Earned Release Program, has already proven cost-effective but Goyke reports that there are 5,900 inmates on a waiting list for treatment.
So his plan would have multiple benefits. It would reduce overcrowding in Wisconsin’s adult prisons at a cost that is lower than sending inmates to private facilities; provide treatment to more adult prisoners who need it; and house youth offenders in much better settings closer to their homes.
Before I leave I ask him the cynical question for a cynical time. Hasn’t he just thrown Walker a bipartisan lifeline to save the governor from a festering issue as he seeks a third term?
Goyke ponders that for a bit in a way that suggests that maybe this isn’t the first time someone has raised that issue with him. He answers that he believes that good ideas will lead people back to his party. “I suffer from chronic naiveté,” he says. “Every day I wake up believing I can change the world.”
