ALLOUEZ — The Wisconsin Department of Corrections (DOC) says the Green Bay Correctional Institution has returned to 2021 staffing levels, thanks to a pay bump for corrections officers and sergeants.
- Our reporting in August indicated that staffing was one of the biggest issues facing the 125-year-old prison.
- Staffing vacancies were down to 13.7% at the most recent pay period, per DOC data, compared to 39.2% a year ago.
- The prison houses 1,073 inmates as of Dec. 31, according to the DOC, in a facility designed for 749.
- We spoke with a state senator and a prisoners' rights advocate about the trends, and the video shown.
(The following is a transcription of the full broadcast story, with additional details added for the web)
More and more people are coming to work as corrections officers at Green Bay Correctional Institution, which legislators say is a good thing. Prisoners rights advocates agree but say it's not enough to address issues inmates are facing.
As of January, the Wisconsin Department of Corrections says vacancies for correctional officers and sergeants are down to 13%, compared to 40% this time last year.
The DOC and state legislators say a 2023 pay raise has helped fill the jobs.
"We've seen now the pay increases to more market wages has solved much of the problem," said state senator Eric Wimberger, a Republican representing District 2.
Wimberger says prison reform is a bipartisan priority.
"Everybody is in favor of closing GBCI," he said. "And therefore, it won't happen. That's politics."
But for now, as Democrats and Republicans disagree on how to close the prison, Wimberger says keeping staff numbers high helps keep it operating.
"We have to stay on top of it," he said. "Otherwise, a court could require us to empty the prison, shuffling people down to different prisons, and minimum security inmates would have to be released by court order."
At a prayer vigil Thursday in protest of solitary confinement practices at GBCI, we asked a prisoners' rights group about the staffing increase.
"Is that a positive thing for the inmates, to have the actual right amount of COs?"
"It is," Caitlin Haynes said. "But I think what we're trying to, what we're really aiming for, is just less people [in the prison]."
The DOC says the prison has been operating normally since the summer of 2024.
Haynes, who acts as the chair of a Transformational Justice Task Force, takes issue with that language.
"Conditions [have] finally improved a little bit, where [inmates] can get out more, but, it's seeming to me that they're just changing the definition of 'normal' to not quite what it used to be," she said.
With nearly 1,100 inmates in a prison designed for 750, Haynes thinks more needs to be done.
"It's overcrowded," she said. "It's a major issue where people have to double up in a single cell made for a single person."
The inmates' rights advocates tell me they'll keep holding vigils outside the walls until things like solitary confinement and overcrowding are solved inside the walls.
