opinion piece written by waupun resident christine ewertAs the holidays approach, many of us finding ourselves giving thanks for all that we have. As the wife of a State Correctional Officer, I’d like to thank all of the DOC employees that continue to show their professionalism by showing up for work, tirelessly, despite their dismal treatment by department Secretary, Ed Wall. Freedom of speech has long been a controversial topic – with different interpretations of it applied to differing circumstances. In the DOC, a simple Facebook post that read “Damn fools, Brett’ resulted in an almost 100 day administrative leave for one officer. One officer was fired for his Facebook post, and two were transferred to different institutions. The First Amendment was written so people could voice their displeasure with the government. The State of Wisconsin’s DOC is a government entity, yet freedom of speech was stripped from these officers. A basic civil right was taken from them over a Facebook post. The FdL Police Department had a similar incident during the District Attorney’s race of 2012. A police detective verbally attacked a citizen (me) and successfully avoided discipline by claiming protection under the 1st amendment. In other words, even though I am not a government entity, it was determined that the officer violated no policies because his constitutional rights trumped all else. Freedom of speech should not be selectively applied to one group of people yet denied to another. Secretary Wall has built a house of cards, with 10,000+ people relying on it for shelter. Under Secretary Wall, vacancies in the state prisons have quintupled. There were 88 vacancies when the Secretary accepted his appointment. Today, there are over 500. Secretary Wall, who has never worked one day within the confines of a Correctional Facility, continues to shoot from the hip managing his staff. He continues to implement policies that are destined to fail, policies that he knows will create more vacancies because of his mistreatment of staff. There is zero accountability because nobody oversees the Secretary. Use common sense when asking yourself, what is the ultimate goal? The answer: Privatization. The vacancies within the DOC are staggering enough today to shut down activities in the prisons and create mandatory overtime, all at a prime cost to the taxpayers. Governor Walker has long lobbied for privatization and Ed Wall is the tool he using to accomplish this goal. As a career politician, Walker made it no secret that he supported private prisons. Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) was one of the major contributors to our Governor’s political career. Walker was instrumental in the legislation that authorized sending prisoners out of state. In the 1990’s/early 2000’s, Walker (as head of the State’s Committee on Corrections), sent roughly 5,000 inmates to different states, at a cost of $45 million to Wisconsin taxpayers. When they returned to Wisconsin, they came back with PlayStations, X-boxes, and – among other things – pornography (allowed by the corrections facilities). We no longer send inmates out to other states for a reason – it did not work. Research has proven that private prisons are plagued with lack of security, falsifying records to cover up understaffing problems (much like we are experiencing now), prisoner abuse, staff assaults, riots, and ultimately cost the taxpayers more money than state run prisons. In 2010, three inmates escaped from a private prison in Arizona, kidnapped two tourists then burned their bodies in their own camper. The troubling part: state investigators found that the perimeter of the prison was left unmonitored for 15 minutes at the beginning of every shift with only one person responsible for monitoring the entire perimeter at the time of escape. So many false alarms went off that staff in the prisons ignored them, and 1/3 of the security staff had less than three months on the job – with zero training. Yet, Walker lobbied for privatization anyway. Even then Republican Governor Tommy Thompson did not approve of Walker’s plan and each time he introduced legislation to privatize prisons, it failed. When giving thanks this year, please remember to thank your state employees who, in spite of dismal treatment, continue to show up for work day after day because the know your public safety falls squarely on their shoulders.Christine Ewerdt
