This post originally appeared at https://www.badgerinstitute.org/the-top-to-bottom-failure-of-wisconsins-prison-system/

Who was doing their job?

We spend a lot of time worrying about our politics. But what about our basic functions of government?

We’ve discovered in recent weeks that many of the people we pay to run our schools and  prisons are either incompetent or, in some instances, possibly criminal. And it’s a top-to-bottom issue.

The Dodge County sheriff and prosecutors started with the bottom in charging nine former employees of the Waupun Correctional Institution – including the former warden, Randall Hepp – with various types of misconduct. The charges stem from inmate deaths in recent months.

There were four deaths over the course of just eight months at Waupun. The first two deaths last summer and fall, of Dean Hoffmann and Tyshun Lemons, have not resulted in charges, but Dodge County Sheriff Dale Schmidt in a recent press conference alleged that a stunning array of people, at minimum, were not doing their jobs.

Hoffmann, who was 60 years old, hanged himself in solitary confinement last June 29 after not receiving or taking at least some of his medications. It’s hard to tell how many doses were missed or how many he didn’t take, according to Schmidt, because “documentation of medication being distributed … was vastly inaccurate and did not match” video evidence.

Lemons was 30 when he overdosed on fentanyl while housed in general population at Waupun last October. The “great concern” here, according to Schmidt, “is the quantity and frequency of contraband being able to be smuggled into” the prison.

Federal investigators are looking into that issue, so there may well be more to come on that front.

The more recent deaths at Waupun of 24-year-old Cameron Williams last October and 62-year-old Donald W. Maier in February are the ones that spurred charges.

Williams died of a stroke while in solitary confinement. He had “multiple medical episodes” prior to his death, including labored breathing and “laying on a bed with no response or movement.”  

Numerous hourly rounds were conducted with no response from Williams, said Schmidt. Numerous hourly rounds were also “skipped by staff,” he alleged.

“A nurse and a correctional officer finally identified that (he) needed to be checked on. That nurse was at the end of her shift and (related) to the incoming staff that a cell entry was recommended and a cell entry team would need to be assembled. The incoming nurse, without visiting (Williams’) cell, determined that there was no medical need to make entry.”

According to Schmidt, Williams was likely was in distress when the incoming nurse determined that there was no need to make entry. “Evidence shows that (Williams) was dead in his cell at least 12 hours before he was discovered on the morning of October 30^th.”

Death by dehydration

Maier died last February of probable dehydration and malnutrition, and his death was ruled a homicide.

Maier, according to Schmidt, had mental health and other medical issues. The water in his cell had been shut off, according to Schmidt, possibly because of fear the cell could be flooded. However, once again, the decision was not documented, and proper notifications up the chain of command did not occur.

“Water appears to have been shut off for significant periods of time, leaving (Maier) without water for a significant period of time,” said Schmidt. “It gets worse. Correctional officers failed to feed (him) nine out of 12 meals over a 4-day period.”

Schmidt alleged that, again, staff failed to conduct required rounds on numerous occasions, and initialed that rounds were completed when they were not – something supervisors were allegedly aware of.

 “At no time … did a medical professional ever have physical contact or direct contact with the decedent except through the cell door,” he said. “Correctional officers did make some

notifications to supervisory staff. However, supervisors made no attempt to further investigate the condition of the decedent or his wellbeing. Security staff notified nursing staff that the decedent had not eaten food for a couple of days, was drinking sewage water and played in the toilet.”

There was a camera in or near Maier’s cell. But it was “unusable for safety observation of inmates due to poor condition.”

While there haven’t been charges for anyone higher up the chain than the warden, Schmidt made it clear the failures in the Department of Corrections go above those charged.  

A county sheriff, he took the extraordinary step of personally calling the secretary of the Department of Corrections, Kevin Carr, “because there was a need to ensure that these things did not continue to happen.”

“Secretary Carr was agitated by the information presented, and he should have been,” said Schmidt. “However, he did not take any personal responsibility but rather shifted that blame toward Warden Hepp and the culture of Waupun Correctional Institution.”

A call to Hepp’s attorney was not immediately returned.

Bigger problems

Carr resigned shortly after that, and Schmidt is optimistic things are getting better. But he also made it clear there are issues that go beyond the Department of Corrections.

Schmidt said that Waupun has an astounding 50% staff vacancy rate. The place is more than 170 years old. It was originally built in the 1850s. Along with Green Bay Correctional Institution, it is one of the 10 oldest prisons in the entire country. They still use handwritten logs for some things. Waupun is so old it is on the National Register of Historic Places.

It’s a historic mess.  

Waupun has had a significant number of upgrades in the last 20 years, but there are things that can’t be fixed, such as the size and location of cells in a four-tier arrangement, many of which now have two inmates in them.

The politicians in Madison have been debating the need for new prisons for years, and Gov. Tony Evers – who campaigned on dramatically cutting the number of inmates – has not moved the issue forward.

There’s a pattern here. Like the implosion of the Milwaukee Public Schools, no one really takes responsibility. There are enormous systemic problems, a need for better facilities, more staff, better training, more direct accountability. There’s clear incompetence, if what Schmidt alleges is true, although it’s easy to imagine the defense attorneys arguing that staffers were placed in untenable situations.

Government has a few basic functions that everyone can agree on, and running schools and prisons are among them. We elect politicians and pay billons of dollars to government employees who, we trust, will do their jobs. Instead, we get a complete breakdown from top to bottom that results in death.

And, if the allegations are true, should result in some people ending up in some of the same cells they once oversaw.

Mike Nichols is the President of the Badger Institute. Permission to reprint is granted as long as the author and Badger Institute are properly cited.

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