{"id":4713,"date":"2023-08-04T19:29:37","date_gmt":"2023-08-04T19:29:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=4713"},"modified":"2023-08-04T19:58:32","modified_gmt":"2023-08-04T19:58:32","slug":"evers-signs-gops-parole-transparency-bill-after-families-wrn-exposed-states-failures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=4713","title":{"rendered":"Evers Signs GOP\u2019s Parole Transparency Bill After Families, WRN Exposed State\u2019s Failures"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.wisconsinrightnow.com\/evers-parole-2\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers has signed<\/a> the parole transparency bill, which Republicans crafted after Wisconsin Right Now and victims\u2019 families exposed systemic failures<\/a> in how the state was notifying victims\u2019 family members. It\u2019s a rare bi-partisan action.<\/p>\n

In addition, the bill will require the Parole Commission to publish information about paroles on its website; it requires an open records request to get the information now. In fact, Wisconsin Right Now, along with the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, had to sue to get the names of some parolees before the governor\u2019s election last fall.<\/p>\n

Senator Van Wanggaard (R-Racine) was the bill\u2019s author.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cFor far too long, the Parole Commission has operated in secrecy,\u201d Van Wanggaard said before. \u201cThe Parole Transparency Act shines a light on what is happening at the Commission. The public, especially crime victims, have a right to know who is being paroled, and when.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although the media largely censored the victims\u2019 voices because a gubernatorial election was going on and tried to ignore the systemic failures in victim notification exposed by WRN, courageous victims\u2019 family members like the Johanna Balsewicz family and Tim Erickson, the son of murder victim Susan Erickson, continued to bravely speak out, urging changes in how victims\u2019 families are treated in the Wisconsin parole process. WRN worked with<\/a> Erickson to compile a list of suggested changes, including the expanded notification that Evers just signed.<\/p>\n

\"balsewicz<\/p>\n

The Balsewicz family courageously fought, successfully, against the release of a convicted wife killer, Douglas Balsewicz, who remains behind bars to this day. They first elevated the issue to the public\u2019s attention. Wisconsin Right Now then exposed the state\u2019s systemic failures to notify many victims\u2019 family members that their loved ones\u2019 killers were being considered for parole and were being released. For example, when WRN called Erickson to get comment about the parole of his mother\u2019s killer, he wasn\u2019t even aware of it. Wisconsin Right Now\u2019s Jim Piwowarczyk and Jessica McBride won a gold Milwaukee Press Club award for the reporting. <\/p>\n

A two-time Evers\u2019 appointee, John Tate, gave the green light to free some <\/a>of the state\u2019s worst killers and rapists, as WRN outlined in a 60-part series. In the wake of the Balsewicz controversy, Evers belatedly requested that Tate rescind the parole of killer Douglas Balsewicz and resign, which Tate did. Tate, bizarrely, is now <\/a>violence prevention manager for the City of Racine.<\/p>\n

In a news release, on August 4, 2023, Evers announced that he had signed Assembly Bill 47, now Wisconsin Act 31, which he wrote:<\/p>\n

\u201cExpands the definition of victim to include any member of the victim\u2019s family who was younger than 18 years of age at the time of the crime but is now 18 years of age or older, allowing those individuals to register to be notified when their offender applies for parole or is released on parole or extended supervision; (our note: This failure was one reason Erickson, a small child when his mother was murdered, was not aware of the killer\u2019s parole. The same was true of the daughter of Balsewicz.)<\/p>\n

Specifies that notices of an individual\u2019s parole application must be sent at least 90 days before a parole interview or hearing (our note, the previous compressed time frame had negatively affected the Balsewicz family); and <\/p>\n

Requires specific information about the actions of the Parole Commission to be posted on the Wisconsin Department of Corrections website, such as any guidance documents that the Parole Commission uses when making parole decisions and monthly and annual totals of the number of persons granted parole, denied parole, and returned to prison.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEnsuring transparency, accountability, and appropriate support and notification for victims, survivors, and their families is absolutely vital to the success of the Parole Commission and of our criminal justice system as a whole,\u201d said Gov. Evers. \u201cParole Commission Chair Erpenbach and I share the same goals of supporting survivors and keeping dangerous individuals off our streets while also ensuring we have a functioning, efficient parole system as required by law. This bill supports both of these important goals.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Van Wanggaard, the bill says that \u201cthe Commission is required to post the paroles granted, denied, and revoked on their website and parole guidance documents on a monthly basis.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.wisconsinrightnow.com\/evers-parole-2\/ Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers has signed the parole transparency…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":3423,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wi-right-now"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4713"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4713\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4716,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4713\/revisions\/4716"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}