Attorney General Josh Kaul, who is supposed to be the state’s “top cop,” was listed as the keynote speaker at an “immigration” summit held by a liberal group whose goal is closing prisons and that wants to “liberate” prison inmates.
The group, WISDOM, bills itself as an interfaith network of affiliated groups. However, time and again, it has shown that its agenda is anti-prison and pro-illegal immigrant. One of its affiliate’s officials recently wrote a letter urging Gov. Tony Evers to commute the sentence of a double murderer.
The immigration summit that Kaul was billed as the speaker was held, in part, to male sure “no one is terrorized by law enforcement,” in the words of its co-executive director, in a video posted to WISDOM’s Facebook page..
In the video clip from the event posted to Facebook, other organizers and people involved expressed concern about sheriffs holding illegal immigrants in jails and expressed passion to get “driver’s licenses for all.” Many of those illegal immigrants, of course, committed violent crimes.
Kaul has been conspicuously silent all summer as the debate about abolishing police and prisons raged due to one-time Democratic frontrunner for governor Francesca Hong’s radical positions. Yet, when Kaul was in the rest, he not only refused to condemn abolishing police and prisons – he wouldn’t say he didn’t want Hong to become the nominee. His hands-off approach has extended to management; for example, his crime lab, which processes key DNA and other evidence needed to make criminal prosecutions, is melting down, taking fewer cases but delaying longer when processing them, when compared to his predecessor.
Fond du Lac County DA Eric Toney is running against Kaul this November. He has called out Kaul’s since on abolishing the police/prisons and has accused him of mismanaging the vital resources of the Department of Justice, including the crime lab.
WISDOM’s Immigration Summit was held on July 31 in Madison. WISDOM’s stated goal is to “end mass incarceration” and close prisons.
“We call upon Governor Evers, Department of Corrections Secretary and lawmakers in Wisconsin to immediately commit closing the prisons,” the group says on its website. The group works to, in its own words:
- Advance racial and economic justice
- Liberate people from Wisconsin’s carceral system
- End perpetual punishment of directly impacted people
- Shift narratives that dehumanize people with conviction records
“Together, we work to end mass incarceration, expand funding to community-based alternatives to crimeless revocations and treatment alternatives and diversions. We will close prisons and re-invest money in programs that will rebuild communities that have been devastated by mass incarceration,” the group says.
WISDOM even held a rally calling on Evers to cut the prison population in half and start doing commutations. Mark Rice, Wisconsin Transformational Justice Campaign Coordinator with WISDOM Wisconsin, outlined a “demand” of “halting the construction of new prisons, cutting the prison population in half through decarceration policies>”
Rice told WKOW: “We’re calling on Governor Evers to start utilizing that power before he leaves office. It’s time for him to follow through.”
In April, Evers did just that, reigniting the commutation process. More than 800 inmates have applied, included the murderer of a Milwaukee police officer, William Robertson, who was ambushed while riding in a police van.
