Reply ID: AMC2012

The most important and pressing issue that I feel you should know about concerns approximately 4000 of Wisconsin's prisoners. Those 4000 are under a law that says once they've completed 25% of their sentence they are able to be released onto parole supervision. So if you had 20 years you did 5 years and would usually be out but did no more than 8 years. If you had 30 years you'd do about 7 to 12 years. And if you had 50 years you did about 12 1/2 to 18 years. This is how Wisconsin's parole law worked prior to Dec. 31, 1999.

However, the parole board is saying that 25% is not "sufficient time served for punishment." On Dec. 31, 1999 the law changed. Anyone arrested on or after that date was subject to do 100% of their sentence. Hence the law was named Truth-in-sentencing (T-I-S). If a person was arrested on Jan. 2, 2000 and sentenced to 20 years in prison, he'd get out on Jan. 1, 2020. He doesn't get a chance to see the parole board at all. He just does 20 years. No rehabilitation. He could be a model prisoner or a nuisance. He gets no good time nor any time taken for messing up. The parole board is implementing T-I-S laws on parole law prisoners which is illegal and the reason why 4000 of Wisconsin's "citizens" are still in prison.

This parole law (which is now discretionary and arbitrary) needs to be attacked and changed through a petition on-line and/or a class-action civil lawsuit based on the denial of our liberty interest. People talk about how overcrowded prisons are and how much money tax-payers are paying to warehouse people in prison. The practical and rational solution is to release the people who are up for parole. We must stand together on this. Some of America's brightest minds are being repressed due to arbitrary laws. The only way we stay in prison is because the mainstream society/community does not know or understand such laws dealing with sentencing and prison politics.

I and 4000 others are serving more time than we usually would if the law wasn't changed in 1999. That law is only supposed to apply to those arrested on or after Dec. 31, 1999. But parole law prisoners are suffering extra years in prison for it.

Please make your voice heard for change for those who don't know about this and need to know, by signing a petition in favor of changing this law and getting rid of the discretionary and arbitrary parole board and make serving 25% of a sentence law. So that the law is more fair, less discretionary and so prisoners can work towards rehabilitation instead of being warehoused.

Sincerely, Marvin D. Wilson