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When Chrissy Barnard faced a mental health crisis and most needed care, law enforcement handcuffed her, placed her in the back of a patrol car and drove her five hours to Wisconsin’s only state-run mental health facility for the general public. 

Barnard remembers the patrol car’s cold seats. She would eventually have her shoes confiscated, presumably so she couldn’t hang herself with the laces.

The 330 miles between Barnard’s hometown of Superior, Wisconsin and Winnebago Mental Health Institute near Oshkosh made it difficult for her loved ones to comfort her in person.

Barnard — who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and borderline personality disorder — stayed there for months and saw her family just three times, she says. 

About 15 years later, after getting the help she needed, Barnard is now a peer support specialist with the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Wisconsin. She’s among many calling on lawmakers to overhaul an emergency mental health system that she says poorly served her and many others.

Mental health crisis services in Wisconsin operate on a county-by-county basis, yielding wide disparities in care. With few exceptions, counties lean heavily on law enforcement to detain people during mental health emergencies — in which a person is considered a threat to themselves or others — and transport patients to receive care. 

The nearest treatment facility might be hundreds of miles away for some rural residents. 

Aside from the Winnebago County institute, the state runs only one other mental health facility: Mendota Mental Health Institute in Madison, which primarily serves people involved in the criminal justice system. 

“The whole system needs to change, because it’s so traumatizing. You’re treated like a criminal from the get-go,” says Barnard, who earlier in her life was hospitalized for mental health challenges in Wisconsin and Minnesota more than 30 times. 

She has company in pushing for change, including other advocates, mental health practitioners and law enforcement officials. Citing examples in neighboring states, the coalition calls for Wisconsin to build new regional mental health facilities, add care options outside of lengthy hospital stays and fund teams of mental health experts to respond during emergencies — lifting such burdens from law enforcement. 

“The system we currently have right now for emergency detention in Wisconsin is broken,” says Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, a Democrat who in 2019 convened a summit focused on solutions. “And we need to find alternatives.” 

In his 2021-2023 biennial budget, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers proposed more than $17 million for such an overhaul, but the Republican-led Legislature rejected the proposal among hundreds of others from Evers. Republican lawmakers have expressed support for regionalizing mental health crisis services, but $10 million allocated for doing so remain tied up in bureaucracy. 

Few resources in rural Wisconsin 

Wisconsin is among few Midwest states that still rely on individual counties to deliver emergency mental health services. Iowa, Minnesota and Missouri have regionalized mental health crisis services to various extents, while Ohio and Illinois have adopted hybrid approaches, says Dr. Tony Thrasher, medical director of crisis services for the Milwaukee County Behavioral Health Division and president of the American Association for Emergency Psychiatry.  

“In that way, you can spread out the care,” says Thrasher, who advocates for a regional approach in Wisconsin that would include making sure that each region has a psychiatric hospital and other services.

“Instead of doing this with 72 different counties, turn us into four or five regions where the counties can work together,” he says. 

Wisconsin sends some mental health funding to its counties. But sparsely populated rural counties lack funds to build crisis centers or hire specialized staff, says Thrasher.

That is the case in Barnard’s home county of Douglas, necessitating her journey to Winnebago County. It’s even more complicated these days for some Douglas County patients, since they live near the Minnesota border, Barnard says; they might end up in hospitals in Rochester, Minnesota or Fargo, North Dakota and later struggle to find transportation home.  

In Minnesota, higher-population counties typically operate their own emergency mental health services, while rural counties often pool their resources to offer regional care, according to the Minnesota Department of Health Services. 

Illinois is divided into five regions for the purpose of emergency mental health services, offering nine state-operated hospitals, more than 30 community hospitals with psychiatric units and more than 162 community mental health centers and agencies. 

Mental health calls distract law enforcement

Thrasher says residents need better options than simply “call police.”

Relying heavily on law enforcement to respond to mental health emergencies distracts them from other public safety duties, Kaul told Wisconsin Watch.  

Officers seem to agree. Most respondents to a 2019 Wisconsin Department of Justice survey of police chiefs and sheriffs said that mental health interventions requiring detention ate up too much time. Of 354 respondents, 96% said that additional mental health facilities and transportation options outside of law enforcement would likely improve the process. 

Law enforcement officers first respond to mental health crises across most of the state. But trained medical professionals can defuse a mental health crisis in most cases, while law enforcement may escalate threats due to a lack of training, according to the American Psychological Association. 

Some of Wisconsin’s more populous communities, including Madison and Milwaukee, are shifting such duties to trained civilians.  

Madison’s Community Alternative Response Emergency Services (CARES) program responded to 935 calls in its first year of operation and resolved most situations on scene, according to a report released in November 2022. CARES provided in-person help and transportation in  31% of instances, and just 3% of calls required police transfers.

In search of short-term options

And for patients who require care following a crisis? They need options outside of Winnebago County, overhaul advocates say.

Across much of Wisconsin, law enforcement and others who respond to mental health crises face a binary choice between emergency detention or no intervention at all, says Kaul. But investing in short-term inpatient facilities, psychiatric emergency rooms and receiving centers could give responders useful middle ground.    

In Madison, that includes University Hospital’s 20-bed psychiatric inpatient wing where patients who may not require a longer hold can receive care for just a few days.

“A lot of people in crisis can turn around and feel markedly better in 24 to 48 hours, it does not require a lengthy inpatient stay,” Thrasher says.

Republicans nix Evers proposals

In his last budget, Evers proposed funding a variety of services that mental health advocates and law enforcement representatives support. He sought $12.3 million over two years to build up to two regional crisis centers — each with crisis urgent care capabilities, a temporary observation center, a 15-bed stabilization facility and at least two inpatient psychiatric beds.  

Evers also proposed $5 million to create five regional crisis stabilization facilities for adults voluntarily seeking care. The centers would offer 16 crisis stabilization beds for “less traumatic” and more “community-based care in the least restrictive setting,” according to his proposal. 

Republicans leading the Joint Finance Committee stripped each proposal from the budget that Evers ultimately signed.

The committee did include $10 million for “regional crisis services or facilities” in its supplemental budget, but those funds have yet to be released. State law requires agencies designated to receive such funds to request their release and justify the need. In this case, that’s the Department of Health Services. 

The department has twice requested meetings with the joint committee for this purpose, once in January and more recently in December. The committee has yet to hold a meeting, an Evers spokesperson told Wisconsin Watch on Dec. 19.

Sen. Howard Marklein, a Spring Green Republican who co-leads the Joint Finance Committee, declined to comment for this story. But his office later provided Wisconsin Watch a Dec. 21 letter to DHS  in which the Joint Finance Committee accused the agency of failing to detail how it would use the $10 million. 

“We have, instead, resorted to requesting information on uses of the funds from stakeholder groups because your agency is unwilling to provide basic information,” says the letter, signed by Marklein and his co-chair Sen. Mark Born, R-Beaver Dam. 

“Our goal is to ensure the $10 million dollars is used in the most effective way possible so as to have the largest overall impact,” the letter adds. 

The Joint Finance Committee supports a regional mental health crisis model that would include crisis urgent care and observation centers, the letter says, adding that committee staff would reach out to DHS to set up a meeting.  

Outside of the budgeting dispute, the Evers administration sought to help counties by requesting federal reimbursement for counties that transport Medicaid recipients during emergency detention. But the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services denied the request, saying it would violate the Social Security Act, Evers’ spokesperson says. 

Evers plans to unveil his next budget on Feb. 15, following a set of public listening sessions.

“Gov. Evers remains committed to improving our crisis response system, but we don’t have to wait until the next biennial budget passes to do so,” Evers’ office tells Wisconsin Watch. “There are $10 million of taxpayer money sitting idly in an appropriation controlled by Republicans on the Joint Finance Committee, and it’s time for them to release those funds.” 

Mental health healing allows advocate to help others

As she looks back upon the dark chapter that her mental health struggles dominated, Barnard feels grateful for her progress and stability. 

“I ended up losing my house and my job and my fiancé and all kinds of things,” Barnard recalls. “I lost basically everything, my pets, everything.”

Barnard now owns her own home in Superior, where she lives with two cats and a dog. She has spent 12 years working for Essentia Health, an integrated health organization serving patients in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and North Dakota. Her recovery made that tenure possible. 

Barnard now sits on the board of directors for NAMI Wisconsin, which in 2019 named her  “Peer of the Year,” and she serves on a variety of councils, task forces and peer support groups related to mental health and recovery. 

“I like to advocate for mental illness recovery wherever I go,” she says. “Because I know from personal experience that recovery is possible.” 

The nonprofit Wisconsin Watch (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with WPR, PBS Wisconsin, Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service, other news media and the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by Wisconsin Watch do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

‘You’re treated like a criminal’: Wisconsin eyes fixes for emergency mental health system is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.

Within a few years of returning from two traumatic combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, David Carlson lost his voting rights.

He spent about four years in prison on felony charges that in Wisconsin result in disenfranchisement.

What Carlson didn’t realize is that while he sat in jail prior to his conviction, he could have cast a ballot. Only, he says, no one told him he was still eligible. 

While tens of thousands of Wisconsinites are legally barred from voting because of felony convictions, thousands more eligible voters in local jails face persistent barriers to casting a ballot. 

Advocates with Demos, a progressive think tank, call this “de facto disenfranchisement.” 

“Disenfranchisement is, in my opinion, a violation of our constitutional liberties, especially individuals who are eligible to vote and the only barrier is the fact that they’re in a jail that doesn’t have a well defined process,” says Carlson, now a community organizer and law school student.

The Wisconsin state constitution enshrines voting as a right for all adults with only two exceptions — people deemed incompetent by a court and those serving felony sentences. 

Almost all of the roughly 20,000 people in Wisconsin’s prisons are ineligible to vote, as are the tens of thousands on probation, parole or extended supervision. Although the Department of Corrections notifies those with felony convictions when they have lost their voting rights, they do not alert them when they are restored, which happens after felons have completed their entire sentences.

But at any given time, some 10,000 to 12,000 people are locked up in the state’s county jails, with roughly half in on misdemeanor-related charges and/or awaiting trial, which means thousands likely still have the right to vote. Yet the number of those who actually cast a ballot is miniscule: about 50 in 2020, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin.

The ACLU’s 2022 report on incarcerated voting, released Monday, largely mirrors responses  Wisconsin Watch got from public records requests sent to all 72 counties. Neither organization got every county to respond. 

The ACLU, which received a few more responses than Wisconsin Watch got, found 47 counties with a policy, many from Lexipol, a Texas-based company that creates public safety policy templates that local governments can use and adapt. Sixteen counties lacked any written policy and 15 had something more detailed than the Lexipol policy template.

Some that said they had no policy also said they help people vote and communicate with local clerks. For example, Dane County has no jail voting policy, but the Sheriff’s Office said it has worked with local clerks to create protocols for voting, and a 2021 ACLU report noted that the county has improved access to voting over the years. Only three counties contacted by Wisconsin Watch said they tracked voter registration or absentee ballots from their facilities.

Additionally, both Wisconsin Watch and the ACLU of Wisconsin found policies varied widely by location and jail.

Regardless of the presence or quality of a jail’s voting policy, hurdles remain for those incarcerated to obtain and cast a ballot. And a recent Supreme Court ruling banning drop boxes did not address an issue some Republicans raised: Whether state law requires all voters to place their absentee ballots in the mail themselves — which a person behind bars cannot do. 

Voting rights for people incarcerated differ from state to state, and some jurisdictions work to ensure those rights can be exercised. In Illinois and Texas, like Wisconsin, people detained while awaiting trial can still vote. Those states are home to two of the country’s largest jails — in Harris and Cook counties — where officials have increased access to voting.

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart says facilitating voting among people who are incarcerated is important.

“It embeds somebody in their community, their community decisions,” Dart says. “And it’s empowering. It makes you, the individual, feel as if you’re no different than a person who hasn’t been in a jail in the sense of, ‘I get the same vote they do and mine is equal to theirs.’”

Rough start leads to crime

Carlson says a troubled upbringing fraught with family trauma and violence landed him in the Minnesota juvenile detention system at a young age. 

Carlson’s father was a Vietnam War veteran who struggled with related severe mental health trauma, compounded by his upbringing as a Black child in 1950s Mississippi. 

“My mom and father were involved in criminal activity and were severely addicted to substances,” Carlson says.

Carlson’s mother remarried when he was 6 years old, but his stepfather, also addicted to drugs and alcohol, was abusive. 

“These traumas in my youth led me into crime by 10 years old,” Carlson recalls. “I did time in group homes, graduated to juvenile detention, then to long-term youth incarceration in the Hennepin County Homeschool.” 

After his release, his white grandparents adopted him and moved to a predominantly white community. He soon fell into alcohol dependence and joined the Wisconsin Army National Guard in an attempt to gain structure.

Looking back on his relationship with civic engagement, Carlson considers his service in the military — mirroring that of his father’s — not as an act of patriotism but acceptance. 

“My family — my Black side, at least — has never been engaged politically,” he says. “Our service, I think, was more about almost like earning our place as an American.”

Carlson’s sense of civic engagement was born in prison, a product of his own will to change the trajectory of his life and help others who share the experience of incarceration and the disenfranchisement that often accompanies. 

Voting help increases in Wisconsin jails 

Retaining a right and being able to act on it, as Carlson discovered in prison, are two very different things.

Wisconsin jails operate at the county level, and each sheriff’s department and jail administration determines how the facility runs. 

An eligible voter in jail could have access to the ballot accommodated or muddied by the jail policy — if there is one.

The number of counties spelling out jail-based voting procedures has increased in recent years, according to the ACLU of Wisconsin, the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin and All Voting is Local, which all have advocated for improvements.

In 2020, the coalition found that 28 counties had “brief policies with vague language,” 22 of which came from Lexipol. That first year, only Kenosha County could provide a “detailed policy.” The following year they found 22 counties had “created or improved a written policy.” 

Milwaukee County, the state’s largest, has a policy that details the process and is also among the few that tracked voter participation in some form. At least 31 people have received an absentee ballot since 2020. 

But the wide variety in policies means some eligible voters will never be told they can vote.

“It’s not enough to say that they have this right,” says Sgt. Doug Simpson, who oversees training at the Kenosha County jail. “You have to take the next few steps and say, ‘How are they going to go about doing these things?’ ”

Jail staff must facilitate voting, and Simpson says unless instructions are “spelled out A-B-C-D-E,” staff may not follow through.

In Kenosha, incarcerated people receive information about jail-based voting during intake. Simpson acts as the “designated facility liaison,” answering questions, checking voter registration online, photocopying identification and more. 

Simpson is proud that his was the first Wisconsin facility to have a “progressive, proactive policy” concerning jail-based voting, and he’s happy to share their approach with anyone — especially fellow jail administrators — who inquire. 

“It’s an important constitutional issue, and we want to be on the right side of it,” he says. And “from an agency standpoint, from a taxpayer standpoint, I don’t want to be defending lawsuits.”

Groups register the incarcerated

In the opposite corner of the state, several jails have made efforts to more routinely engage incarcerated people about their rights, through periodic postings, informational sessions or registration events.

Engagement is essential because incarceration is traumatic, and “there are bigger things that that person’s worried about than voting,” says Capt. Dave Riewestahl, administrator of the Eau Claire County Jail. 

The ACLU’s initial 2020 report prompted Riewestahl to improve his facility’s voting policies. Teaming up with the League of Women Voters and Chippewa Valley Votes, a local voting advocacy group, they developed a multipronged approach. 

Eau Claire County Jail now posts its voting guide online. Electronic kiosks in each housing unit allow people to check eligibility and registration and message a social worker with questions.

The jail has even held several voter registration drives, the first in 2021. Riewestahl says registrations aren’t tracked because he doesn’t think it’s appropriate for the sheriff’s office to track that information.

“For me, success is: we have the community coming into the jail, and teaching and bringing their passion really for the voting process, and then sharing that with those that are in custody, who want to learn how to vote get signed up,” he says.

Riewestahl, who is currently running for sheriff, questions the appropriateness of “somebody in a uniform with a star badge” trying to get people to vote. Instead, he wants to bring in “the actual subject matter experts.” 

Volunteers drive process

Chippewa Valley Votes and the League of Women Voters have been central to organizing voter registration events in his jail.

Karen Voss, co-coordinator of Chippewa Valley Votes, says her group’s efforts have gone beyond Eau Claire County and included recent trips to Dunn County Jail to meet with residents in small groups.

“That has made a much bigger difference than I would have ever expected until it happened,” she says.

Volunteers can forge a “one-to-one connection” through casual, frank conversations, explaining the elected offices with direct impact on incarcerated people, such as sheriff, county board and city council.

One person confided that he assumed voting put him on “some sort of list” that opened him up to other responsibilities, like jury duty. Voss reassured him that was not the case.

After one event with several productive conversations, it turned out that none of the individuals was eligible to vote. But that didn’t mean the event was a failure.

“It was almost a paradigm shift for me,” Voss recalls. She thinks participants left with a clearer understanding of  “their value and their potential ability to exercise the power to vote in the future.”

Carlson says the general lack of voter education and outreach in jails plays a key role in diminished civic engagement among incarcerated or formerly incarcerated people. 

“There’s so many different laws in so many different states on who is eligible, when you’re eligible, if you get a felony conviction, so a lot of people just think that once you have a felony you can never vote again,” Carlson says. “They’re very quick to ensure that you know that your right has been taken. But, there is no transparency on when that right comes back.”

Eligible — but no ID

Like all voters, people who are incarcerated need certain things to register or request an absentee ballot, including an identification card that fits the state’s requirement for voter ID. A jail photograph won’t do.

“The jail knows who it has,” Carlson says. “They have fingerprints, they have all of that. So for there to be this arbitrary rule that, no, it has to be this state-issued ID, it’s stopping a lot of people from being able to engage that are in the jails.”

Both Texas and Wisconsin have voter ID laws, and accept identification specifically for voting.  

In Harris County, home to Houston, the jail ensures eligible voters are able to get such ID beforehand, says Maj. Phillip Bosquez, who’s in charge of roughly half the jail’s population.

Harris County is among the few jails nationwide that has some form of in-person voting.

Bosquez says the process starts weeks before an election and includes communication with elections officials about who is in the jail, who is registered to vote and who needs a voter ID. 

Voter ID is a barrier for many incarcerated people who have difficulty accessing a voter-sanctioned ID — even before going to jail.

“A lot of people are like how do you not have an ID? Well, I can relate to that also. I was a drug addict and alcoholic,” Carlson says. “I very rarely had an ID ever on me. By the time I ended up in jail, my phone and my wallet were typically always gone.” 

Many steps to in-jail voting 

A lot has to go right for someone to vote behind bars in Wisconsin. Even if they happen to get locked up in a facility with a proactive policy and clear procedure, and an acceptable form of photo ID — they still might not be able to cast a ballot.

“The wheels of government move very, very slowly,” says Kenosha’s Simpson.

If a person incarcerated in Kenosha — which has not held voting-related events — begins the process to vote by mail two weeks prior to an election, Simpson says they’re already too late. 

He estimates they would need a month to get a copy of proper ID, absentee paperwork and for the staff to review it all, which means for anyone arrested and jailed weeks before an election it’s more difficult — if not impossible — to vote.

Riewestahl, of Eau Claire, says under the current law, it’s possible a person arrested and jailed the Monday before a Tuesday election could not vote.

Then, there’s the reality of jail turnover. Riewestahl says 75% of his population leaves within 10 days.

“So how do you get somebody who’s never registered to vote or never even cared about voting — how do you get them engaged in a jail setting? And then they follow through to get them through the registration part, to get the absentee ballot, to then mail it out?” Riewestahl says. “They’re most likely going to be gone.” 

Confusion reigns after ruling 

Absentee voting in Wisconsin jails has been complicated by a recent court decision.

In July, the state Supreme Court ruled that voters can’t return their absentee ballots to drop boxes.

On Aug. 31, a federal judge ruled that voters who have difficulty returning their own ballot can choose someone to return their ballot for them. The judge cited the federal Voting Rights Act, which protects voters with disabilities. 

But the ruling did not address the rights of people in jail, and as of Aug. 16, the Wisconsin Elections Commission had not issued any guidance to clerks about incarcerated voters. 

“The privileges available to a jail inmate vary from facility to facility and from person to person,” a WEC spokesperson said in an email to Wisconsin Watch. 

There are several possible solutions to the problem.

The state could make accommodations for incarcerated people similar to those who are hospitalized. Currently, someone hospitalized within seven days of an election — unable to go to the polls or mail an absentee ballot in time — “may appoint an agent to retrieve and deliver their absentee ballot,” according to the WEC. The state could allow incarcerated people to appoint an agent to ferry their ballot to their clerk. But jail populations include people from across the state and country, potentially requiring an agent to travel long distances.

Chicago, Houston lead in access 

Jails in Chicago and Houston bring the polls to their incarcerated voters. 

Both efforts came from jail staff working directly with local advocacy groups and election officials. Bosquez quoted a phrase his boss, Sheriff Ed Gonzalez, uses regularly: “How does the community want us to return their neighbors back to them?”

Previously, voting by mail was the only method for the roughly 10,000 people in custody in Harris County. Bosquez says the jail still keeps that as the primary method for voting beginning weeks before an election because it’s logistically easier with such a large population. 

But once the absentee ballot deadline passes, the jail then shifts to in-person voting, he says, identifying and notifying eligible voters of the option leading up to and on Election Day.

Chicago Votes, a voting rights advocacy group, had for years focused on voter registration drives on college campuses and concerts. When it decided to take those efforts into the Cook County Jail, members expected pushback from Sheriff Dart.

But they found the opposite, says Jen Dean, a co-executive director for the organization.

“He was actually super excited about it, wanted to do everything possible to make it a success,” she says. “And I definitely believe over the past five or six years he’s kept to that promise.”

The jail is now a temporary early voting location, allowing incarcerated people the chance to vote in person on the two weekends before an election. 

During the June primary, voter turnout for the Cook County Jail was higher than the city as a whole, 25% for the jail and 20% for the city, Block Club Chicago reported in July.

“The more opportunities that people have to vote the better,” says Alex Boutros, community organizing manager for Chicago Votes.

Dart says voting is among the most substantive ways to get people engaged in the community, which can go a long way toward breaking the cycle of incarceration. He wants to make voters in his jail — who like all voters cast ballots for sheriff and judges — the most educated in the county.

In November 2021, for the first time, 96 voters — including people incarcerated and members of the public — cast a ballot at the Harris County Jail on Election Day, which included races for local offices and state constitutional amendments. The jail’s turnout was the median for the county’s 704 voting locations. The jail’s visitor lobby was also open to the public to vote, which state law requires for all polling places.

“Given the unique nature of this location, we believe this to be a profound success,” says Nadia Hakim, spokesperson for the Harris County Elections Administration.

In the March primary, more than 200 people cast a ballot from the jail. Bosquez says he expects the upcoming general election to be their biggest yet. 

Coalition pushes voting behind bars 

Carlson knows from personal experience the damage that can come from disenfranchisement. 

He’s now a part of the Wisconsin Voting Rights Coalition, a group of legal and advocacy organizations including the League of Women Voters and ACLU Wisconsin. The coalition collaborates with jails to increase voting registration. 

During his previous time as an organizer with ACLU Wisconsin, Carlson compiled a voting rights toolkit for county jail administrators. The coalition has held at least 11 jail-based voter outreach events across Wisconsin, according to Eileen Newcomer, voter education manager with the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin. 

Carlson, now living in Eau Claire, also runs two small businesses, a peer mentoring program for individuals leaving incarceration and a property business designed to ease rental and housing barriers often facing individuals who were recently incarcerated. 

“I’m dealing with the exact population of individuals who, generally you know, end up in and out of jail, and are disenfranchised for one reason or another,” Carlson says, identifying the linkages between his work and his advocacy.  

Participating in civic and community engagement can become personal for individuals who have experienced incarceration.

Shannon Ross, executive director of The Community, spent 17 years in various Wisconsin prisons on a homicide conviction starting at age 19. 

Ross launched The Community in 2014 while still in prison. Since then, what began as a newsletter has grown into a nonprofit organization aimed at correcting the narrative surrounding formerly incarcerated people and their place in society.

Prior to his time in prison, Ross, like Carlson, never placed much stock in civic engagement.

“The reason I came to this work, of course, like so many, is that I was impacted by the system,” Ross says. “My advocacy has largely been on learning, education, preparation and agency for people that are incarcerated.”

Ross was released from prison only 23 months ago and is still 13 years away from regaining his voting rights. 

That hasn’t stopped him from working to help others. 

“I felt like there was some value in helping people understand their rights,” Ross says. “Even if I don’t vote, at least I can tell you what your rights are, I can give you an understanding of the landscape.” 

He calls it an ecosystem of change — helping the formerly disenfranchised “engage in that power of voting.” 

The nonprofit Wisconsin Watch (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with WPR, PBS Wisconsin, other news media and the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by Wisconsin Watch do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

Thousands of eligible Wisconsin voters face ballot barriers in jail is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.

Brown County is launching an independent medical examiner’s office — exiting a partnership with the Dane County Medical Examiner’s Office, which has overseen the northeastern Wisconsin county’s autopsies since 2016. 

The Brown County Board of Supervisors voted July 20 to hire a full-time chief medical examiner and end an agreement with Dane County, which helped Brown County upgrade and professionalize its services in recent years. 

The restructuring unfolds as Brown County prepares to open a $12 million complex, eliminating the need to transport bodies to Dane County. And it comes two months after 12 current and former employees told Wisconsin Watch that they regularly endured bullying, screaming and insults from two of their supervisors in the Dane County office: longtime Director of Operations Barry Irmen and Dr. Agnieszka Rogalska, the chief medical examiner. Both have denied the allegations. 

Dane County’s staff turmoil did not shape Brown County’s plans to launch its own medical examiner’s office, county officials said. That has been a “long term goal for many years,” Jeff Flynt, Brown County deputy executive, wrote in an email. 

“We are entering into discussions with Dane County regarding transitioning from them providing ME Services to providing those services ourselves, while at the same time continuing our cooperative relationship with Dane County,” Flynt told Wisconsin Watch.

Dane County has appointed a replacement for Irmen, whose office recently saw two additional high-level employees resign. Dr. Cristina Figueroa Soto, the office’s chief of investigations since 2021, became director of operations on June 6, according to Greg Brockmeyer, Dane County’s director of administration, with Irmen staying on to offer training. 

Dane County was serving Brown County under the parameters of a contract that recently expired, making it easier to end the relationship, said Keith Deneys, who chairs the Brown County Board’s Public Safety Committee. 

“There became an opportunity for us to look at moving off on our own. Dane has been very helpful in getting our medical examiner’s office up and running to professional standards,” Deneys said. “There are no ill feelings, or anything that they have done, that would have driven us away.”

Dr. Elizabeth A. Douglas will lead Brown County’s new medical examiner’s office, following nine years as an assistant professor of forensic pathology at Western Michigan University’s medical school. The county sent her an offer letter on July 21, Flynt said.   

Ending the cross-county partnership will slow the revenue flowing to the Dane County Medical Examiner’s Office. The office budgeted about $733,000 in revenue from the Brown County partnership for 2022 —  about 23% of its estimated revenue that year, according to records provided by the Dane County Department of Administration.

Dane County may also stop or slow conducting autopsies for Door and Oconto counties under the restructuring, which currently pay Brown County roughly $100,000 each per year for medical examiner-related services — money that Brown passes through to Dane County, which provides those services. 

Door and Oconto counties will likely draw services from Brown County’s new office, county administrators told Wisconsin Watch, although some collaboration with Dane County could still happen. Oconto County Administrator Erik Pritzl said he expects a smooth shift. 

“It’s kind of an exciting time to see these services going to a true local, regional provision with Brown County taking the lead,” he said.  

Rock County, which pays Dane County about $362,000 per year for medical examiner services, has no plans to cut ties, Rock County Administrator Josh Smith wrote in an email.

“We, as others, have followed the reporting about concerns expressed by staff from the Dane County Medical Examiner’s Office, and we have worked to promote a positive work environment in the Rock County office,” Smith wrote. “We have valued the improvements in expertise that Dane County has brought to the Rock County office since the contract began.” 

New leadership in Dane County 

Figueroa Soto is filling Irmen’s longtime role. Irmen served as operations director from 2011 until he retired in January 2022. Dane County re-hired him on a temporary, part-time basis in April amid a search for his permanent replacement. He and Rogalska, who rose to chief medical examiner in January after eight years as deputy chief medical examiner, deny allegations that they yelled or screamed at employees and drove some to leave the office.

Dane County has never had its full complement of five budgeted pathologists, which Irmen has attributed to a nationwide shortage of pathologists. Since 2013, five pathologists have started and left the Dane County Medical Examiner’s Office, along with dozens of other employees who exited positions within the same period of time, Wisconsin Watch reported in May. Wisconsin Watch could not independently verify the reasons for each departure.

Dane County has since accepted the resignations of the office’s lead investigator and deputy director of operations, according to Brockmeyer. 

“With almost 3,000 employees Dane County sees turnover in every department. The Medical Examiner’s Office is no different in that regard,” Brockmeyer said in an email. 

Brockmeyer did not answer a question about whether these resignations or Brown County’s changes will impact an autopsy backlog that Dane County employees have described.  

Figueroa Soto served roles including deputy medical examiner in the Waukesha County Medical Examiner’s Office for more than five years before joining the Dane County Medical Examiner’s Office in August of 2020 and becoming chief of investigations in September 2021, according to her LinkedIn resume.  

Lucas Robinson of the Wisconsin State Journal contributed reporting. The nonprofit Wisconsin Watch (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with WPR, PBS Wisconsin, other news media and the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by Wisconsin Watch do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

Brown County halts partnership with embattled Dane County Medical Examiner’s Office is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.