ALLOUEZ – Green Bay Correctional Institution has been locked down for nearly six months.
State lawmakers, families of those incarcerated and prison reform advocates agree the 125-year-old prison should be closed. But it appears there are no plans to make it happen anytime soon.
In the past five years, the prison has been the scene of a homicide tied to a hate crime allegation, hundreds of assaults between staff and prisoners, rodent infestations and at least one death of a prisoner that resulted in a criminal investigation.
"The conditions are horrendous," said Maike Hess, whose son, Nikolas Czysz, is incarcerated at the facility currently. "It's a horrendous, atrocious place that's not fit for a pet shelter, let alone humans."
While Waupun Correctional Institution received national media attention for its ongoing lockdown, Green Bay Correctional has been under lockdown as well. The Department of Corrections says the "modified movement" has only been ongoing since June.
Some incarcerated individuals, however, say they've had restricted movement since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020. Many of the prisoners have not been outdoors or even seen the sun for a year, according to prisoner letters and advocates.
The Department of Corrections says prison officials have been gradually lifting restrictions at the prison over the past few months. On Tuesday, Gov. Tony Evers announced plans to further lift restrictions at both Green Bay Correctional Institution and Waupun Correctional Institution. At Green Bay, those incarcerated will be permitted to access time with their lawyers, the library and other areas, but recreation is still being limited.
The prison, located in the Green Bay suburb of Allouez, was a former bicycle factory that has been operating continuously as a prison since the 1890s. It has been the subject of complaints for years. A bipartisan group of state lawmakers this year asked that the state shut down the outdated facility, but that proposal was not funded in Evers' biennial budget or the changes made by the Republican-controlled Legislature this summer.
State Sen. Rob Cowles, R-Allouez, said that it's become clear that the facility "could be shut down and should be shut down."
But the state can't simply close the prison without having a plan for where to house the people currently incarcerated there. Cowles said some areas near the lakeshore have expressed interest in providing land, but nothing yet has come to fruition, because building a new facility would likely cost up to $500 million.
Evers was largely silent about the issue, before Tuesday. In his joint announcement with DOC Secretary Kevin Carr, Evers said the recent pay raises for state employees, passed by the Republican-led state Senate in June, should help solve the statewide prison staffing shortage and make it safer to end lockdown restrictions.
During his campaign, he pledged to reduce the prison population, which could translate into being able to move those incarcerated at Green Bay to other facilities, but that hasn't happened.
At the beginning of this month, the prison housed 938 people — more than 30% over its capacity — and more than one in three security staff positions were unfilled, according to DOC data.
The Green Bay prison is more expensive to operate than a modern facility because of its need for regular upkeep and repairs. Overall, Wisconsin taxpayers fund one of the largest state prison budgets in the nation, spending about $220 per resident to fund the prison system in 2020.
One of the strongest advocates for closing the prison is Jim Rafter, president of the village of Allouez. He said he worries about the safety of staff and those incarcerated, as well as residents in the surrounding community.
"You would hope with all the attention that the conditions of GBCI has gotten over the last several years that things would have improved," he said. "Instead they've gotten worse."
Life inside a lockdown: Little sunlight, fresh air and limited time outside a cell
Even before the lockdown, the prison left a visible mark on people incarcerated there.
Dant'e Cottingham, interim associate director ofEx-Incarcerated People Organizing, served about 11 of his 26 years in the state prison system at the facility. When he arrived, he noticed a pallor across the faces of those housed there.
"You can see it in people's skin," he said. "There's a grayness. There's a dullness. There's a coldness."
The prison has clouded windows that block full sunlight from coming in. The ongoing lockdown meant prisoners did not have outdoor recreation time this summer and likely won't have another opportunity for months, given the coming winter.
"I haven't walked outside on the yard since last summer," said Victor Robinson, 64, in a letter from the prison. The pent-up energy, he said, is noticeable, particularly among younger men.
Two people are housed in most cells. The space is so small, it is difficult to do sit-ups or push-ups, Cottingham said.
"You're genuinely, like, stuck in a little small space for months and months at a time," he said. "And it's hard to explain how devastating that is, intellectually, psychologically, emotionally."
Meals and medicine are delivered directly to cells, instead of communal areas. During the lockdown, some prisoners say they have had no recreation time, and only leave their cells for visits to the medical office.
Hess has visited her son at the prison a few times this year. Each trip has left her worried and in tears.
"He's not healthy looking," she said, noting the lack of sunlight and exercise.
"It pains me to see him."
Numerous letters from people inside the prison have described the facility's conditions, including an infestation of mice, water that tastes like iron and toilets with such weak water pressure that waste often cannot be flushed for extended periods of time.
The toilets, multiple prisoners say, are allowed to be flushed once every five minutes. If a second flush is done in that period, they are then locked from flushing for an hour. Sharing cells in tight quarters and poor ventilation makes the situation unsanitary, according to letters.
Kevin Hoffman, the deputy director of communications for the Department of Corrections, said the toilets can be flushed twice in a 10-minute period, a system in place to avoid flooding. Hoffman said in August that the mice issue was handled by pest control, despite prisoners contending that the rodents continue to visit cells.
More coverage:Bipartisan support grows for closing Green Bay Correctional Institution in Allouez
Local law enforcement investigates a prisoner's death, multiple suicide attempts and a homicide
Antonio Whatley asked for a wheelchair to get to a medical exam.
Whatley, 37, was sick and so weak he could hardly stand.But a correctional officer told Whatley he could walk to the Health Services Unit — and if he did not, it would be considered refusing the medical appointment.
Body camera footage showed Whatley slowly sitting up and standing. He tried to steady himself between the bed and wall, before falling back onto the bed and again asking for a wheelchair, according to an incident report from the Brown County Sheriff's Office.
The officer left. A short while later, another officer and a nurse spoke to Whatley at his cell door, both declining to provide him with a wheelchair. They asked him to sign a form that he was refusing medical treatment.
No one examined him. Less than 48 hours later, on May 13, 2021, Whatley died.
In the hours before Whatley's death, prison staff passed by his cell numerous times to pass out meals, medicine and hygiene products, and to offer a phone call. The investigation found Whatley gave little to no response during these interactions. The last time Whatley received anything staff tried to give him through the trap door to his cell was at 10:13 a.m. the day before his death, for medication, according to the incident report.
Multiple prisoners filed complaints related to Whatley's death.
Someone housed in the next cell told sheriff's investigators Whatley had a heart condition and had been yelling for help about 24 hours before his death. Another prisoner said Whatley missed his medication two days before his death. Whatley, the man said, could not get to his cell door quickly enough when staff was passing out medication.
A third prisoner said others in the restrictive housing unit kicked their doors and yelled to try to get the staff's attention to help Whatley.
Shift reports in the hours leading up to Whatley's death were missing, according to the sheriff's office investigation, and there was not proper documentation of Whatley's meal refusals.
An investigator from the Brown County Sheriff's Office referred charges of abuse of residents of penal facilities against a correctional officer and a nurse who refused to provide Whatley with a wheelchair. The Brown County District Attorney's Office never filed any charges.
Prison staff also have been investigated after prisoners attempted suicide.
A Brown County Sheriff's investigator referred charges of abuse of residents of penal facilities against two prison staff members after a man with a history of suicide attempts hanged himself in February 2022. The man survived. He was supposed to be under observation by staff. Instead, no one checked on him for more than an hour.
A second prisoner also made suicidal statements that day, and no one checked on him until he made a second call more than an hour later, according to sheriff's records.
A sergeant told an investigator the delays were likely because of another self-harm emergency that occurred earlier in the day.
The investigator's report quoted the sergeant saying communication among prison staff is “lacking" and called the six-week DOC training academy "a joke."
“I have concerns working at this facility as there is no consistency, communications and documentation,” the sergeant said, according to the report.
A year ago, a white prisoner already under investigation by prison staff for "racist activity" was charged with killing a Black prisoner in Green Bay.
Joshua Scolman fatally stabbed Timothy Nabors and injured a second prisoner with a handmade knife in October 2022, prosecutors say.
The knife, crafted from a bedframe, included a carving of a swastika, according to investigative reports. Scolman has a trial set for February.
RELATED:Brown County Sheriff's investigators recommended hate crime charges in prison homicide; DA didn't include them
Prisoners attacking guards and staffers charged with smuggling drugs, contraband
Four weeks after Nabors was killed, a prisoner repeatedly beat a correctional officer in the head and neck with a shower bag.
The blows "posed a high risk of causing death or great bodily harm to him," according to an investigator's report.
The number of assaults on prison staff has fluctuated in recent years after earlier high-profile incidents. In 2015, a prisoner attacked a prison psychologist, grabbing her by the neck. In 2016, a man stabbed and beat two correctional officers. Weeks later, a staff member was seriously burned after a prisoner threw scalding water in his face.
The prison has seen an increase in incidents involving staff and prisoners that resulted in referrals for criminal charges, from eight cases in 2019 to 26 incidents last year, according to records from the Brown County Sheriff's Office.
The majority of these incidents involved prisoners spitting on staff — a Class F felony under assaults that include any throwing or expelling of bodily substances at prison staff. But there were also numerous incidents of incarcerated people hitting and punching guards, making threats and reporting sexual assaults among prisoners.
There also have been allegations of staff misconduct.
In 2019, two female staff members, Rachelle Ritchie and Sharon Pierce, were charged with smuggling marijuana and other contraband to incarcerated men. The women were believed to have had sexual relationships with those men but were not charged with that offense, according to court records. They were convicted and sentenced to probation.
In 2021, correctional officer Justin Maher was charged with smuggling cocaine, marijuana and cellphones to prisoners.
Politicians agree the prison is a problem, but are unsure of solutions
The Green Bay prison has been a problem for decades.
In the '90s, it had the nickname of "gladiator school." Fights were common among the young men held there, many in their late teens and early 20s, Cottingham said.
Calls to close the facility have intensified in recent years.
State and local leaders, Republicans and Democrats, agree the prison should be closed. But they disagree on what should be done with those incarcerated there.
Britt Cudaback, a spokeswoman for the governor, said Evers inherited problems from former governors and his proposed solutions have been ignored in the past by the Republican-controlled Legislature.
The lockdowns and facilities were "necessary steps" to keep those incarcerated, workers and visitors safe, and the governor trusts DOC leadership to make those decisions, she said.
Rep. David Steffen, R-Howard, has advocated for closing the prison. He is critical of Evers' plan announced Tuesday, saying moving "dangerous felons" to other facilities doesn't solve the problem.
"It’s time for Governor Evers to stop passing the buck and show leadership by closing and replacing our 19th century prisons,” Steffens said in a news release.
Democratic state lawmakers recently introduced a package of bills to improve prison conditions. But the bills do not have Republican support at this time, and are unlikely to receive hearings.
In the meantime, those incarcerated continue to navigate life in an aging and overcrowded facility.
"Their mental health is deteriorating, all of them, and I don't just speak for my son, I'm speaking for all the inmates there," Hess said. "They all belong to families that love them, you know, and it's not right. It's not fair for them."
Laura Schulte can be reached atleschulte@jrn.com and on X at@SchulteLaura.Kelli Arseneau can be reached at 920-213-3721 orkarseneau@gannett.com. Follow her on X at@ArseneauKelli.
