Rep Schraa on Earned Release for Vocational Training

one of the reasons why I wanted to come to Madison was um to affect change and uh as many people in this body know uh during the summer we have what's called ledge Council study committees and I participated in one which was called the ledge Council ledge Council study committee on increasing offender employment opportunities this summer and these are bipartisan um the gentl from the 18th the gentle lady from the 77th and the gentleman from the 93rd were on this committee uh Senator falowski and Lena Taylor who is now a judge uh and all of us got together to try to come up and brainstorm ideas to help the workforce and also to find ways that we can do some smart Criminal Justice Reform and that's an issue that in this building it's either you got to be you know if if you look at any Criminal Justice Reform a lot of people think that you're just soft on crime and that is not the case what we want to be as smart on crime so we came up with some really good ideas um we know that our prisons uh are overc capacity they're busting at the seams and if we don't do something Mr Speaker we're going to be spending billions and billions of dollars over the next few years uh building new prisons so we need to do some smart Criminal Justice Reform like all the states around us have done and we also know that employers are desperate for vocational uh for workers that have vocational skills uh currently the doc already has an earned release program it is for people that have aoda issues and it is very successful recidivism rates are very low it betters outcomes for individuals that made some mistakes they're nonviolent uh offenses um all of us in this room if I look around and I I won't look around because I don't want to be reprimanded by you Mr Speaker but everyone in this everyone in this body has probably made a mistake sometime in their life that if it went a little bit differently they could be behind bars and I've talked about this before so what does this bill do uh this bill allows a person who's been incarcerated who has a nonviolent offense who has served 2third of their sentence already if they receive a v vocational training program or certificate they could become eligible for this program uh the the person incarcerated would have to petition the sent s in court so there's a lot of steps to go through to give you an example if somebody was incarcerated for 10 years they would have to uh have received a certificate for a vocational skill they would have had to have served 6 and a half years of their sentence and the if if they qualified for this and they were chosen the sentence doesn't go away the three and a half remaining years of their sentence would actually be added on to their extended supervision so this is a good bill it's a hard Bill maybe for some of you to vote on because it may seem like we're just letting people out of jail or letting them out of prison but this is this is a lwh hanging fruit of some Criminal Justice Reform that my colleague on the other side of the aisle who I have grown uh uh a very good friendship with and who will be leaving this body and I know we don't do this a lot of times but I'm going to say some nice things about somebody on the other side of the aisle uh this individual from the 18th I know his passion uh I know his determination he is a really smart individual he will be uh sorely missed and in this uh chamber as he's leaving and Milwaukee the city of Milwaukee is gain gaining a real gem uh but I want him to know he has made a difference um his legacy will continue on uh some of the greatest bills and some of the most powerful times on this floor have been bills that he and I have worked on so Mr Speaker uh and everyone in this body I hope that we can have a unanimous across the board green up and down the vote is green thank you