February 10 Parole Commission Staff Meeting

Commission Chair John Tate II and new commissioner Shannon Pierce

 

The WI Parole Commission had a staff meeting via zoom today. They have only had three of these meetings since March 4, 2020 (when the pandemic began).

The meeting was breif as usual and John Tate II did not allow public comment, or questions, not even the zoom chat was available to participants. Nevertheless, I was able to glean a little bit of insight from it.

First, I want to point out that Commissioner Doug Drankiewicz’s zoom ettiquite is terrible. He sat back, away from the microphone and it was often difficult to hear him. Chairman Tate even asked him to sit forward so he could be heard, which he did for all of fifteen seconds, then he leaned back again, and became pretty much inaudible again. Since all parole commission hearings are being done virtually, I imagine most of the people in Drankiewicz’s hearings cannot hear what he’s saying. Those people’s lives and futures depend on Doug’s the muffled inaudible ramblings, but he is in a position of power over them, so I imagine it is hard to ask him to sit closer. Of course, anyone who has been before Drankiewicz in the past knows to expect nothing but excuses for defers from him anyway.

Second, the largest business item in the meeting was a discussion of a records requests. Someone in the records department contacted the commission to say that the requests they send are very labor intensive and difficult to keep up with. The commissioners and Tate spoke in polite circles around the subject because these records are part of the commissioner’s delay and obstruction practice.

Harlan Richards, who is sentenced under the old law has descibed the situation for us a year ago:

The practice of spending hours and hours reviewing files prior to a parole hearing is a new practice started by [former commissioner Danielle] LaCost and her cronies for the express purpose of finding excuses to justify denying release on parole. Before Truth In Sentencing (TIS) cut down the number of prisoners receiving parole hearings, most hearings did not last more than 15 minutes and dozens of prisoners received hearings by one commissioner in one day. Commission members should be basing their decisions on the person sitting in front of them, not the file created by DOC officials who do everything possible to make a prisoner look like a monster on papers they place in the files.

If we understand the Parole Commission rightly, it serves no purpose other than corruption and bureaucratic waste. Its not surprising for such an organization to have these kinds of convoluted indirect conversations in their staff meetings. Everyone is playing around the elephant in the room. I don’t know if he intended to or not, but Chairman John Tate’s concern about his staff over-taxing the records department amounted to a threat on one of the primary time-wasting excuses used by the commissioners in the course of their self-serving fake jobs. Asking them to request fewer records is another way of asking them to ignore the long history of conduct reports from ten or more years ago. The commissioners have access to newer conduct reports online through a program or site called wix, but they rely on the past files to find old incidents they can use as pretext to justify deferring release.

I’ve seen John Tate directly instruct them to focus on recent conduct reports in previous staff meetings, but it is clear they’ve ignored him, leading to this conversation about record requests. The conclusion of the conversation was to identify a few things that record requests should be limited to, but Doug Drankiewicz and Jennifer Kramer both said that they would request old files on a case-by-case basis (ie for every person who’s recent record doesn’t have any incidents they can use as pretext to defer release). This is something Tate, their boss, has discouraged them from doing, but he did not push back when they said they would continue it.

Third, there was a newer commissioner on the call. Her name is Shannon Pierce, according to her LinkedIn page, she was CCI field supervisor for 3 years, and a madison DCC agent for 5.5 years before that. She was hired in October 2020, and, based on the call has recently completed training. She said that she “does exactly the same process as Doug and Jennifer,” which is what I expect from anyone hired out of the staff of the DOC.

Fourth, the office staff said a few things about correspondence. Apparently, the process for dealing with letters from people is that records associate Oliver Buchino does a first pass on letters from incarcerated people and their families. He returns any forms or things that are inappopriate for the file to the sender, and then passes the support letters to records associate Sara Tome, who I think, puts them into people’s files for the commissioners to ignore. In the past, Tate has said that he does see letters that these two staff members deem important, and when he is reviewing a reccomendation from commissioners, he has access to their files, which include these letters (which the commissioners surely ignored).

Our contacts inside say that all three commissioners do almost 100% deferrals, but every once in a while Tate will reverse their reccomendation and release someone. He still has never been confirmed by the state senate, so he’s a reformer walking a tightrope. If he overturns too many deferrals, the commissioners merely have to have a chat with Senator Van Wanggaard, head of the senate public safety committee and Tate would be fired. Tate mentioned that his term expires at the end of March, but he expects to be reinstated.

Fundamentally, it continues to surprise me how little has changed for the commission in the face of a pandemic that has infected half the prison population and threatens to take the life of people they have the power to save. Tate talked about hoping commissioners get vaccinated, and Drankiewicz talked about a conference that was postponed that he’d like to attend in June. So, they are concerned about how the pandemic impacts their lives and work routines. During the meeting, commissioner Jennifer Kramer talked about the video hearings and said “I think we’re doing the best that we can.” Tate responded “I agree, certainly want to emphasize my appreciation for your continued efforts and professionalism and kind of taking in the whole of the circumstances that are around as you’re assessing cases and creating plans for people who are ready to be advanced.” This vague euphimism about “the whole of the circumstances” is the closest anyone in the meeting came to acknowledging that with every deferred release, they choose to maintain the situation of WI prisons as overcrowded death traps.