TREE, n.

A tall vegetable intended by nature to serve as a penal apparatus, though through a miscarriage of justice most trees bear only a negligible fruit, or none at all. When naturally fruited, the tree is a beneficient agency of civilization and an important factor in public morals. In the stern West and the sensitive South its fruit (white and black respectively) though not eaten, is agreeable to the public taste and, though not exported, profitable to the general welfare. That the legitimate relation of the tree to justice was no discovery of Judge Lynch (who, indeed, conceded it no primacy over the lamp-post and the bridge-girder) is made plain by the following passage from Morryster, who antedated him by two centuries:

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

(from woods lot)

According to the most recent data from the US Department of Justice (midyear 2024 published May 2024), the “incarceration rate” or number of prisoners in custody with sentences of greater than one year is not remarkable in Wisconsin. We hold 383 people for every 100,000 of our population. Compared to the national incarceration rate of 488 convicts per 100,000 population we look pretty good. On the other hand, we hold roughly 23,000 people in State and Federal prisons and I don’t think this tells the whole story… I need to verify this… it’s my understanding that a substantial number of those convicted in Wisconsin are farmed out to prisons in other states, particularly those where the great experiment in incarceration as private enterprise has taken hold. In 2024 about twenty percent of our convicts were contracted out to other states for imprisonment, probably to a mix of private and public institutions. Wisconsin flirted with privatization. Data for 2024 show almost 500 prisoners held in private facilities within the state, but this had dropped to zero by June of 2024. The decline in support for the prison business coincides with the election of Democratic governor with executive powers over the State Department of Corrections.

According to these data, 4,416 of every 100,000 black Wisconsinites are in jail. In other words, more than four percent of the state’s black population is incarcerated. Less than four-tenths of a percent of the state’s population as a whole is incarcerated. That’s more than an order of magnitude difference. Something awful is going on when 12% or more of black males in their late twenties are in prison.

Incarceration is a growth industry. More prisoners are “admitted” every year than released. Admitted is the word the DOJ report uses. Sounds a little like higher education, and I suppose it is…