Wisconsin Idea Seminar: Thursday, May 24

Map of Wisonsin showing Madison, Baraboo, Fond Du Lac, Oshkosh, the Oneida Nation, Door County, Green Bay and Milwaukee.

Day four started at Wisconsin Public Radio’s regional office on the campus of UW-Green Bay. The station produces and broadcasts 10 hours of locally created programming, including long-running radio shows for the region’s Hmong, Hispanic and Native American populations.

After a talk titled “Criminal Justice 101” from UW–Madison law professor Walter Dickey, the group toured the Green Bay Correctional Institution, a maximum-security prison for men, many of whom have committed violent crimes. After passing through the metal detector, institution staff took the group to eat the lunch prepared and eaten by inmates earlier that day, then showed the group around the wards, recreational grounds, and health and religious facilities.

The group then headed to Milwaukee.

First-person impressions

Greg Downey

Associate professor, School of Journalism and Mass Communication and School of Library and Information Studies

On: Visit to the Green Bay Correctional Institution

Downey was struck by the great disparity between the racial makeup of the prison population in comparison to that of the overall population in the state. Reflecting on the experience, he noted that UW–Madison and the correctional institution share common challenges in defining a meaningful role for themselves within the larger context of addressing the state’s social needs.

Says Downey: “It raised the question for me of how do you get an institution like that to think beyond its walls, which raised the question of what are we doing here on the Wisconsin Idea … the idea of the university looking beyond its walls and thinking about the state and its impact on the state and its relationship to the state.”

Listen to Downey’s comments (4.7 Mb mp3; 5 min., 5 sec.)

Susan Robinson

Assistant professor, School of Journalism and Mass Communication

On: Visit to the Green Bay Correctional Institution

“It really made me think a lot about power hierarchies and the social system that we have and how we treat criminals and whether what we’re doing over there is the best thing, because it seemed like it worked very efficiently … but on the other hand, you’re in a 100-year-old building and it seemed as if there were racial disparities as well as some issues that they had with unrest and idleness and some mental illness issues that they couldn’t quite deal with as effectively as they wanted to.”

Listen to Robinson’s description of the lunch (2.1 Mb mp3; 2 min., 16 sec.)

Listen to Robinson’s reflection on the overall experience (.8 Mb mp3; 52 sec.)

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