Yes, Minnesota incarcerates far less people than Wisconsin does

The number of people incarcerated in Wisconsin is getting more and more attention, especially because of claims of overcrowding and understaffing for the number of people behind bars. 

During an event hosted Feb. 1 in Madison by advocates for incarcerated people in Wisconsin, state Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, compared Wisconsin with other nearby states that incarcerate fewer people. 

In particular, she mentioned Minnesota, which "incarcerates about a third of the number of people Wisconsin does." 

Is that true? 

Data from the Minnesota Department of Corrections and the Wisconsin Department of Corrections show that, yes, Wisconsin does have far more people incarcerated than Minnesota, as of the end of June 2023. 

According to Minnesota Department of Corrections data, there were 8,274 people incarcerated in state prisons about midway through the year. 

And in Wisconsin, there were 21,332 people incarcerated in state prisons around that same time. 

One-third of 21,332 is about 7,110 people. 

So, Minnesota has more than one-third of the number of people incarcerated in its prisons, but Roys’ estimation really wasn’t far off. 

For reference, Wisconsin’s population is about 5.9 million people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, while Minnesota’s population is about 5.7 million. 

When asked for more information about the claim, Jalen Knuteson, an aide to Roys, sent a host of information regarding prison populations from the Prison Policy Initiative, which had slightly different numbers, from earlier in the year. 

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According to information from the Initiative, as of May 2023, Wisconsin had about 20,000 people in state prisons. 

And for Minnesota, the Prison Policy Initiative listed 8,000 people in state prisons. 

Using those numbers, 8,000 is more than one-third of 20,000 as well. 

So, although Wisconsin does have far more people in prisons across the state, Minnesota’s number of incarcerated people isn’t quite as low as one-third of Wisconsin’s numbers. But Roys didn’t claim that the number was exact, only about one-third. 

Roys, too, weighed in over the phone.

"The bottom line is that we are so far out of step with our peer states like Minnesota," she said. "We’ve been incarcerating between double and triple the rate of folks. It’s just way too many." 

Wisconsin incarcerates more people, not because people are committing more crimes, but because of revocations for rule violations by people on community supervision after being released from custody, according to an Oct. 26, 2023, report in the Green Bay Press-Gazette. About 30% of all new admissions in the state between 2000 and 2020 were for revocations. 

Revocations are strongly associated with substance abuse issues, the report said. 

Our ruling

Roys claimed that Minnesota has about one-third the number of people incarcerated than Wisconsin. 

As of the end of June last year, the most recent data available, Wisconsin had 21,332 incarcerated people, compared with the 8,274. That is about one-third.

We rate the claim True.