With the implementation of the Jail Audit Recommendations the county will be releasing more than 200 inmates into the electronic monitoring program instead of incarceration. This is expected to save the county $56/day per inmate or more than $3 million a year.

In September a grassroots coalition of students and community activists worked with Kumar and other progressive supervisors to successfully pass an ordinance that ended millions of dollars of profiteering from inmates in the jail.

Kumar stated, “A $20 a day fee for every inmate on top of the millions we will be saving by not having inmates in jail is shameful. Most inmates are living in poverty and can barely afford to survive day-to-day, an additional $600 a month is too high a burden for inmates living in poverty. The county should not choose profit over people. This ordinance hopes to assure that low-income people and people of color are given equal access to their families and jobs through this well-intentioned program.”

The ordinance uses a number of methods to identify those who qualify including, but are not limited to, the following:

“A person assisted by a court appointed attorney or public defender; a person receiving W2 assistance, federal Section 8 housing
assistance; or parents or guardians of children receiving the federal breakfast or lunch programs.”

In addition, the Clerk of Courts or the County Sheriff may exempt or reduce rates for individuals whom they believe have a financial hardship but do not qualify under the ‘poverty exemption’ provision.

The Madison-area Urban Ministry’s Executive Director Linda Ketchum stated her organization’s strong support for the ordinance; “The expansion of the electronic monitoring program is long overdue but establishing these fees universally succeeds in creating a two-tiered system of justice. Considering the findings and recommendations of the recently released Governor's Commission on Racial Disparities we see the relationship in our state between economics, education, income and race in creating a system where there exists huge racial disparities in participation in alternatives to incarceration programs and options.”

Dane County was recently shown to have the third-highest disparate black incarceration rate in the country, and Wisconsin continues its tradition as the state with the highest black incarceration rate in the country.