State gets millions despite spending audit
The federal government has funneled $3.5 million in criminal justice grants to Wisconsin over the past month despite the lingering cloud of an ongoing audit to determine whether the state falsified data to boost past grant applications.
About $2.2 million in grant funding previously awarded to the Wisconsin Department of Justice is currently frozen pending a rare audit by the U.S. Justice Department.
The audit followed a scathing inspector general report last year that found hundreds of detention facilities weren’t inspected as required and a state Department of Justice worker had repeatedly “made up” information so the state would continue to receive funding. The report called Wisconsin's system for monitoring grant compliance inadequate.
The federal grant program aims to close racial gaps in youth crime, but recent statistics show Wisconsin has seen only mixed results. Overall youth arrests and detentions are down across the state but racial minorities make up a disproportionate share of offenders.
Some youth crime statistics have moved in the wrong direction. In July, grant documents obtained by Gannett Wisconsin Media through open records law show state justice officials called an increasing rate of African American incarcerations in the state “disturbing.”
At the peak in 2012, six out of every eight Wisconsin children being committed was black. The trend “reversed somewhat” last year, state justice officials wrote, to five out of out every eight children.
Concerns over the state’s handling of one U.S. Justice Department grant program have not affected others, though. Wisconsin received $2 million in early September from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance to combat a mountain of untested sexual kits and then $1.5 million from another federal justice agency last week for anti-heroin initiatives.
Fourteen other states sought slices of the $6 million anti-heroin grant program. Half received no funding from the U.S. Community Oriented Policing Services office and the rest — Maine, Michigan, New Jersey, Tennessee and Vermont — received less than Wisconsin.
Wisconsin’s heroin problems are well documented. Fueled by increasing abuse of prescription opiate drugs over the past decade, heroin-related deaths have steadily climbed to what state law enforcement authorities call epidemic levels.
Wisconsin was the only state to receive the maximum allowed amount under the anti-heroin grant program. The funding must be used over the next two years to investigate crimes related to heroin or prescription opiate drugs, a known gateway to heroin, which is a cheaper opiate.
Anne Schwartz, a state Justice Department spokeswoman, said Wednesday that the new funding will pay for a drug crime analyst, crime lab equipment and local anti-drug task forces.
“Fighting the heroin/opiate epidemic that is spreading throughout our state is a priority for Attorney General (Brad) Schimel and we are grateful to have the COPS grant to help in that fight,” Schwartz wrote in an email.
Schwartz did not respond to questions about the ongoing audit by the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, a branch of the U.S. Justice Department.
Keegan Kyle is an investigative reporter for Gannett Wisconsin Media. He can be reached atkkyle@gannett.comor on Twitter@keegankyle.