As the country grapples with a racial reckoning, local activists, organizers and officials weigh in on Madison’s documented disparities and what criminal justice reform could mean here. Over the years, Girard Thomas has gotten used to being stopped and qu

When sex offenders get released from jail or prison, they’re required to stay in contact with the state Department of Corrections so that law enforcement can keep tabs on them. For the rest of their lives, they must update authorities about their employment and place of residence. Convicted child rapist Frederick Perez-Santos had a problem doing that.

A longstanding educator drain strains teachers and students. Reader donations, many as small as just $5, are what fund the work of writers like this—and keep our content free and accessible to everyone. If you support this work, will you chip in to help f

Madison families and young professionals aren’t mincing words. They say the city’s rental market is “a nightmare,” “verging on highly unaffordable” and turning into “an absolute [expletive] housing crisis.”. When Jeanette Dainty found out her family of four had to move because the landlord was selling their two-flat house, she expected the hunt for new rental housing to be “a little frustrating.”.

Milwaukee muralist Aisha Valentín vividly remembers the first time she picked up a can of spray paint. “It was just so fast,” she says, describing how the paint erupted from the can unlike drawing with a pencil or painting with a brush. “It was addictive—

Collin Vander Galien had been working at Didion Milling in Cambria for about three months, loading 55-pound bags of processed corn into train cars. It was hardly his dream job but it paid well and he needed the money to pay off his truck and student loans from an unfinished degree from Madison College.

It happened during her second date with an Illinois man she met on a dating website. “He seemed like a nice guy and was a single parent like me,” says the 46-year-old real-estate agent in a recent interview. On that evening in March 2016, the two had dinner and drinks at a downtown restaurant. “Things were going well and I liked him,” she says.

UW–Madison researcher and Wicab Inc. founder Paul Bach-y-Rita showcases his tongue display unit, a sensory substitution device that helps profoundly blind patients with orientation, mobility, and object recognition through electro-tactile stimulation. Photo by Phillipe Psaila/Science Photo Library.

Not all of Brian Whitmore’s friends wanted him to become a cop. It wasn’t that they feared for his safety. It was because they saw him as a traitor. “All you’re gonna do is lock up more brothers,” friends told Whitmore, who is black. “You’re just going to oppress more of us because that’s the system you’re going to work for.”.

Class is out for the summer, but Michael Ford is still in teaching — and recruiting — mode. The Madison College professor of architecture is meeting a recent East High graduate at the DreamBank downtown to chat about careers. The student had been leaning toward engineering, but Ford is pushing him to consider a different kind of design.

It was arguably the most high-profile arson case in recent Milwaukee history, an explosion and fire that engulfed a bar, three restaurants – including East Side institution Pizza Man – and 10 upstairs apartments. Thankfully, no employees or residents were injured, but the building and its businesses were completely destroyed.

When federal agents arrested a young Muslim man in an undercover sting in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, last year, they played it up big as "terrorism." His defense, however, says any threat was not just overblown, but completely manufactured.