WI Senate Candidate Barnes: 'Reducing Prison Populations Is Now Sexy'

Wisconsin Senate candidate Democrat Mandela Barnes said in 2018 he believes “reducing prison populations is now sexy,” a video unearthed from the Republican National Committee revealed.

“I’m happy we are all talking about it,” Barnes told a group about reducing prison populations. “Now that criminal justice reform and reducing prison populations is now sexy — it’s now a thing that leading candidates are talking about… Because ten years ago people would have run away from this issue.”

“People would not have showed up to a forum like this because they would be scared they would have looked like they were soft on crime,” Barnes admitted.

Barnes, who is accused by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) of releasing “270 murderers and attempted murderers from prison,” was also angry in 2021 because the state of Wisconsin was not able to “reduce Wisconsin’s prison population by 11,000 inmates” or half by 2015. Barnes has additionally called for “a reduction of spending” on state corrections budgets.

Barnes is one of the most radical candidates in the 2022 cycle. He has advocated for allowing felons to retain the right to vote and supported defunding “over-bloated” police departments

Despite Barnes’ radical position on law and order, he has spent large amounts of money on security for himself. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Barnes has “averaged more than 13½ hours of security protection a day — including weekdays, weekends and holidays — at a daily cost to the state of $660 for patrol officers’ wages. That’s more than 10 times the number of hours as his predecessor.”

Yet crime in Wisconsin is on the rise, according to a MacIver Institute. Murders increased 62 percent, and violent crime rose 8.85 percent between 2019 and 2020. The Wisconsin Department of Justice reported that in 2021, there were 57,000 offenses of theft, over 29,000 offenses of assault, over 18,000 offenses of motor vehicle theft, over 13,000 offenses of aggravated assault, over 10,000 offenses of burglary, over 2,300 offenses of rape, and 70 offenses of human trafficking.

Barnes does not just want personal security while pushing soft crime policies. He believes in abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), permitting driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants, and giving in-state college tuition to illegal immigrants. He favors an entirely government-run healthcare system, eliminating the Senate filibuster, packing the Supreme Court, and passing the Green New Deal. Barnes also derided small business owners as “selfish” for wanting to serve customers during the pandemic.

FiveThirtyEight has the Johnson-Barnes senate race as a tossup, according to polling. However, the New York Times wrote Monday pollsters could be overestimating the strength of Democrat senate candidates with “persistent and unaddressed biases in survey research.”