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Open Records Request

The Open Records Law (Wisconsin Statutes 19.31-19.39) is a powerful tool at the public's disposal to hold our government accountable through securing records pertaining to governmental actions, operations, and other related processes. This page is meant to provide you with a brief summary and tips of how to launch an open records request through the Department of Corrections.

To request open records, you will need to access the open records web page found here. Here, you will be required to create an account. This account will allow you to request the records to be sent electronically (so you do not have to pay for the cost), and to use your account to make additional and subsequent requests. 

Below is a small sampling of open records requests that have been made in the past. By sharing them here, we hope to provide you with a better understanding of the scope of open records, and how they can be used to facilitate the work of advocacy. The most important thing is to make the request specific. In doing so, this will help to avoid the department coming back with claims that your request is too broad or fails to make a request for records that the Department can reasonably locate.

1. "Please provide me with a complete record of all DOC-wide employee work rules specific to the positions of corrections officer, corrections sergeant, and security supervisor. Moreover, please provide me with a copy of the training curriculum used in the academy for new correction officer hires. This request should be construed as the most recently updated materials."

2. "I am requesting the complete, exhaustive, and comprehensive invoices received by the Department from its contractor TextBehind, for mail services for the dates described above."

3. "Please provide a copy of the current contract the Doc has with X vendor, including any addendums".

4. "Please provide a complete record of all disciplinary reports issued by every DAI institution for the timeframe described above. As part of the record, please include the sanction issued for each disciplinary report, identify whether each disciplinary report was a "minor" or a "major", and include any and all supplemental materials included in each disciplinary report."

5. "Please provide me with a complete, exhaustive, and comprehensive list of every DOC employee who was either a) promoted, b) laterally transferred, and/or c) reassigned out of their previously held position to a different position for the timeframe described above. In the response, please identify the name of the employee, the position s/he previously held, and the new position s/he was placed into. If the individual promoted and/or was reassigned/transferred multiple times, please provide the above information for every instance of promotion/transfer/reassignment."

6. "Please provide me the records concerning the names of all websites visited by the below named employees. Specifically, provide this information specific to each employee's state assigned computer work account and include any and all state computers they accessed using this state assigned work account. This request should include the information during the dates named above. John Does 1-12"

7. "Please provide me with the official security staffing matrices that exists at each of the following correctional institutions to include the number of staff required to operate the facility and the posts to which staff are assigned. New Lisbon, Redgranite, Oakhill, Waupun, Green Bay."

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