ALLOUEZ, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – An open records request reveals more than $1,000 a month was being spent last summer to battle a mice infestation at Green Bay Correctional Institution.
An open records request reveals more than $1,000 a month was being spent last summer to battle a mice infestation at Green Bay Correctional Institution. (WLUK)
It’s one of many issues FOX 11 has reported on over the years at the 125-year-old prison, which has been under lockdown-like restrictions since last June.
$7,892 was spent on pest control for Green Bay Correctional Institution between September 2022 and September 2023, according to an open records request the Wisconsin Department of Corrections fulfilled Wednesday that FOX 11 submitted back in September.
“We have two contracts with pest control folks that go into Green Bay weekly to monitor that situation,” DOC Secretary Kevin Carr told a legislative committee in September, which prompted the records request.
The DOC provided FOX 11 20 pest control invoices it was issued. All but two of the invoices noted varying levels of rodent activity including multiple incidents of mice caught in the prison’s kitchen, basement food storage, the library and throughout inmate cell halls.
“Like Green Bay is a level of its own when it comes to that specifically,” Dant’e Cottingham told FOX 11 last July.
Cottingham served 11 years at GBCI and now works as an advocate for inmates at Wisconsin’s chapter of Ex-incarcerated People Organizing or EXPO. He was one of a handful of people FOX 11 spoke with last summer about the rodent problem.
The DOC invoices indicate the state ramped up pest control at the same time we were hearing complaints. An Appleton pest control company was servicing GBCI once a month for $130, but at the time of the complaints, a new vendor started doing work at GBCI weekly. An initial investment of $2,571 was made on June 23, 2023, followed by $479 visits almost every week through the end of August.
“It’s obvious that while they’re trying to get a handle on the rats and mice that have invested GBCI that it’s pervasive and it’s a difficult thing to address,” said State Rep. David Steffen, R-Green Bay.
Steffen has been leading efforts for more than a decade to close the prison.
“This is what happens when you have a 125-year-old building that hasn’t been maintained properly for over half a century,” said Steffen.
The invoices show the Appleton pest control company told the DOC in each of its nine monthly reports that new doors or door sweeps were needed throughout the facility to help keep rodents out.
Considering it took the DOC nearly five months to comply with our open records request, we tried getting more updated information on where things stand with the mice. The department’s communications director says she is working to get us answers.
However, just two weeks ago, Cottingham told us the problem persists.
“The brothers that live in Green Bay are still complaining to me, I’ve talked to several people there, that the mice infestation is still a big problem there,” said Cottingham on Feb. 1.
State-funded reports in 2020 and 2009 called for the prison to be shut down. There has been no indication that is close to happening.
Other concerns voiced over the last several months include a lack of showers, recreation time, and health and education services.
The DOC recently said the only restriction currently in place is for leisure time.
State officials have said restrictions were originally put in place due to inmate assaults and a lack of corrections officers.
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