Craig Gilbert and Patrick Marley

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Former Gov. Tommy Thompson, the author of a new memoir, has done many things in public life he’s very proud of.

But among his regrets, he said Wednesday, is getting caught up decades ago in the “hysteria” of locking people up. He wishes he hadn’t built so many prisons.

“We lock up too many people for too long. It’s about time we change the dynamics. I apologize for that,” Thompson, the state’s Republican governor from 1987 to 2001, said at the Marquette University Law School.

In a wide-ranging conversation with Mike Gousha of the law school’s Lubar Center, Thompson said he’d like to see Wisconsin begin to convert prisons into vocational schools so inmates can get the training they need to get on with their lives and also help solve the state’s worker shortage.

Thompson is not alone in his party. There has been a prison and justice reform movement in recent years with political backing from both the right and left. But Thompson's views are hardly universal within the GOP. Current Republican Gov. Scott Walker is a more hard-line conservative on prison and sentencing issues.

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Thompson did not criticize Walker directly over the issue Wednesday.

"I wouldn't say he's wrong. It's just that I have matured over the years and I've seen the prison systems inside and out. ... I've studied it. The way we warehouse prisoners right now is not the right way. ... Some people have to be in prison, there is no question about it. But we have too many people locked up that should be rehabilitated, retrained and allowed to get out and take a job. We need the workers," Thompson told reporters after the Marquette event. He said he has made his case to Walker on the subject.

Near the end of their conversation, Gousha asked Thompson if he prized his role and record in public office over his business ventures since he left office. Thompson, who also waged unsuccessful bids for president and U.S. Senate, said there was no comparison.

"If I could walk away (from business) and be governor for six weeks and change the prisons, I would do it. I would make that change because that gets me really pumped up," said Thompson, whose new book is called "Tommy: My Journey of a Lifetime" and was co-written with journalist Doug Moe.

In April, Thompson wrote an op-ed for the Journal Sentinel on prison reform, saying he had "come to believe that our corrections system and incarceration practices are both financially unsustainable and provide questionable outcomes."

Said Thompson at Marquette Wednesday: “We pass all these laws that you can’t apply to this job or that job or that job because you’ve got a criminal record. So we freeze them out of a lot of jobs, and we tell them ‘don’t come back (to prison).' "

Walker, who is seeking a third term this fall, has criticized Democrats for advocating large reductions in the prison population.

When he was in the Assembly in the 1990s, Walker was the lead sponsor of the “truth-in-sentencing” law that ended parole. Thompson signed that law as governor, which meant inmates spent more time behind bars.

During his first term as governor, Walker ended an early-release program established by his predecessor, Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle. Walker has declined to issue any pardons, unlike Doyle, Thompson and other governors.

In recent weeks, Walker has criticized his Democratic challenger and state schools Superintendent Tony Evers for his support of early-release programs and other reforms aimed at reducing the prison population.

While Walker does not want to reduce sentences, he has backed giving inmates training near the end of their sentences to make them more employable.

Once the chairman of the Assembly’s committee on corrections, Walker has never visited a Wisconsin prison during his eight years as governor. Last month, he said he saw “no value” in touring one of the facilities his administration oversees.

Wisconsin’s prisons hold about 23,500 adult inmates and are running out of room. Walker’s administration is now studying whether to build a new prison, which would cost about $300 million.

Thompson, 76, discussed a host of other issues Wednesday, including how polarized the political culture has grown.

"We have become so polarized in America that ... we talk (but) we don’t listen. We think we're right and everybody else is wrong," he said. "This is a huge country and a very complex world and rightness is a wonderful attribute, but very few people are an Albert Einstein or Jesus Christ or Moses or Gandhi or a Martin Luther King. You have to be able to listen to the other side."