People with criminal records in Milwaukee can face barriers long after they have completed their sentences.
Those barriers can affect where they work, live and other parts of everyday life, said Shannon Ross, founder and executive director of The Community, a Milwaukee organization that works to change the way people with criminal records are viewed.
“Discrimination affects folks in the most basic ways. It just makes it more difficult to get a job and a house,” Ross said.
Criminal records can also create barriers to everyday activities, Ross said, including chaperoning school trips or using services such as Airbnb and Turo.
Wisconsin already provides some protections against discrimination. But organizations in cities around the country are pushing to go further by making people with criminal records a protected class, which would provide broader legal protections against discrimination in housing and other areas.
The current laws on discrimination
Wisconsin has prohibited employment discrimination based on arrest or conviction records since 1977 as part of the Wisconsin Fair Employment Act.
However, there are exceptions, including when the circumstances of a conviction are substantially related to the circumstances of the job.
Current protections are focused on employment and do not amount to a general prohibition on discrimination based on criminal history in other areas, including housing.
The City of Milwaukee’s 2025-29 Consolidated Plan & Strategy identifies criminal background checks and blanket exclusions based on criminal histories as barriers that can restrict access to rental housing.
Added to these barriers is the fact that legal protections don’t necessarily eliminate discrimination, Ross said.
He has heard from people who were hired and began working before a background check was completed, only to lose the job afterward.
“It’s almost like you would have been better off if you never even had the job,” Ross said
Alonzo Waheed, policy and legislative director for Equity and Transformation, or EAT, in Chicago, describes a criminal record as a second sentence.
“Someone may have received a sentence of five or 10 years, but if that record prevents them from getting stable housing, meaningful employment, financing a business or fully participating in society for another 30 years, then we have to ask whether that person ever truly finished serving their sentence,” he said.
A push for broader protections
Helping to advocate and lead the charge for broader legal protections for people with criminal records is the Protected Class Network, which is made up of organizations around the country.
The protected class movement was created by formerly incarcerated Black women.
The network’s approach goes beyond laws regulating when employers can ask about or consider someone’s criminal history, sometimes referred to as “Ban the Box” policies.
“Ban the Box was an important step, but protected class legislation addresses a different problem,” Waheed said. “Ban the Box generally deals with when and how criminal history can be considered in employment. Protected class legislation addresses discrimination itself.”
In 2025, Minneapolis added “justice-impacted status” to the protected classes covered by its civil rights ordinance.
The protections cover employment, education, housing and public accommodations, although the ordinance allows criminal history to be considered under certain circumstances.
Atlanta amended its Human Relations Code in 2022 to add protections based on criminal history status.
Bridgette “Bri” Simpson is CEO and executive director of Barred Business, an Atlanta-based organization focused on healing, providing resources and building power for justice-impacted people. She said protected class policy changes need to accompany the services already offered to people returning from incarceration.
“Milwaukee already has organizations doing important work to support people returning from incarceration, but no nonprofit can out-service a system that continues to create barriers,” Simpson said. “If we want better outcomes, we have to pair direct services with policy change.”
Can Milwaukee advocates create change here?
The idea of pursuing broader protections for justice-impacted individuals is not entirely new to Milwaukee.
About five years ago, Ross participated in conversations with advocates from around the country about making people with criminal records a protected class.
The discussions began through Clubhouse, an audio-based social media platform, and grew into a series of meetings among people interested in pursuing the idea.
One participant discussed the possibility of obtaining significant funding for the work, Ross said.
“Nothing ever materialized on that, so it was just a series of meetings we had for maybe half a year,” he said.
Ross said he hasn’t followed the effort closely since then and was not familiar with the Protected Class Network.
But his experiences five years ago introduced him to the concept, leaving him with questions about whether legislation by itself can change how people with records are treated.
“You cannot legislate these types of things,” Ross said. “I mean, legislation can help, but at a certain point, you have to create an apparatus where people can start to help those that are in the positions to make the decisions – or create the obstacles – to understand why this is a helpful thing, or why it matters.”
‘This isn’t about erasing accountability’
Ross said Milwaukee organizations could work together on the issue, particularly by engaging directly with businesses and other institutions.
“I don’t think it’d be a waste of time at all,” he said.
Waheed said any Milwaukee effort should begin with the people experiencing barriers.
“Don’t build the policy first and then invite formerly incarcerated people into the room to comment on it,” he said. “Bring them into the process from the beginning.”
He said that passing a protected class law would not be the end of the work.
“If we create a new right, but formerly incarcerated people don’t know that right exists, don’t know where to file a complaint or cannot navigate the enforcement process, then we haven’t finished the job,” Waheed said.
For Waheed, the larger question is when the consequences of a criminal conviction should end.
“This isn’t about erasing accountability,” he said. “It’s about making sure accountability doesn’t become permanent exclusion.”
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