U.S. Congressman Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) has authored a bill with Sen. Ron Johnson, a fellow Republican, calling for a nationwide study on bail procedures and release processes for violent criminal suspects. 

The issue has been front-and-center in Wisconsin ever since Darrell Brooks, who was out on bail from Milwaukee County after allegedly running the mother of his child over with a vehicle, was charged with killing six people and injuring more than 60 others at the Waukesha Christmas Parade. 

Brooks is accused of driving his vehicle into the parade route and indiscriminately plowing through crowds of innocent people. 

Fitzgerald said he believes the violence at the Christmas parade, along with civil unrest following the police-involved shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, and the police officer-caused death of George Floyd, in Minnesota, have made public safety a top issue for voters across Wisconsin. 

"It's definitely something people have been talking about, I think first and foremost because it's been framed up as kind of a national debate if you will," Fitzgerald said. "That goes back to the riots that happened in many of the major metropolitan areas in that very terrible summer in which it became a public policy discussion among people." 

"That was heightened, I think, by some of the rhetoric coming from some of my colleagues in Congress about whether police departments should be funded," he added. 

Fitzgerald said, if his proposal becomes law, he hopes a national study would answer some of the questions Americans have about the justice system. 

"What does the system look like? Why is it different from state to state? And why are some of these DAs not doing their due diligence to make sure this system works?" Fitzgerald said. 

"You see some District Attorneys have created this turnstile, where dangerous people come and go," he added.