Sheriff Clarke Spends Money Unnecessarily Just to Spite Detainees

I had written previously about the way Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke treats detainees and unnecessarily makes them sit in his jail by denying them access to phone calls. With the ongoing spat between Clarke and Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele on the tax revenue allotted to the Sheriff's Dept., I thought this would be worth exploring again.

First of all I am NOT talking about violent offenders — and we should remember that the vast majority of those in the County Jail have NOT been convicted of any crime, that is why they are in jail and not prison or the House of Corrections — and until accusations are proven, a judge should decide the whether and how long and under what terms a detainee accused of any crime should be held.

It is the treatment of the non-violent offenders, who have been arrested during a traffic stop or other circumstances, who have a warrant for their arrest for such things as unpaid parking tickets, unpaid traffic tickets, and other assorted fines or penalties, even an unpaid fine for overdue library books.

Most of these detainees only need to contact a family member or friend, to come with the fine or bond, often no more than a few hundred dollars, and they can be released, and not kept in jail at taxpayer expense. Nothing more than a simple phone call can have them released within hours, instead of days.

The problem is that Clarke makes it practically impossible for many of these detainees to contact someone to come bail them out.

A detainee is not allowed to use their cell phone from the jail; they must use a pay phone for a "collect call" only. A private firm runs these pay phones, which charges outrageous fees for these collect calls.

As we now live in a world of cell phones, many times there is NO one that the detainee can call collect, as you can not make a collect call to a cell phone.

Law and Order Sheriff Clarke has a reputation for making life as miserable as possible for anyone unfortunate enough to enter his jail, whether they are there for committing murder, or just because they have unpaid parking tickets. His comments and actions bespeak his intent to punish everyone, deserved or not.

I am sure that if Abele's people did an audit of the detainees that have been kept for days in lieu of a phone call, and found out just how many have been held for days instead of hours, they would find that the Sheriff's Dept could save millions of our tax dollars, simply by giving the detainees access to their cell phones, or a prison phone. 

I think Time Warner cable could put in dozens of phones without unlimited calling for very little cost per month.

Aside from saving money for the taxpayers, who knows, maybe if the sheriff starts to treat the non-convicted detainees like humans instead of dirt, maybe the law enforcement officers would get a little more respect from them — most people tend to give back what they receive.