New report examines the practice of jailing people for Wisconsin municipal court debts

Milwaukee Municipal Court, one of the courts issuing arrest warrants and writs of commitment for unpaid court forfeitures and fines, says a recent report by the ACLU of Wisconsin.

By Alexandria Staubach
 
Warrants and civil commitments persist in municipal courts across the state of Wisconsin despite widespread investigation and advocacy against the practice, according to a report published last week by the ACLU of Wisconsin.
 
Municipal courts are permitted by state law to employ “stay to pay” contracts. Under stay to pay, those with outstanding debts spend days in jail to satisfy their forfeiture. The maximum time of imprisonment is 90 days at a minimum rate of $50 per day.
 
Jail time is being served for offenses like contributing to truancy, operating a vehicle without a license, non-registration of a motor vehicle, loud and unnecessary noise, and even a dog running at large, the report says.
 
The use of such jail time is common in some courts. In Waukesha, for instance, 499 warrants were satisfied by defendants serving jail time between 2023 and 2024.
 
Meanwhile, other municipal courts do not use jail time to enforce nonpayment at all.
 
The report describes two systems of justice: one for the haves and one for the have-nots. Those unable to pay court fines and forfeitures suffer extra penalties such as jail time. Effects of incarceration include missed wages, having to appear in court time and again to assert an ongoing inability to pay, and even loss of housing. To demonstrate the extent of possible outcomes, the report details the story of one grandmother who, after experiencing homelessness, lost a public housing opportunity because of outstanding municipal warrants for failure to pay.
 
“Monetary sanctions trigger a long series of consequences and barriers to full societal integration for families who cannot pay, which are very different from the effects of monetary sanctions on those who can afford them” the report says.
 
While there are legal protections for those who can demonstrate an inability to pay, having an attorney to enforce those rights is the exception rather than the norm.
 
The report found racial inequities consistent with those well documented in the greater criminal justice system.
 
The report shows the most significant impact to those in low-income communities of color, with 71% of warrants and 49% of commitments issued against Black defendants in Milwaukee Municipal Court between January 2023 and August 2024. In La Crosse County, where the Black population represents 1.8% of the total population, 33% of those incarcerated on municipal warrants were Black.
  
Jailing those who fail to pay municipal forfeitures actually costs the municipality money. The jail that hosts such stay-to-pay contracts submits a bill to the municipal court that ordered the time. The report says this practice can cost a municipal court more in enforcement than a forfeiture was actually worth.  
 
The report’s recommendations include eliminating warrants and incarceration for failure to pay fines; removing old outstanding warrants, especially in jurisdictions that have stopped incarcerating people for failure to pay; appointing counsel at hearings concerning the ability to pay; and improving municipal court record keeping to make municipal court revenue generating practices more transparent.
 
Wisconsin municipal courts generated more than $35 million in revenue in 2023, the report says.
 
A 2018 report from the Wisconsin Director of State Courts and the National Center for State Courts also recommended reducing the use of incarceration for failure to pay municipal forfeitures.
 
Dr. Emma Shakeshaft, the author of the ACLU of Wisconsin report, is a WJI board member.