Crowley Halts Tablet Messaging In County-Run Prison

Milwaukee County Community Reintegration Center. Photo by Graham Kilmer.

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley announced he is halting instant messaging on digital tablets from the county’s Community Reintegration Center (CRC). He also wants Sheriff Denita Ball to stop allowing the functionality at the Milwaukee County Jail.

Digital tablets provided to inmates have become a controversial issue in the governor’s race, where Democrat Crowley is running against Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany.

During the past year, inmates at the jail have used the tablets to engage in witness intimidation and harassment. Tiffany’s campaign seized on the issue in August after Circuit Court Judge David Borowski questioned the use of jail tablets during a hearing for a high-profile murder case. Since then, the congressman has attacked Crowley over the tablets.

“I will not tolerate victim harassment or witness intimidation. That is why I am ordering the CRC and calling on the Sheriff’s Office to disable this feature until we are confident strong safeguards are in place to prevent misuse and protect victims,” Crowley said in a statement. “Communication technology can support rehabilitation, but it absolutely cannot be at the expense of victims’ safety. Period.”

Separate from the jail, the CRC is run by Superintendent Chantell Jewell, who is appointed by the county executive.

The tablets can be used to send messages, but the recipient must first accept the message before they can read it, according to the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office. The tablets can also be used to access the law library, educational materials and entertainment. The sheriff’s office issues them to each of the roughly 20,000 individuals that pass through the jail each year, according to the MCSO. They are not directly connected to the internet.

The decision was made following an investigation conducted “alongside the MCSO, the CRC, Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office,” according to the county executive’s office.

The MCSO introduced tablets to the county jail in 2021 as part of its telecommunications contract with ICSolutions. They were introduced in state prisons in 2018 under former Gov. Scott Walker. Under President Donald Trump‘s administration, the federal Bureau of Prisons recently began providing tablets.

“Why did it take an election for David Crowley to protect victims from their attackers? Since May, he has known about reports of inmates using the tablets he approved to threaten victims. Yet he continued to defend the program as ‘best practice,’ even as an accused triple murderer and an alleged domestic abuser used them to intimidate victims and witnesses from jail. David Crowley will only protect victims when it benefits him. As governor, it won’t take me five months to act,” said Tiffany in a statement after Crowley announced his plan.

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