Crowley Halts Tablet Messaging In County-Run Prison
Jail tablets have become a controversial issue in the governor's race.
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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I heard something from right-leaning media that I’d like to confirm is true (or not). The claim was that not only does the county supply the tablets, but they also subsidize a certain amount of messages and calls – something that is not generally done elsewhere in the state.
An acquaintance of mine had the displeasure of being a guest of the state a few years ago. I would get the occasional collect call and we could exchange electronic messages via a portal. IIRC, both of us had to pay to send messages. It was a minimal amount. When I heard the claim that the county was subsidizing the messages, I took that to mean that they were paying those “send a message” fees.
Anyhow, regarding subsidized messages: Is this true? Is this unique to Milw. County? When did it start? What does it cost? Who presented this to DC for his signature?
In order for a person to receive a message via the tablet from a resident at the Milwaukee County Jail (downtown) or the Milwaukee County Community Reintegration Center (formerly the House of Correction in Franklin), the person gets a request from the resident, which identifies their name and their jail identification number. They can accept or decline the contact. There is no way for the resident to force the community member to accept communication from them.
Further, the jail administration is able to monitor not only every message sent from a resident but also every request from a resident to a community member to establish contact. It can take days for communication to be approved, even if the community member has okayed receiving messages from a resident.
Tablets are one of the few ways residents of our prisons and jails can maintain contact with family and other community members. Such contact is crucial to ensuring an effective reintegration to society upon release and, therefore, public safety.
Messages are not subsidized in Milwaukee. Each resident receives 90 minutes of free calls a week. That’s what is subsidized. The majority of residents do not have funds to pay for the calls. The calls allow contact between residents and community members and must be accepted by community members in order for the call to proceed, even if it is not a collect call. All calls are recorded. Any law enforcement officer and any prosecutor in Milwaukee County has immediate access to the recording of any phone call.
These are the facts. This is obviously Tiffany’s Willie Horton gambit. Be afraid of Crowley. He is way out of the mainstream. And he will ensure witness and victim harm if he is governor.
Crowley disappointingly communicates that there is merit to Tiffany’s nonsense claims by ending tablets at CRC/HOC. Why not shine a light on the truth and the safeguards that are in place to protect community members from unwanted contact with residents of our jails?
Tablets through ICSolutions are used in over 230 U.S. Correctional facilities. In Wisconsin alone, the tablets are distributed to all 36 correctional institutions – 23,000 residetns of our prisons have access to tablets every day – and in seven county jails, including those notoriously soft on criminal counties of Walworth and Ozaukee, as well as Ashland and Polk counties, which are in Tom Tiffany’s district. Why isn’t he bashing the county executives and sheriffs of Ashland and Polk counties?
having tablets is a knotty problem, however, although misused by a very few, why punish the whole. intimidating a witness carries another charge which the resident will have to face. they are punished again for misbehavior and rightly so.
Tornado is not incorrect, but witness tampering may only be able to be prosecuted as a Class A misdemeanor, so if that’s less than the original charges one is facing and that case is disrupted due to the county enabled tampering, there’s a lot of liability there, a potentially favorable risk reward calculation for the detained, and a miscarriage of justice for society.
Tom Tiffany protecting a know rapist and felon like Donald Trump is worse than tablets.