All the city police departments bring their prisoners downtown to the Milwaukee County jail after they are processed at the district stations. This includes all the cities in Milwaukee County with Milwaukee being the largest. The jail currently is almost at capacity. There are 890 prisoners currently with a capacity of nine hundred plus beds. Over 180 prisoners are in jail awaiting charges for homicide. Some have been in jail for over two years awaiting trial. The covid pandemic has made the situation a lot worst. In addition, the jail has been short staffed. They can move the more violent offenders to the House of Correction to make more room. It will take a few years for all these offenders to go to trial.
The Chief Judge Mary Triggiano said everything is on the table to try and solve this situation. She hopes to use federal covid dollars to help. There is a backlog of 1700 criminal cases and three thousand misdemeanor cases. She is looking at attempting to have night court to help. This would require more judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys. She states, “it would give us a chance to oversee more cases out of the regular business hours.” Reserve and retired judges would have to be hired to manage these courts. In addition, you would also need more deputies in all these new court rooms also.
All these local district stations in places like Shorewood, Whitefish Bay, Bayside, Glendale, and Milwaukee are not made to house prisoners for long time periods. It can cause problems when you must keep them for long time periods. You must have extra food to feed them plus you must watch them to make sure they do not try to harm themselves. Last week a prisoner at District 5 was found unresponsive in a cellblock. Medical attention was called but he ended up dying. He had been at the station for over 15 hours which is a long time at a district station. Right now, there is an investigation going on by an outside agency to see what occurred. The jail situation downtown needs to be straightened out soon so offenders can go downtown in a timely manner.