Outagamie Jail Still Used as 'Debtor Prison'

    May 29, 2007
    Appleton Post Crescent
    By Susan Squires

    APPLETON — In recent weeks, a 19-year-old student, a middle-aged contractor with money problems and a food service worker all spent the night in the Outagamie County Jail's lockup unit.

    They are not drunken drivers, or domestic batterers, or burglars or sex offenders. Rather, they were in jail because they failed to pay municipal court fines.

    In the nine months between June 2006 and March 2007, the jail booked 173 people for unpaid tickets at the order of municipal judges. The offenders spent an average of 2½ days in lockup as the result.

    Outagamie County Court Commissioner Brian Figy calls jailing people for failing to pay fines the local criminal justice system's "dirty little secret."

    "It's a debtors prison mentality," said Figy, who succeeded about five years ago in persuading Outagamie County and the city of Appleton to use collection agencies instead of incarceration to satisfy unpaid fines.

    Other municipalities, however, have continued in varying degrees to issue "writs of commitment" for nonpayment of fines. "Maybe it's my public defender background or growing up with meager living as a kid, but the bottom line is some people are poor and don't have any money," Figy said.

    Kaukauna Municipal Judge Eugene Schaefer says he orders lockup as a last resort, and would never knowingly jail someone who honestly doesn't have the means to pay.

    "We don't know if they're indigent," said Schaefer, who issued 97 of the 173 nonpayment warrants. If a jailed offender called and claimed poverty, Schaefer said, he would arrange for his release and hold a hearing, but in the 13 years he has been judge that call has never come.

    "They don't tell us," Schaefer said. "We're not mind readers. So some of them go to jail and they shouldn't."

    Sheriff Brad Gehring, who is looking at the prospect of building a new jail in the next decade, doesn't think any of them belong in jail. While municipal judges usually grant their prisoners work-release privileges, the county rarely is able to accommodate them — either because the offender is unemployed or the work-release program is at capacity.

    "A significant amount of costs are being incurred by counties to house offenders for forfeiture violations — anything from the 99-cent Bic lighter that was shoplifted to the $500 OWI," Gehring said. "And obviously there are other avenues."

    The last time the county was worried about running out of room, it increased its fee for jailing municipal debtors from $16 a day to $50. Schaefer is still angry about the increase. Kaukauna paid the county $6,200 in 2006.

    "They don't want our prisoners," Schaefer said. "They want state prisoners. Millions in tax dollars go from Kaukauna to the county, but they don't want to give us the service in the jail. That's why they raised it."

    Little Chute Municipal Judge Sue Hammen also resents the implication that municipal court orders are somehow second string.

    According to a Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance study, municipal courts handled 55 percent of the cases adjudicated in Wisconsin in 2004. For every $1 municipal courts spent, circuit courts spent $14, it found.

    "Some years we issue 3,000 tickets," Hammen said. "Some of the violations we handle are serious offenses, like drunken driving."

    If there weren't some consequence for nonpayment, Hammen and Schaefer said, no one would take their fines seriously. While the average debtor stays in jail 2½ days, most find the money to pay their fines within hours of their arrests.

    "How is that fair to other people, who make a mistake and pay their fines?" Hammen said.

    Little Chute paid the county $4,450 for boarding debtors in 2006. Ordering someone to jail, Hammen said, is a "last, last, last ditch effort to enforce some kind of penalty. Yes, it is a lose, lose, lose situation."

    None of the people jailed for nonpayment The Post-Crescent was able to reach responded to requests for an interview.



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