A Milwaukee police squad in front of the Municipal Court downtown. (Photo | Isiah Holmes)

Wisconsin’s municipal courts issued more than 27,000 arrest warrants and writs of commitment against people who failed to pay local ticket fines between January 2023 and August 2024, according to a report from ACLU of Wisconsin.

The extensive use of these tools, which include jailing people for failing to pay fines or forcing them to appear at a court date in 173 of the state’s 219 municipal courts (reflecting the number of courts which responded to the ACLU’s open records requests for data)  create a tiered local justice system, the report found. People who can afford a fine simply pay it and move on while those who can’t afford the fine must deal with the shockwaves a stint in jail can send through their lives. 

In 2023, the report states, Wisconsin municipal courts collected more than $35 million in fines. 

“Carceral sanctions for failure to pay municipal forfeitures create an unequal system of punishment: one for those with financial means and one for those without,” Dr. Emma Shakeshaft, the ACLU attorney who wrote the report, said in a statement. “People who are able to pay a municipal court ticket can address the citation without ever having to step in court or think about the ticket again. People who cannot pay the citation amount in full experience increased court and law enforcement involvement and a long series of harmful consequences that create barriers to well-being, employment, and community involvement.”

The report found that during the time period the ACLU assessed, Wisconsin municipal courts had more than 50,000 active warrants and commitments for people failing to pay fines. The data also showed the punitive actions were disproportionately used against people of color. In Milwaukee, which houses the state’s largest municipal court and employs three full-time judges, 71% of warrants and 49% of commitments issued between January 2023 and August 2024 were issued against Black residents. 

Even a short time in jail can have huge consequences for a person’s life, the report states, causing people to miss work or to be unable to care for family members over something as trivial as a municipal fine. 

“Monetary sanctions harm individuals and their families,” the report states. “Not only do these fines, fees, surcharges, and forfeitures have a more severe and disproportionate impact on those without access to financial resources, but they also cause harmful short- and long-term collateral consequences.”

Among the consequences of jail time for unpaid tickets are  driver’s license suspensions, caregiving emergencies, loss of employment, loss of housing and detrimental health impacts, the report found. “Overall, this leads to less household resources, limited social mobility, and negative financial consequences.”

The report also notes that using incarceration as the “teeth” of enforcement against minor violations is more expensive in the long term because of the expense to law enforcement and local jail staff.

Municipalities have a number of other tools available to collect these debts under state law, including the ability to “intercept taxes, garnish wages and levy bank accounts via the state debt collection agency, use a private debt collection agency, issue a civil judgment, transfer unclaimed property, issue a driver’s license suspension, or issue an arrest warrant for incarceration.”

A number of recommendations for municipal courts are made in the report, including eliminating the use of commitments and warrants in these cases, appointing legal counsel to people during hearings, reviewing and removing old warrants that are still active in local systems and improving data collection.