Nothing is Simple

February 4th, 2025

My wife just got off the phone with someone dear to us, who just happens to be residing in the Milwaukee County Jail. This person will be there for a while and then will be going to prison for a currently unknown amount of time. One might think that we do not need to be concerned with this individual while they are in jail. In theory, we could ignore the person for years to come, but we won’t do that because of love and/or stupidity. We refuse to abandon them.

For those who have never been in jail or never had a friend or family member incarcerated, it is often a shock to learn how dependent the inmate is on outside support. Even the simplest tasks become almost impossible to do when a person is behind bars. I will give you an example of what I mean.

My wife recently spoke with the inmate because I cannot. The prisoner has been slapped with a “no contact” order by the court. This order applies to that person’s relationship with me, and only me. Why the judge decided to keep the inmate from contacting me directly is obscure. In a way it doesn’t matter. The actual effect of the order is that my wife has phone conversations with the inmate and then has to pass the information on to me. This individual has been in prison before, so we know the drill. During the person’s previous stint in prison, I did all the leg work necessary to get the inmate what they needed. I will still probably perform that role this go around. It’s just that for now all the needs of the prisoner have to get filtered through my wife. It’s just one more layer of confusion and delay.

One thing the inmate wanted us to handle was an unpaid traffic ticket. The person’s concern was that, if the ticket did not get paid, there might be a warrant issued for the individual, and that would make their eventual release from jail much more interesting. It would normally be a small thing easily resolved. Not this time. The inmate has no way to pay the fine on their own. They have no access to their phone or their credit cards or the Internet. Somebody on the outside, meaning my wife or me, has to pay the fine for the inmate.

I attempted to pay the ticket this morning. Being as we are living in the 21st century, I expected that I could go to the county sheriff’s website and pay it online. I was correct that there was a screen for doing just that. I started filling in the blanks when I realized I did not know the citation number, which is a mandatory piece of information. The inmate might know the number, but probably not. In any case, we can’t call the prisoner. They have to call us. I had to call the sheriff’s department, and after a few transfers, talked to a helpful lady who dug through her files to give me the number. Then I went back to the payment screen and coughed up $275, 3% of which was some kind of fee for doing nothing.

All in all, the payment process was hassle, but not a major one. The problem is that this episode will be just one of many. We will be resolving a plethora of problems for the inmate during their time in the slammer. From experience I know that it will not get easier.

We are the inmate’s lifeline to the real world. Most of the time, we are okay with that responsibility. I am certain that there are many incarcerated people who have nobody on the outside to help them. Those prisoners are screwed, plain and simple. That is the only thing that is simple.