Milwaukee Municipal Court, one of the courts issuing arrest warrants and writs of commitment for unpaid court forfeitures and fines, says a recent report by the ACLU of Wisconsin. By Alexandria Staubach Warrants and civil commitments persist in municipal courts across the state of Wisconsin despite widespread investigation and advocacy against the practice, according to a report published last week by the ACLU of Wisconsin. Municipal courts are permitted by state law to employ &l ..read more

By Alexandria Staubach Today the Wisconsin Court of Appeals reversed Dane County Circuit Judge Susan Crawford’s 2022 decision siding with Attorney General Josh Kaul in a dispute about the separation of powers in litigation settlements. Judge Maria S. Lazar, a former Waukesha County Circuit Court judge, wrote for the District 2 appellate court. She was joined by Judge Shelly A. Grogan, a former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Grassl Bradley. Both Lazar and Grogan list in t ..read more

​By Alexandria Staubach The price of goods sold to individuals incarcerated in Wisconsin prisons is rising, yet the nominal pay earned by the incarcerated remains unchanged and is effectively decreasing. Wisconsin Department of Corrections contracts obtained by Wisconsin Justice Initiative through an open records request show that a sole provider, Union Supply Group, Inc. out of California, has held an exclusive contract since 2019 to sell goods to those in Wisconsin prisons. W ..read more

​"Evers' judges" is our effort to present information about Gov. Tony Evers' appointees to the bench. The information is taken from the appointees' own judgeship applications. Italics indicate direct quotes from the application.​ Typos, including punctuation errors, come from the original application even though we have not inserted “(sic)” after each one. WJI has left them as is. Name: Milton L. Childs Appointed to: Milwaukee County Circuit Court Appoint ..read more

By Alexandria Staubach​Milwaukee County’s 2025 budget shows how recent state legislation helped improve revenue while increasing spending even more. Last week, Milwaukee County adopted its 2025 budget unanimously. With reserves shored up by new taxes, the budget seems positive. Recent state legislation known as Act 12 permitted the county to raise Milwaukee County’s sales tax from 0.5% to 0.9% in 2024. However, the Wisconsin Policy Forum’s annual review w ..read more

Note: We are crunching Supreme Court of Wisconsin decisions down to size. The rule for this is that no justice gets more than 10 paragraphs as written in the actual decision. The “upshot” and “background” sections do not count as part of the 10 paragraphs because of their summary and necessary nature. We’ve also removed headings, citations, and footnotes from the opinion for ease of reading but have linked to important cases cited or information about them. Ita ..read more

By Alexandria StaubachIn Milwaukee, the numbers of vehicle pursuits by police and resulting collisions are up, but only 48% of police chases result in apprehension of a subject.The numbers come from last week’s findings by the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission’s Audit Unit, released at a presentation to the commission on Nov. 7, following the unit’s first-ever examination of vehicle pursuits by the Milwaukee Police Department.The study showed that nearly 80% of all vehi ..read more

Photograph of George Heriot De Reef from a report of the Semi-Centennial Celebration of Negro-Freedom, courtesy of the Wisconsin Black Historical Society. ​By Amy Rabideau Silvers  For a man who made headlines in his day, George Heriot De Reef remains a somewhat elusive figure. News items and scholarly mentions provide clues to who he was and what was important to him, not unlike piecing together an incomplete puzzle.​De Reef was an attorney, one of the few African Ame ..read more

By Alexandria StaubachThe Wisconsin Court of Appeals recently clarified that a defendant’s dangerousness is not a permissible basis for involuntary medication to return the person to competency.Any request for involuntary medication based on a person's danger to self or others must occur under commitment statutes and proceedings.An order for involuntary medication to restore a person to competency for court proceedings must instead satisfy the “Sell factors,” named after a ..read more

​"Evers' judges" is our effort to present information about Gov. Tony Evers' appointees to the bench. The information is taken from the appointees' own judgeship applications. Italics indicate direct quotes from the application.​ Typos, including punctuation errors, come from the original application even though we have not inserted “(sic)” after each one. WJI has left them as is. Name: Theresa A. Beck Appointed to: Jefferson County Circuit Court Appointm ..read more