Village to Soon Be Responsible for Criminals’ Medical Expenses

will no longer pay for emergency medical care for uninsured criminals after a municipality has sent them to jail. Starting in January, that’ll be the communities’ responsibility.

For example, if the Village of Sussex sends a resident to the county jail because he’s not paying his parking tickets, and he has a heart attack while incarcerated, the village will be responsible for his medical expenses if he’s uninsured.

After first learning of the sheriff department’s policy change during the Nov. 22 Village Board meeting, Sussex officials began questioning how they would even budget for such a sporadic expenditure. However, Waukesha County’s District Attorney Brad Schimel said that’s a question the sheriff’s department has been dealing with for years.

“The sheriff was in the same boat,” said Schimel. “He doesn’t know who is going to have a heart attack. We have an awful lot of people locked up on municipal holds, so this is just the cost of doing business.”

Paying for uninsured inmates doesn’t always break the bank, though. Waukesha County Sheriff Daniel Trawicki said the county only spent $1,500 on medical expenses last year, but sometimes there are situations where a huge bill is racked up.

According to the sheriff, people don’t spend a long period of time in jail for a municipal charge, so the likelihood of the village receiving a substantial medical bill is very slim. In addition, he’d like to see the number of people sent to jail for municipal charges decrease to avoid this problem in general.

“There are other options for these people other than being incarcerated,” Trawicki said. “I’ve said, to be quite honest, I’m not sure if jail is an option for someone who just isn’t paying a municipal fine. Maybe there’s a better way of dealing with this than sending them to the county jail.”

And withholding someone from jail was brought up during Sussex’s Village Board meeting. Village officials dabbled with the idea of no longer sending violators to jail until they developed a plan to handle a possibly large medical expense.

Village Administrator Jeremy Smith, however, confirmed that isn’t happening. He said at this point the village is still sending people to jail, and he’s communicating with the sheriff’s department and the other municipalities dealing with this new policy.

“Generally the people we send to jail are people who don’t pay their parking tickets or are traffic violators,” Smith said. “These aren’t exactly hardened criminals. They are sent to jail as a method of paying for their violations.”

Smith said he doesn’t have any answers yet, but dialogue is happening on how to address the new costs come January.