Clicking on any of the Wisconsin Counties or Cities below will direct you to a list of all the City Jails, County Jails and Juvenile Detention Centers in that specific County.
Wisconsin has 72 counties, and the sheriff runs the jail. Milwaukee is the one most families are looking for. It has the county jail downtown and the House of Correction in Franklin. Dane in Madison, Waukesha, Brown in Green Bay, and Racine are the next tier. A northern county may have one small jail and send the overflow south. City police have a holding room for a few hours. That room is not a county jail.
A year or less stays with the sheriff. A longer felony sentence goes to the Department of Corrections. A federal sentence goes to the Bureau of Prisons. FCI Oxford is the federal prison in the state. When a jail holds somebody for another county, for the state, or for the Marshals, it bills a daily rate. That rate is local.
Jails in Wisconsin are the pretrial and short-sentence buildings. State prison is a different map. Dodge Correctional Institution is the men’s intake. Waupun, Green Bay, Columbia, and the Wisconsin Secure Program Facility in Boscobel are the prisons families ask about. Taycheedah, outside Fond du Lac, is the women’s prison. A person sentenced in Milwaukee can end up in Waupun or Boscobel.
Most of the 72 counties operate a jail. Milwaukee operates two. A few small counties contract. Milwaukee, Dane, and Waukesha account for a large share of the beds. A full jail in the north means a transfer, not a second jail in the same town.
County detention and state commitment are different stops. Milwaukee, Dane, and a handful of other counties run a juvenile detention center for a youth waiting on a hearing. Smaller counties contract, and some share a regional center. A youth in one of those centers is usually waiting on court.
Lincoln Hills School for boys and Copper Lake School for girls, both in Irma, are the state juvenile correctional facilities. They are not county jails. Search the county of the arrest. The listing shows the detention center that county uses, and Lincoln Hills or Copper Lake only if the youth has been committed.
At the Milwaukee County Jail the first day is a booking floor downtown. Name, prints, a medical screen, a search, clothes in a bag, one call if the phones are working. The person has not been convicted. There is no phone in the cell, and no way to know if the job, the truck, or the kids got covered. Glasses stay in property until somebody signs for them. A sentenced misdemeanor can be moved to the House of Correction in Franklin. In a northern county the same booking happens in a smaller room, and in January that room is cold.
The hard part is the ordinary part. The uniform does not fit. The bunk is thin, and the next bed is awake. Meals are plain and on a clock. Mail is slow. A visit from a northern county to Milwaukee is a drive that may not happen. Withdrawal from alcohol, opioids, or methamphetamine can start before the first appearance, and the night is when that gets loud. Deputies who apply the rules the same way to everybody run a quieter pod. Uneven rules are how contraband moves. Milwaukee and Dane can separate by risk. A small northern jail often cannot, and a full jail there means a transfer.
Tablets, video visits, and deposits take some of the isolation out of the bigger jails. A message home does not fix the bed or the case, and the account can be shut off. Each county page on this site lists the jail phone, the vendor, and the way to send money for that sheriff’s office.