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Treatment in Jail
My question involves criminal law for the state of: Wisconsin
I will give you a brief summary of what I am going through, My wife and I have been separated since Sep 2007, on Oct. 1st 2008 we had the temp hearing, and I was ordered to pay $240 a week for family support and pay for the travel trailer we own witch is $207 a mth. Family support was done by wage assignment, and I was to make trailer payment on my own. I was not able to pay for trailer so in Dec my wife’s attorney had a hearing and I was found I contempt and given 30 days to make past payments and continue to make payments. I was ordered to serve 60 days in jail if I did not purge contempt. On Jan 23rd I was charged for OWI 1st offense and spent the weekend in jail on a warrant for failure to appear; on Jan 26 I was given the order of confinement to serve 60 days in jail. While I was in court for my bond on the warrant the judge granted me Huber privileges for the contempt. While I was in jail I did not have access to the phones so I repeatedly asked jail staff if I could use the phone in the booking area, and was always given the response later I am busy now, or I will see what I can do. But my verbal requests were always ignored, when I finally realized I wasn’t going to work that week I filled out a written request to find out why I didn’t have phone privileges, On Saturday I was finally able to use the phone. Well since I did not have direct contact with my employer I was terminated from my job, and I received that notice in the mail on the 31st. Later the next week on the 5th of Feb I was asked to meet with the LT of the jail. At that point he said that my employer informed them on the 29th that I was on suspension and wanted me to come in for a 1/2 hour meeting and he said I could not because I did not have any driver’s info on file. On Feb 10th I had a hearing to modify sentence and the judge granted me a 2 week furlough to find employment, and take care of legal matters.
This may all seem kind of confusing but I documented most of my troubles while in jail, and now I am in the process of replacing my $43000yr job witch is going to be very difficult. I guess my question to you would be if I had any recourse against the county/sheriffs dept or my former employer? I would like to contact my former employer but im not sure if that’s a good idea with out first talking with an attorney.
I feel the jail staff should have granted my verbal requests to use the phone to contact my employer, or allowed me to have the meeting with them, finding suitable transportation would have not been a problem since we have a local taxi, and I have numerous friends who were capable and willing to help me in my situation. I also feel if allowed to have the meeting I would still be employed
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Re: Jail
You may be right that you might have retained employment. But there is no guarantee that your employer would have let you retain your employment status given your incarceration or the charges that you faced. In most states, employment is at-will; then can terminate you for any reason or for no reason at all. Also,
I honestly don't see you having a case against the county, city, state over this matter but the experts here will be able to determine better than I.
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Re: Treatment in Jail
Your allowed 1 phone call after you get to jail, but that also depends on if your on investigative hold or anything else. Not knowing I cant say. Other than that, you really do not have the right to a phone. They are privileges and only that. Jail sucks. I did my share of time there and it was not fun. The real only right you have in jail is food and medical attention.