They Handed the Wolf a Phone Book and Called It Healing

Leave a CommentThey Handed the Wolf a Phone Book and Called It HealingCommentary, Politics

A Milwaukee judge looked at a man charged with killing three people and asked the only adult question in the room: why does the jail hand him a tablet? Thomas Zollicoffer, accused of shooting three people in two apartments on August 8, used a county device to tell someone to make a witness “stop lying,” then promised that when he got out—even briefly—“they will pay.” The judge cut his calls, visits, and gadgets except for his lawyer. Then he said he has seen this movie before.

He has. One inmate used a jail tablet to hammer a domestic-abuse victim more than 1,500 times. Another, the judge said in court, used a county laptop or iPad to intimidate witnesses and allegedly punched through the software into child pornography. There is no constitutional right to Netflix in a cell. There is a county executive who signed the contract.

Who Bought the Toy

David Crowley approved Milwaukee County’s inmate tablet program in 2022 and extended it in 2025. Every inmate gets one. Messaging, email, “education,” streaming. Phone and video visits on the taxpayer dime under his budget. The pitch from his office after the explosion: family ties, legal access, rehabilitation, a “strong support system” for reentry. He will “identify vulnerabilities.” That is what you say after the barn is empty and the horse is texting the witness.

Crowley is the Democrat running for governor. A Marquette Law School poll has him tied at 44 percent with the Republican who wants the tablets yanked from violent offenders. The race just found its prop.

California Already Ran the Experiment

California spent on the order of $189 million putting tablets in nearly every state cell in the name of connection and equity. Inmates used them to watch porn, run explicit video, and, in documented prosecutions, keep working a child from inside the walls. A former corrections official said he would bet his pension the devices were loaded with child sexual abuse material. The state banned the obvious content after the stories landed. Inmates said there is always a way around. You do not need a white paper to know a locked man with a camera and a contact list will test the lock.

Milwaukee is the same religion at county scale. Smaller budget. Same theology.

The Theory, Named

The theory is that jail is a campus. Isolation is the real crime. A device is “connection,” and connection is rehabilitation, and rehabilitation is justice. Crime is a support-system failure. If you give the accused a portal to the world he just shot up, he will use it for GED modules and grandmother. If he uses it to hunt the only person willing to testify, that is a “vulnerability” in the vendor settings.

Crowley has talked for years about family members in and out of prison, first jobs placing ex-offenders, violence interrupters, alternatives to incarceration. Fine. None of that requires a homicide defendant to have instant message. The left’s carceral idea for a decade has been that punishment is trauma and tools are equity. Digital equity in a max unit is how you get a triple-murder case with a group chat.

They will say the sheriff runs the jail. Crowley signed the program and renewed it. They will say most inmates only watch movies. Most inmates are not the problem. The problem is the one who is, and the policy that refuses to treat him as a predator with a new antenna.

A judge called it preposterous. He is paid to notice when a witness starts getting mail from the man who is supposed to be locked away from her. The genius who thought the tablet was mercy never had to sit in that gallery. The rest of Milwaukee does.