973.02 Place of imprisonment when none expressed. Except as provided in s. 973.032, if a statute authorizes imprisonment for its violation but does not prescribe the place of imprisonment, a sentence of less than one year shall be to the county jail, a sentence of more than one year shall be to the Wisconsin state prisons and the minimum under the indeterminate sentence law shall be one year, and a sentence of one year may be to either the Wisconsin state prisons or the county jail. In any proper case, sentence and commitment may be to the department or any house of correction or other institution as provided by law or to detention under s. 973.03 (4).
History: 1973 c. 90; 1987 a. 27; 1991 a. 39.
The legislature is presumed to have been aware of many existing statutes carrying sentences of one year or less with no place of confinement specified when it enacted the predecessor to s. 973.02 as chapter 154, laws of 1945. State ex rel. McDonald v. Douglas Cty. Cir. Ct. 100 Wis. 2d 569, 302 N.W.2d 462 (1981).
Criminal defendants who receive consecutive sentences that in the aggregate exceed one year, but individually are all less than one year, should be incarcerated in county jails rather than the Wisconsin prison system. 78 Atty. Gen. 44.
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