By Ashley Luthern
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
MILWAUKEE — A coalition of community, faith and youth advocates on Thursday called on Wisconsin lawmakers to close the state’s youth prisons and for Milwaukee County judges to stop sending teens to those facilities.
Youth Justice Milwaukee is pushing for state and local officials to provide resources, programs and secure facilities for Milwaukee County youth in the community, instead of the state-run Lincoln Hills School for Boys and Copper Lake School for Girls, located north of Wausau.
“Every news story out Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake makes it clear that these facilities are broken and they can’t be fixed,” said Jeffrey Roman, co-founder of the coalition.
In recent weeks, reports of assault on staff and sexual harassment of female workers, including teen inmates who openly masturbate in front of them, have continued to roil the institution.
Lincoln Hills has been under a criminal investigation for nearly three years for prisoner abuse and child neglect. This summer, a federal judge ordered prison officials to curb their use of solitary confinement and pepper spray.
State corrections officials say they have made “significant investments” to bolster safety, education, programming and mental health services and improve staff training over the past two years.
A 16-year-old girl who was incarcerated at Copper Lake for nine months spoke at Youth Justice Milwaukee’s news conference Thursday, saying her family struggled to make the four-hour drive to visit her. She said she spent weeks in solitary confinement.
“I felt like I was losing my mind,” she said.
Milwaukee County Circuit Chief Judge Maxine White was not available for comment Thursday, but the county has cut the number of youth sent to Lincoln Hills and Cooper Lake from 104 in January 2016 to 57 as of October.
The county also has been seeking proposals from vendors to help run a 24-bed treatment facility that at capacity could nearly halve Milwaukee transfers to Lincoln Hills.
The state Department of Corrections’ primary responsibility is to protect the public, and youth at the facility have committed “very serious crimes,” often failing in community-based settings, agency spokesman Tristan Cook said in an email.
The facility has set up youth council to voice concerns and is creating a similar council for inmates’ families, he said.
At the news conference, state Sen. Lena Taylor (D-Milwaukee) acknowledged some youth will need to be incarcerated. She said the question was whether Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake were appropriate places to send high-risk, high-trauma youth.
“Correctional officers have now also been harmed,” she said. “What are we waiting on? Does someone have to die?”
©2017 the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel