Two Wisconsin youth detention centers, Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake, have been under federal supervision for almost a decade after numerous complaints of abuse. That supervision ended last week. An advocate, a judge and a state senator all weigh in on the decision and the state of juvenile justice.
CEO Riya Saha Shah and Jamie Silvonek were recently featured on The Pursuing Justice podcast with host Harriet Hendel (sponsored by the Innocence Project of Florida). Listen in as Riya speaks about Juvenile Law Center's work, from our historic fight in the Kids for Cash scandal to the fight to bring children condemned to die in prison home. In the second part, hear directly from Jamie about her fight for freedom and redemption.
Just north of Highway 63, a row of trees separates a service road from a gray one-story building dotted with windows just wide enough to allow the width of a face.
The campus expands to reveal an arts center. An American flag waves out front.
After eight years, the court-mandated oversight of a Wisconsin youth prison has come to an end.
The Lincoln Hills School for boys and the nearby all-girls Cooper Lake School have been monitored by a court-appointed official since 2018. On Wednesday afternoon, U.S. District Judge James Peterson granted a request from Wisconsin’s Department of Corrections to terminate that consent decree.
On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge James Peterson ended mandated oversight of the Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake youth prisons. A court-mandated monitoring program for the juvenile detention facilities found them to be in “substantial compliance” with reforms sought in a 2018 class action settlement, marking a new chapter in their troubled history.
Today, the court-appointed monitor overseeing Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake submitted the second consecutive report finding “substantial compliance” with all measures. In 2018, the State agreed to regular monitoring as part of the settlement of a class action lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Wisconsin, Juvenile Law Center and Quarles & Brady LLP to address harmful conditions at Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake. As the settlement allows, Defendants today filed an unopposed motion to terminate the court-ordered Consent Decree.
Gov. Tony Evers is asking a federal judge to lift restrictions on the state's corrections department that were put in place nearly a decade ago after inmates at the state's youth prison were subjected to excessive use of solitary confinement, pepper spray and shackles.
Operations at Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake Schools, Wisconsin's youth prison facilities, are once again in full compliance with 50 court-ordered reforms put in place after a lawsuit stemming from child abuse allegations.
Nine years after a class-action lawsuit was filed, the state of Wisconsin’s juvenile prisons have been found in compliance with a federal court order.
The ACLU of Wisconsin, Juvenile Law Center and Quarles & Brady LLP sued the state of Wisconsin in 2017 over allegations of abuse and excessive force at the Lincoln Hills School for Boys and the Copper Lake School for Girls.
The year is 2016. The United States Supreme Court just issued the most consequential decision for children condemned to die in prison.
In Montgomery v. Louisiana, the Supreme Court fulfilled the promise it made four years earlier in Miller v. Alabama – that children could not receive mandatory sentences of life without the possibility of parole.
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