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.
