State Agrees To End Pepper Spray, Solitary At Youth Prison

The ACLU, the Juvenile Law Center and the Quarles and Brady law firm brought a separate lawsuit in January 2017 on behalf of four inmates seeking improvements at the prison, including limits on the use of pepper spray solitary confinement and mechanical restraints.

U.S. District Judge James Peterson ordered the DOC last June to curtail the use of solitary confinement, pepper spray and shackles. The ACLU argued later that year that the use of pepper spray increased following the order and inmates were rotated between different types of confinement, exposing them to the "same intolerable conditions entailed in punitive solitary confinement."