Wisconsin still has work to do at youth prisons | Opinion
“This is the most severe and damaging type of solitary confinement that is used in the American penal system.” So wrote federal Judge James Peterson about the conditions at Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake Schools in 2017. When he issued this ruling, concerns about child maltreatment had plagued the facilities for years, even sparking an FBI investigation.
Children faced weeks and even months in solitary as a punishment, often only leaving their cell for an hour a day, sometimes chained to a desk. When our team visited the facility and later got access to body cam videos, we witnessed excessive uses of force, teenagers pepper sprayed in hallways and through the doors of their locked cells, and youth shuffling from place to place in chains.
ACLU of Wisconsin, Juvenile Law Center, and Quarles & Brady LLP filed a lawsuit that settled in 2018 when the court ordered a “Consent Decree” — appointing a monitor to oversee the facility and provide regular updates on whether the facilities were doing what they promised.
