ACLU expected to file suit over Lincoln Hills problems

Madison —The American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin and a juvenile justice group are expected to file a lawsuit Tuesday over the state's teen prisons.

The ACLU of Wisconsin’s legal director, Larry Dupuis, declined to say Friday if the planned lawsuit was related to Lincoln Hills School for Boys and Copper Lake School for Girls, which share a campus 30 miles north of Wausau and have been under criminal investigation for two years.

But his group has been closely tracking activities at the juvenile prisons and last year raised serious concerns about how medications were distributed there.

The ACLU of Wisconsin and the Juvenile Law Center will announce their lawsuit at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday at Urban Underground, 4850 W. Fond du Lac Ave. in Milwaukee.

The Juvenile Law Center calls itself “the oldest non-profit, public interest law firm for children in the nation.” Urban Underground is part of a coalition that has called for closing Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake.

CONTUINING COVERAGE: Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake schools scandal

A Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigation last month found that state officials missed repeated warning signs at Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake. Contributing to the problems there were lax management, confusion over policies, a lack of communication and chronic staff shortages.

Department of Corrections officials have emphasized changes they have made in the last year, including installing more surveillance cameras, equipping staff with body cameras, enhancing training and requiring nurses — rather than guards — to dispense medication to inmates.

“Under Secretary (Jon) Litscher’s leadership, the Department of Corrections has made significant and wide-reaching reforms within the Division of Juvenile Corrections,” Department of Corrections spokesman Tristan Cook said in a statement. “These changes ... have transformed institution operations.”

This week, a court ruling showed state prosecutors last year argued a 16-year-old accused of sexual assault should be handled in the adult system for his own protection because there is a “cloud over Lincoln Hills.” An appeals court on Wednesday agreed it was appropriate to treat the boy, now 17, as an adult.

The Journal Sentinel investigation found Gov. Scott Walker and other officials for years ignored indications of a brewing crisis at Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake. A judge wrote to Walker directly about a 2012 incident in which a juvenile inmate who had been beaten and sexually assaulted did not get medical attention for hours. Walker’s aides did not pass the judge’s memo onto the governor and no one was disciplined over the prison’s handling of the assault.

In another incident, a teen inmate had to have parts of two toes amputated after a guard shoved him into a room and slammed a door on his foot in November 2015. Taxpayers paid him $300,000 last year to avoid a lawsuit.

In a third incident, a guard was investigated over allegations he  put his hand on the neck of a 15-year-old female inmate and pushed her against a wall in October 2015. The Lincoln County Sheriff’s Department recommended the former guard, Scott McKenna, be charged with child abuse and strangulation last year.

So far, no charging decisions have been made, but the 2-year-old criminal probe is ongoing.

It is looking into allegations of prisoner abuse, child neglect, sexual assault, intimidation of witnesses and victims, strangulation and tampering with public records. There have been at least four instances in which inmates’ bones have been broken, according to records.

State Attorney General Brad Schimel started the investigation in January 2015 and handed it off a year later to the FBI. He said after the Journal Sentinel’s investigation last month that his office may now become more involved in the investigation.

The changes to how medicine is distributed at Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake was made last fall, after the Journal Sentinel reported on instances of guards giving the wrong drugs to inmates and the ACLU of Wisconsin seeking a host of documents about the practice under the state’s open records law.

The ACLU of Wisconsin in 2006 sued the state over its women’s prison, Taycheedah Correctional Institution in Fond du Lac. That lawsuit led to changes in how medicine is dispensed there and provided for more medical and psychiatric care at the prison.