Campaign to close Wisconsin youth prison launches
A wide-ranging coalition of community groups and youth advocates launched a campaign Wednesday to close youth prisons in Wisconsin.
"We have traumatized our kids by locking them up in these old outdated and obsolete prisons," said Sharlen Moore, executive director of Urban Underground and a founding member of Youth Justice Milwaukee.
"We are traumatizing their families and the communities that they live in and it needs to stop."
The effort comes while Lincoln Hills School for Boys and Copper Lake School for Girls, youth prisons located in northern Wisconsin, remain under criminal investigation for child abuse and neglect. The probe has been going on for two years.
In January, four inmates and their parents filed a class-action federal lawsuit against state officials, alleging guards used pepper spray excessively and kept teens in solitary confinement for weeks or months at a time. The lawsuit was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin and the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center.
Youth Justice Milwaukee is calling for the closure of youth prisons in the state and replacing those facilities with community-based, family centered, restorative programs.
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Such programs, supporters say, have proved to have better success rehabilitating young offenders and cost taxpayers less money than incarceration. Wisconsin spends more than $30 million annually operating youth prisons and 61% of former inmates committed a new criminal offense within three years of release, according to the coalition's analysis of state data.
At a news conference Wednesday, a college student named Marcus who had spent 14 months at Lincoln Hills urged local officials to invest in prevention, rather than incarceration. The 19-year-old said he was placed in foster care at the age of 9 months and suffered physical and sexual abuse as a child. Marcus requested to be identified only by his first name. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel also does not name victims of sexual assault.
When he was placed in another foster home, his guardians tried to find him programs to prevent him from going down the wrong path, but there were none to be found, Marcus said. Instead, he made "poor choices" and ended up in Lincoln Hills.
"I never suffered physical abuse," he said of his time at the Northwoods prison. "But what I can say is I watched and had no choice but to stand by as I watched others get verbally abused, physically abused."
About 90% of 400 people surveyed in Milwaukee County expressed support for treatment and rehabilitation plans that include a youth's family in planning and services, according to poll data released Wednesday by Youth Justice Milwaukee.
Of those surveyed, 83% supported providing financial incentives for states and municipalities to invest in alternatives to youth incarceration; and 73% supported requiring states to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in the youth justice system.
A state Department of Corrections spokesman said Thursday that youth confined at Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake have typically been unsuccessful in community-based programs and the department has invested in improvements at both facilities. The department also has conducted internal investigations related to the allegations and held staff accountable, he said.
The coalition is asking people who want get involved to go online to www.youthjusticemke.org.