Juveniles at the Lincoln Hills correctional facility can expect
fewer days in solitary confinement and less pepper
spray in the future.
In tonight's closer look, the Wisconsin Department of
Corrections says it will not appeal a federal judge's ruling
that said workers showed "Callous indifference
to the harm being inflicted on juvenile prisoners."
But this isn't the end of the story.
Earlier this week we spoke to Patrick Marley,
reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel,
about the remaining lawsuits and investigations
still pending at Lincoln Hills.
It's been three weeks since a federal judge ruled
the Department of Corrections and the ACLU,
they need to agree on a plan to reduce the use of pepper spray
and confined spaces.
What have we seen so far?
- Since then they have put together a plan
and the judge has ruled on it.
The two sides couldn't agree on all the details,
so the judge came in and said they need to reduce the amount
of time kids are put in solitary confinement for punishment
to seven days.
The maximum currently is 60 days.
So it's a dramatic drop in how much time.
And then when they're in there, when they're in solitary
confinement, they have to be out for at least 30 hours a week for
meals, education, those kinds of things.
There's also a sharp reduction
in how much pepper spray they can use.
Now as we've seen from the videos that were released
in the court hearing, kids would get sprayed
for refusing to go in their room or something like that.
Now they can only do it if someone's being--harming someone
or there's an immediate risk that they will harm someone.
- There have been allegations of abuse and mistreatment at
Lincoln Hills for a couple of years now.
Has the release of the videos to the public changed the way
people are approaching this?
- We've been reporting for a year and a half
about very serious problems
that have been going on for a long time at Lincoln Hills.
I think the videos--there are two videos released through this
court case and we obtained a video on our own of an incident
that happened in 2013.
I think the public being able to actually witness how things
operate there with their eyes and see it for themselves has
changed the way some people may perceive this.
It's a little more abstract
when you're just reading words in a newspaper.
It's a lot more real when you see people in riot gear
going up to a cell door and spraying pepper spray
through a slot in that door
because a juvenile won't take their hands out of the door.
- And do you think people are reacting differently
because these are juveniles?
You can hear they're kids' voices,
kids' body as opposed to just an inmate.
- Well, Wisconsin has had a long policy of trying to treat
juvenile inmates differently than adult inmates.
Some of these kids are in there for very serious crimes,
carjacking, some of them even homicide.
But the notion Wisconsin has adopted
is that kids are more susceptible to rehabilitation.
That there's a better chance
they can turn their lives around.
And it's more important we as a society do turn them around
because they're going to live a lot longer than an adult inmate.
So what the judge found is that many of the things that
are done at Lincoln Hills are not in keeping with that policy.
He hasn't made a final ruling, but they appear not to be
keeping with that policy and they appear to be violating the
constitutional rights of these inmates.
- And other judges are saying the same thing.
County judges in southeast Wisconsin are actually
sending fewer children there.
- We've seen a huge drop in the number of kids
being sent to Lincoln Hills.
Part of that appears to be of the grave concerns
about how the facility has been operating.
- More than a year ago we had you on the program to update us
on the different lawsuits and the federal investigation.
What do we know now?
- We still don't know where this federal investigation is.
The FBI's in charge of it now.
It's been going on for two and a half years.
First the State Department of Justice was doing it.
Now the FBI is doing it.
There's also a civil investigation
being done by the U.S. Department of Justice.
There's at least five lawsuits that I'm aware of.
But really the prosecutors are very tight-lipped.
We don't know if they're going to issue charges.
We don't know when they're going to wrap this up
and make those kind of decisions.
They just won't tell us.
- Is there any possibility that the shift in Washington with
the Department of Justice could alter the way this is handled?
- I talked to the former U.S. Attorney about that,
and he didn't think so.
He thinks that the Department of Justice,
the U.S. Department of Justice is a professional organization
that's going to continue to do what it does
regardless of who the president is.
We haven't seen any evidence.
You know, the thing was taking a long time and was being kept
from the public, which is typically how prosecutors act.
So we have not detected any shift.
We just don't know.
- Governor Walker also has a new secretary
in the Department of Corrections.
Has he made any changes? - Yes.
There was a raid on the facility in December of 2015 and
the Department of Corrections made a number of changes.
First, they put all new leaders in at the Department of
Corrections, mostly new leaders at the prison itself.
They gave a lot more training to all the staff there.
They now put them through a six or seven-week training course
where before it was two weeks on the job.
They have equipped everybody with body cameras.
They've installed more fixed cameras in the facility.
The administration has touted that a lot.
Those are real changes that have been made.
The judge, you know, the case that the ACLU brought is really
all about activities there since that raid.
And the judge said there have been no concrete or substantive
steps toward reducing solitary confinement,
reducing the use of pepper spray.
That's what this lawsuit is really focused on.
- What about the state budget that's still ongoing?
Are there any changes for Lincoln Hills there?
- The state budget is totally stalled, as you know,
on other issues like transportation.
They have voted on the budget
for the Department of Corrections
and they're putting more money into mental health work.
At Lincoln Hills they're formalizing a policy
where only nurses and medical staff will give out medicine.
Previously it had been guards who had given out medicine.
And we documented some cases where teen inmates got the wrong
medicine.
So there are those kinds of changes.
But they are not making really substantive changes
to the way the place operates that those
in the prison reform community have wanted.
The opponents of this place want to shut it down and have it move
to regional centers.
That would be very expensive and lawmakers have not shown
interest in that so far.
- Is there any sense that this is going to become political
as we approach the next gubernatorial election?
- Some Democrats have criticized Governor Walker
because he's never visited Lincoln Hills.
When I asked him about it, he said he didn't see a need to go
there because he believes he's putting staff who are going to
be responsive and responsible for running it.
And he said that he didn't think --
he didn't think when a politician visits a prison
they get a real look at what the prison is like.
That you just see what they want you to see.
Some Democrats have been very critical of that saying
he should be up there making it more of a priority.
Who's to say in the next year how much of a political issue
people try to make it.
- We just found out that they're going to invite media
members to possibly tour some facilities.
- Yes.
We had an opportunity to visit Lincoln Hills back in December,
a pretty good tour of getting to see both the--
they stay in cottages.
They're spread around on campus.
Seeing the ordinary cottages as well as the secure,
solitary confinement wing, the school itself that's on the
grounds.
Now they're talking about doing similar tours of adult prisons,
the state's women's prison.
So we'll be looking forward to seeing what that's like.
- Patrick Marley, thanks for the update.
- Thanks.