By WisPolitics.com

Gov. Tony Evers’ budget doesn’t envision closing the state’s troubled youth prisons in northern Wisconsin until after a new juvenile facility in Milwaukee would be completed in early 2024.

But that’s nearly three years past the statutorily required deadline to shut them down.

Evers said his budget sought to close Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake “as soon as we safely and responsibly can” as part of an overhaul of the juvenile justice system. That included moving toward creating smaller, community-based facilities across the state, though Evers didn’t put a firm date on when the prisons would close.

Then in his capital budget, Evers proposed $45.8 million for a state-run youth corrections facility in Milwaukee County that would be completed in February 2024. He also proposed putting another $22 million into the expansion of the Mendota Mental Health Institute to treat youthful offenders with a projected completion date of April 2025.

An Evers spokeswoman confirmed Evers’ plans to close Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake are contingent upon the Milwaukee facility opening to house some offenders. If approved by the Legislature, it would mark a second delay in shuttering the prisons, which were originally slated to close last month. Evers signed a bill in 2019 pushing that back to July 2021.

Britt Cudaback said the planned overhaul of the juvenile justice system would prioritize rehabilitation and keeping juveniles closer to home.

“The governor’s goal is to get our kids back home and back in their communities as soon as we safely and responsibly can,” she said. “That requires us to have facilities to be able to do that.”
Evers’ move would mark another setback in the effort to close Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake after a federal investigation into allegations that staff members were mistreating youth at the facilities. Former Gov. Scott Walker in March 2018 signed legislation that set a January 2021 deadline to close the facilities and replace them with a new system.

But the effort turned out to be woefully underfunded, and residents in Milwaukee and Outagamie counties balked at the prospect of having new youth prisons built in their communities to house the most serious juvenile offenders. What’s more, an initiative to have counties build regional facilities for less serious offenders has so far only advanced in Racine County.

Part of Evers’ proposed approach to the juvenile justice system would be to get rid of the facilities for the most serious offenders and instead focus on a regional approach.

But state Rep. Michael Schraa said that proposal likely “isn’t going to fly” with some of his GOP colleagues. The Oshkosh Republican and chair of the Assembly Corrections Committee was heavily involved in the legislation to close Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake.

“It was a kumbaya moment, and I felt like we were on the right path, and now it’s all kind of fallen apart,” Schraa said.

The legislation Walker signed in March 2018 included $80 million for a series of new juvenile facilities. That included $40 million for Secure Residential Care Centers for Children and Youth for less serious offenders; $25 million for two new state-run “Type 1” facilities for more serious offenders; and $15 million for the Mendota Juvenile Treatment Center in Dane County.

But it wasn’t long before estimates on those county-run facilities — abbreviated as SRCCYs — came in well above the $80 million that had been envisioned for the entire overhaul. By late 2019, the estimate for facilities in Brown, Dane, Milwaukee and Racine counties came in at roughly $111 million.

Even though the state eventually put more money into the county piece of the overhaul, only Racine County moved forward with its plans. That facility alone is in line to receive $40 million.

A year ago, the GOP-run Joint Finance Committee also rejected Evers’ request for $73.2 million to build two new Type 1 facilities that were envisioned in the original plan.

Evers’ executive budget calls for eliminating the Serious Juvenile Offender designation, which has been used to send minors to Type 1 facilities, which now include Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake. The governor would eliminate the two-tiered system and instead use the regional SRCCYs run either by counties or the state.

Beyond the SRCCYs, county-run juvenile detention facilities would continue to be responsible for juveniles awaiting sentencing andshort-term holds.

Evers’ capital budget calls for a state-run SRCCY in Milwaukee County that would house up to 32 juveniles with approximately 70 Department of Corrections employees, not counting teachers, social workers and others.

It also calls for another $22 million as part of a planned expansion of the Mendota Mental Health Institute in Dane County to add capacity. That would be on top of the $44 million that was approved in the 2019-21 budget for the construction of a juvenile treatment center at the institute.

According to the capital budget, the new facility would include housing units for 30 male and 20 female juvenile offenders.

The capital budget also calls for nixing the enumeration for the Tier 1 facility that had been slated for Outagamie County. In 2019, Evers’ administration had identified a site in the town of Hortonia, between New London and Hortonville, for that facility. But local officials complained the administration hadn’t given them adequate warning and local residents balked at the prospect of having the facility built there. State Sen. Rob Cowles, R-Green Bay, called it a “botched and miscalculated unveiling.”

Evers’ capital budget notes the intention continues to be eventually converting Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake buildings into adult facilities.

At the beginning of 2018, there were 148 boys at Lincoln Hills and 18 girls at Copper Lake. Last week, those numbers were down to 52 and five, respectively.

Mark Mertens, administrator for the Milwaukee County Division of Youth and Family Services, questioned whether the state needs a combined capacity at the Milwaukee and Dane county facilities for 82 offenders.

Of the juveniles at Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake now, 22 are from Milwaukee County, and Mertens said the goal is to have none there by year’s end. Mertens said there needs to be a secure detention center available for some youthful offenders. But the county is focusing its efforts on treating juveniles locally, saying it’s a better investment of youth aid it gets from the state. If the state has excess capacity, it means counties sending their juvenile offenders to the facilities would be paying a higher daily rate.

“I think that’s the wave of the future,” he said. “The question then is, have we done our due diligence about that, about right-sizing?”

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