GOP senators grilled state Corrections officials about conditions at the state’s troubled youth prisons while knocking a consent decree they argued makes staff jobs more dangerous.
Dems on the Senate Judiciary and Public Safety Committee, meanwhile, criticized the Joint Finance Committee for delaying funding to replace the state’s juvenile corrections facilities.
Committee Chair Sen. Van Wanggaard, R-Racine, said during yesterday’s hearing in Merrill that he would “hope we look to change” the consent decree, which bans the use of pepper spray as a defensive measure, on the Lincoln Hills premises. Wanggaard suggested training Lincoln Hills staff to properly use pepper spray, rather than “taking it away altogether.”
Sen. LaTonya Johnson, D-Milwaukee faulted GOP members of the Joint Finance Committee for delays in funding for new facilities because the “minority party doesn’t have any control.”
Lawmakers first approved legislation in 2018 to begin shutting down Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake. But there have been numerous setbacks to that effort. While a new juvenile facility in Milwaukee is slated to break ground this fall, GOP lawmakers haven’t yet agreed to fund a new type 1 facility in Dane County. Corrections officials have said that second facility is needed to close Lincoln Hills.
Department of Corrections Secretary Jared Hoy said he believes Lincoln Hills would be closed if funds had been granted for a second Type 1 Facility in Dane County.
Hoy added that it is “unlikely” Lincoln Hills can close without the Dane County facility being built.
The informational hearing before the Senate panel came after a counselor was attacked in June at the Lincoln Hills facility and later died.
Sen. Mary Felzkowski, R-Tomahawk, and JFC member, said she sees the situation at Lincoln Hills as a “huge failure on both sides of the aisle.”
“[The inmate] was at a youth facility trying to go through rehabilitation so that he could rejoin society,” Felzkowski said. “Now he’s killed a man, and he will probably never see the light of day again. He will go into an adult facility and spend the majority of his adult years there. And we have a dead youth counselor. And we need to find out what went wrong because we have two lives that have ended.”
This article was originally published by a www.wispolitics.com . Read the Original article here. .