MADISON, WI (WSAU) — Governor Scott Walker is signing the bill that will close the state’s Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake youth prisons in Lincoln County.
The signing ceremony took place Friday in Milwaukee.
The troubled juvenile corrections facilities will be closed no later than 2021. The state’s plan calls for most youth offenders to be housed in county-based program. Lincoln Hills will be replaced with five smaller regional facilities with an emphasis on mental health. The state will borrow up to $80-million to build those new facilities.
The locations of those facilities has not been finalized. The state will conduct a study later this year to help determine where to place the facilities. Governor Walker has also made it known that the individual counties ability to handle the facilities will also be taken into account.
The bill also calls for the state to establish treatment standards for the new facilities by the end of the year.
Walker said earlier that the Lincoln Hills site in Irma may be repurposed to an adult facility that would specialize in drug treatment. Employees at Lincoln Hills would get preferred treatment for jobs there.
There’s an ongoing federal investigation into the abuse of youth inmates at Lincoln Hills. The state is also under court order to reduce the use of pepper spray, restraints, and solitary confinement there.
