GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – Brown County has made its case to the state to build a new $43 million juvenile detention center.
They want to put the juvenile center somewhere on its jail campus, on Green Bay’s far east side.
“It certainly would be a way for us to serve our community and to serve the youngsters in juvenile detention, but do so in a way that doesn’t affect our bottom line too much,” said Erik Hoyer, a Brown County supervisor.
The state’s current youth prisons, Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake Schools, are set to close in July 2021.
$47 million is earmarked for new type-1, state-run, facilities for the most serious offenders, including one in Hortonia, just south of New London. The state has set aside $80 million to pay for 95% of the construction costs for county facilities, which would house less-serious offenders.
Along with Brown County’s $43 million proposal, a state committee is considering similarly priced plans from Milwaukee ($41.8 million) and Racine ($45.8 million) counties. Dane County is also in the running with a $3.5 to $4.5 million plan to expand an existing building.
“We have a successful track record,” said Erik Pritzl, the executive director for Brown County Health and Human Services, when asked how Brown County’s proposal fares compared to the others. “We are in a desirable location for other parts of the state. I think the committee is interested in that.”
Brown County’s facility would include 32 short-term beds for youth going through the court process and 24-beds for inmates serving sentences up to a year.
In recent years, Brown County has averaged 11 youth offenders in a detention center-type facility at a given time. However, 21 other counties would also use the detention center. Those counties recently averaged 19 youth offenders between them.
Brown County projects those outside counties would pay between $550 and $685 per day, per inmate to help cover the $7.2 million it would cost per year to run the detention center.
Brown County believes it would end up coming out ahead, because of what it would pay if the facility was built elsewhere.
“We’re not having to send workers, we’re not having to securely transport youth in and out of the county,” said Pritzl. “We’re not having families have to drive to the other facilities.”
“It allows them to visit and be more supportive and have more interaction than if they were say across the state,” said Hoyer.
On Wednesday, the county’s health and human services committee will discuss a resolution from Hoyer to have the full county board support the juvenile jail plan.
The state committee recommending which counties will receive money to build the centers is supposed to make a decision by October 1st. The legislature has the final say.
