Mixed results found at Lincoln Hills

MADISON - After doing a private tour of the state’s troubled youth prison, a panel of lawmakers said Thursday they see both progress and lingering problems there.

The Assembly Committee on Corrections chairman, Rep. Michael Schraa (R-Oshkosh), denied a request from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel to have a reporter accompany the visit after state attorneys said the law allowed that. In a statehouse meeting Thursday, Schraa recapped the visit, saying that lawmakers were able to get wide access to the facility and at times were able to talk to staff without having state Department of Corrections officials hovering nearby.

“I really felt that we were getting the true story from these individuals because we were one on one with them,” Schraa told lawmakers on the panel. “I was extremely and pleasantly surprised by what I saw up there.”

The Journal Sentinel has reported extensively on problems at Lincoln Hills School for Boys, which has been under criminal investigation for more than two years for allegations of inmate abuse.

The tour of the prison about 30 miles north of Wausau is a sign that Republicans who control the Legislature are becoming more interested in digging into the problems there.

Schraa detailed the extensive questions that he put to prison staff and inmates about the conditions there. He asked about the schedules of the employees, the presence of youth gangs operating among the inmates, the meals and what it felt like to wear cuff belts that inmates sometimes have on while being moved.

Schraa said he was willing to work with Democrats on recommendations for improving the prison, such as greater training for staff, and he also told Democrats that he was also willing to take unannounced visits to the prison with them in the future.

Both Schraa and Rep. Evan Goyke (D-Milwaukee) described a daytime conversation with a staff member who had worked through the night and who cried when describing the way staff often had to work forced overtime in 16-hour shifts to fill vacant posts.

Schraa said he believed staff morale was largely good. But Goyke said their conversation showed that more needed to be done, particularly on the forced overtime.

“When we put people in that situation, the tensions flare, it would happen to anyone,” Goyke said.