News & Commentary

ACLU Calls on Incoming Corrections Secretary Jon Litscher to Eliminate Solitary Confinement, Especially of Children As Jon Litscher prepares to take the reins as Secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Corrections amid revelations about the abuse of children at Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake juvenile correctional facilities, the ACLU of Wisconsin repeats its call for independent oversight and reform of the Department’s use of solitary confinement, particularly of juveniles.  The ACLU also supports Milwaukee County’s efforts to bring young prisoners back to their home communities, but only if they can be appropriately housed and cared for locally. Recent developments have brought momentum to the cause of curtailing solitary confinement and the “terrible price” it exacts on prisoners. In a concurring opinion in June 2015, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy complained that “the conditions in which prisoners have been kept simply has not been a matter of sufficient public inquiry or interest.” He observed that “near-total isolation exacts a terrible price,” and invited a legal challenge to long-term solitary confinement.  In late 2015, a group of leaders of state correctional systems, including former Wisconsin DOC secretary Rick Raemisch, and advocates for prisoners made recommendations to end the over-use of isolation in prisons.  The recommendations included ensuring that vulnerable populations, including juveniles, be confined in isolated settings only when no alternative exists and then only for a maximum of 15 days.  In January 2016, President Obama prohibited solitary confinement of juveniles in federal prisons and adopted other recommendations to limit the use of restrictive housing.  These developments coincide with the United Nation’s adoption of the “Nelson Mandela Rules” for the treatment of prisoners, which recognize solitary’s “devastating effect on physical and mental health” and restrict its use to no more than 15 days. The ACLU has long been concerned about solitary confinement in Wisconsin’s prisons and jails, especially when applied to young people, and called for greater transparency so the public can monitor and deter abuse.  In 2010, the ACLU questioned the closing of Ethan Allen School for Boys and Southern Oaks School for Girls, because many of the youth incarcerated there were from the Milwaukee area and would be more isolated from family if moved to the more distant Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake facilities. The ACLU feared the greater distance would make family visits more difficult, interfere with the youths’ rehabilitation, and put them further “out of sight and out of mind.” In 2012, the ACLU and Human Rights Watch issued a report, “Growing Up Locked Down,” which documented the severe harm solitary confinement causes young people.  The report noted that the Wisconsin Department of Corrections refused to allow interviews of children in its custody, and the ACLU called upon “Wisconsin prison and jail officials . . . to be more transparent about how they use solitary confinement on kids.”  In November 2015, the ACLU joined other advocates in calling upon the Department to contract with an independent entity, such as the National Institute of Corrections, to evaluate its solitary practices and policies, report its findings to the public and make recommendations for future improvements.  While the Department under outgoing Secretary Ed Wall made some progress toward reducing the use of solitary confinement, it did not respond to calls for greater oversight and transparency. The DOC’s general lack of transparency with regard to solitary and particularly the isolation of the Lincoln Hills and Copper Lakes facilities from prisoners’ families raise serious concerns about the extent to which juveniles may have been subjected to solitary.  Secretary Litscher should seize the opportunity of his appointment to eliminate solitary confinement of juveniles, radically reduce its use among all prisoners, and submit to independent oversight.

In recent years, there have been calls by communities at varying distances from the Great Lakes to divert Great Lakes water for drinking (and development) purposes. Under the 2008 Great Lakes Compact ( http://www.greatlakes.org/Document.Doc?id=144 ), Great Lakes water generally must remain within the Great Lakes basin – except that municipalities within counties that straddle the basin can request water. That request, however, can be vetoed by even just ONE governor of one of the Great Lakes states (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin).   The first test case is coming from Wau

The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Wisconsin today announced that the State of Wisconsin has satisfied the terms of a settlement agreement requiring fundamental changes to medical and mental health care at the state’s largest women’s prison and that the parties to Flynn v. Walker, the longstanding class-action lawsuit, would file papers seeking court dismissal of the case. The first-of-its-kind class action lawsuit was originally filed in 2006 on behalf of women prisoners at Taycheedah Correctional Institution. The lawsuit charged that the prison system put the lives of women prisoners at risk through grossly deficient health care, provided women mental health treatment far inferior to that provided to men in Wisconsin, and failed to provide reasonable accommodations to allow prisoners with disabilities to access basic prison services.

Last week, representatives of the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) held a “listening session” as the COPS Office began a voluntary Collaborative Reform Initiative program with the Milwaukee Police Department.  Milwaukee community organizations and individuals reiterated some of the issues that surfaced during the listening session and at subsequent meetings that they hope will be included in the goals for the collaborative reform initiative in a letter sent today.

Police agencies in Wisconsin use civil asset forfeiture laws to seize – and then keep or sell – property they allege is involved in a crime.  Even if the owner of the property is innocent or never charged, they may never get their property back.  From the moment police seize the property until the courts act, owners are harmed, and may be deprived of their vehicle or the funds they may need to hire an attorney.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Jan. 8, 2015

by Jabril Faraj

"All censorships exist to prevent any one from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorships." - George Bernard Shaw

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