Gov. Evers, Doc Celebrate Opening of New Juvenile Corrections Facility in Milwaukee, Marking Significant Milestone in Efforts to Close Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake Schools for Good

MILWAUKEE — Gov. Tony Evers, together with Wisconsin Department of Corrections (DOC) Secretary Jared Hoy and community partners, today celebrated the opening of the Southeast Regional Care Center for Youth (SERC) in Milwaukee. The governor toured the facility as staff prepare for the first youth to arrive next month. This marks an important step forward in Gov. Evers and the Evers Administration’s efforts to close the existing Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake schools in Irma, Wisconsin, as youth facilities once and for all and transition the buildings into adult facilities, as part of the governor’s statewide corrections realignment plan. An effort spearheaded by Gov. Evers and the Evers Administration over the last eight years, the new SERC facility will be the first of its kind for Wisconsin, moving youth closer to home, their families, and their support systems safely and responsibly.

“This new facility marks a historic milestone for our state and is the beginning of what I hope is a real, meaningful transformation of not only juvenile corrections in our state but of corrections in Wisconsin,” said Gov. Evers. “Not only will this new facility allow us to safely move our kids closer to their homes, their families, and their support systems, but it will give kids and families hope for a brighter future. With evidence-based strategies, this new facility will provide young people the role models, educational opportunities, and support needed so they can grow, be better, and do better, all while helping to reduce crime, prevent violence, and keep our kids, families, and communities safe.

“But our work is not over—far from it. Our state is decades behind in how we think about corrections, and this new facility is the first step, but it is only a step. We must continue our work to modernize our corrections system into the 21st Century and close Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake schools for good.”

Gov. Evers and the Evers Administration have spent nearly eight years working to close Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake Schools. In the wake of the 2015 raid on Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake Schools under the Walker Administration, 2017 Wisconsin Act 185 called for Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake to be closed as youth facilities and to build new, smaller, regional facilities to replace the schools, ensuring youth can receive treatment closer to their homes and their family and community supports.

The opening of the SERC is the first in a series of steps that will allow DOC to transfer all youth in the agency’s custody to new facilities and convert the existing 500-bed Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake campus to an adult male institution. Plans call for Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake to close to youth in spring 2029.

The center, along with the South Central Regional Care Center for Youth that is now under construction in Dane County, was purposefully designed around education and treatment and will be home to 32 boys in DOC custody. It includes a school, gym, indoor and outdoor recreation, a health services unit with dental and vision care, a psychological services unit, a chapel, music studio, and welding and woodworking workshops. The center is also partly powered by a solar array on the roof.

“Looking around SERC, you see a school and not a prison,” said DOC Secretary Hoy. “That’s because it is a school and even more. It’s a place to learn and to heal. There’s no barbed wire. No towers. There are big windows, color, space. And it’s all secure both for the youth and for the neighborhood. The design supports what we now know about adolescent development, and the programming offered here will follow suit with staff using evidence-based techniques to help youth make better choices and support rehabilitation.”

Gov. Evers has long supported efforts to close Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake Schools, including during his time as state superintendent, and has spent most of his tenure as governor working to reform the state’s juvenile and adult justice systems. The governor has proposed measures to make sweeping changes to Wisconsin’s corrections landscape in his 2019-21, 2021-23, 2023-25, and 2025-27 Executive and Capital Budgets, the vast majority of which were rejected by the Republican-controlled Legislature.

To ensure the closure of Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake and the expansion of Type 1 juvenile facilities in Wisconsin, in April 2022, Gov. Evers signed Senate Bill 520, now 2021 Wisconsin Act 252, which furthered the eventual closure of Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake Schools by authorizing up to $41.7 million in bonding for the purpose of constructing a new Type 1 juvenile facility in Milwaukee County. Further, the 2023-25 Biennial Budget approved by Gov. Evers increased the funding for this project to $78.4 million.

Additionally, the bipartisan 2025-27 Biennial Budget signed by Gov. Evers included $130.7 million to construct an additional Type 1 facility in Dane County but, unfortunately, did not include funding for a Type 1 in Northeastern Wisconsin and only provided $1.5 million of the $3.1 million requested to plan a Grow Academy expansion, which is also a critical piece of the plan to fully realize the goals of Act 185 and move kids closer to home.

NEW JUVENILE FACILITIES IN DEVELOPMENT

Closing Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake and converting the schools to adult correctional institutions will require more juvenile Type 1 facilities to be online in addition to other programming designed to improve youth treatment, rehabilitation, and successful reentry.

In addition to the new SERC in Milwaukee County, the bipartisan 2025-2027 Biennial Budget signed by Gov. Evers included $130.7 million for construction of the South Central Regional Care Center for Youth in Oregon near Oakhill Correctional Institution and the Grow Academy in Dane County. Construction began last month, and the Dane County facility will have space for 32 boys and eight girls.

A third facility has been envisioned to serve youth from Northeastern Wisconsin, but that has not been funded at this time. The budget also included $1.5 million in funding to plan to expand the Grow Academy’s current capacity from six to 16 boys.

GOV. EVERS’ COMPREHENSIVE CORRECTIONS REFORM PLAN

For years, Wisconsin’s corrections system has put a strain on resources across the state—from local law enforcement to courts to annual corrections costs to taxpayers, coupled with consistent lack of meaningful investment in evidence-based, data-driven programs proven to reduce recidivism, which help improve public safety and keep kids, families, and communities safe.

In his 2025-27 Executive Budget, Gov. Evers proposed sweeping reforms to Wisconsin corrections, including some of the most significant facility and capital changes in DOC history. The governor’s proposal aimed to improve public safety across Wisconsin, reduce short- and long-term costs to taxpayers, lower rates of recidivism, support corrections staff, and stabilize the state’s skyrocketing prison population. The governor’s comprehensive plan provided a “domino” series of facility changes, improvements, and modernization efforts across Wisconsin’s correctional institutions, including ultimately closing Green Bay Correctional Institution (GBCI) in 2029 and wholly rehabilitating and transforming Waupun Correctional Institution (WCI), facilities that were both built in the 1800s, as well as closing Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake as youth facilities.

In order to begin addressing the state’s skyrocketing prison population, the governor proposed investing in expanding capacity for several evidence-based programs, including educational, vocational, and substance use disorder treatment programs, to reduce the likelihood that people will reoffend once they are released and providing support and pay increases for critical staff, including probation and parole agents, correctional field staff, social workers, and treatment specialists, among several other proposals.

Additionally, the governor’s plan hinges on a “domino” series of projects to improve and rehabilitate adult facilities across the state’s aging correctional institution infrastructure. This includes:

• Completing construction on the planned Dane County Type 1 facility for youth in order to close Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake schools;
• Converting LHS/CLS to a 500-bed medium-custody institution for men;
• Converting Stanley Correctional Institution to a maximum-security institution with ability to “flex” as a medium-custody institution;
• Converting John Burke Correctional Center in Waupun to a female institution, adding 300 women’s beds (No cost); and
• Expanding capacity at Sanger B. Powers Correctional Center in Hobart to increase bed space by 200 minimum-security beds and complete a kitchen remodel.

Further, Gov. Evers’ plan converts Waupun Correctional Institution into a state-of-the-art, medium-security institution that would be designated as the state’s first “vocational village.” Based on models from other states like Louisiana and Missouri, vocational villages emphasize vocational training and workforce readiness to ensure that individuals who have completed their time in Wisconsin’s correctional institutions have the resources, training, and skills to join our workforce and be contributing members of society to help reduce the risk of reoffending and improve public safety.

The governor’s plan remains the safest, fastest, and cheapest solution available.

THE CHALLENGES AT LINCOLN HILLS AND COPPER LAKE SCHOOLS

In 2015, under former Gov. Scott Walker’s Administration, dozens of law enforcement officers raided Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake Schools as part of a criminal probe into claims of abuse and unsafe working conditions that resulted in several lawsuits regarding child abuse and mistreatment. The raid was the culmination of a concerning pattern of reports and complaints over the course of several years.

State and federal investigators at Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake Schools ultimately found frequent and excessive use of force on kids, excessive use of pepper spray, excessive confinement, failure to intervene in youth-on-youth fights, no investigations into sexual misconduct allegations, sexual abuse of youth, and physical abuse of youth that included broken bones and feet being slammed in doors.

The Walker-era scandal ultimately resulted in the state spending more than $25 million in legal fees and settlement agreements resulting from abuse and maltreatment at the schools.

Consequently, the state of Wisconsin was subject to court orders requiring DOC to implement 50 reforms at Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake Schools, including addressing staff shortages and staffing ratios, eliminating punitive solitary confinement, eliminating the use of pepper spray, limiting use of mechanical restraints, providing enhanced staff training and support, ensuring confined youth have consistent access to basic services and necessities, making and codifying several administrative rule changes, and improving incident review and response efforts, among other requirements. On a quarterly basis since then, a court-approved monitor with expertise in juvenile corrections has visited the facilities, interviewed youth and staff, and ensured compliance with the court-ordered requirements.

When the Walker Administration ended in January 2019, the state was in substantial compliance with just one of the 50 court-ordered requirements. As of Oct. 2, 2025, DOC and the Evers Administration reached compliance with all 50 reforms, and in January, the federal court ended the consent decree. Reaching and maintaining full compliance with the court-approved consent decree is a significant and crucial step toward ultimately closing Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake Schools, but much work nevertheless remains to be able to move all youth from the schools, close the facilities, and proceed as planned with converting the institutions to an adult corrections facility.

NOTE: This press release was submitted to Urban Milwaukee and was not written by an Urban Milwaukee writer. While it is believed to be reliable, Urban Milwaukee does not guarantee its accuracy or completeness.

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