New Youth Correctional Facility Opening By November

Milwaukee County Center for Youth Rendering. Courtesy of DHHS.

Milwaukee County is on track to open a new $30 million youth correctional facility by the end of October this year.

The facility, called a Secure Residential Care Center for Children and Youth (SRCCCY), is a legacy of the long-running effort to close the state’s youth prisons at Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake. The prisons have been the source of allegations of abuse and mistreatment. The new county facility is being called the Milwaukee County Center for Youth.

However, even after the county opens the new facility, it’s expected placements at the state’s two youth prisons will continue for some time.

“We will still have kids in Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake,” Kelly Pethke, Administrator of the Division of Children Youth and Family Services, told county supervisors during a May 8 meeting of the boards Committee on Health, Equity, Human Needs and Strategic Planning.

The SRCCCY was created, in part, by 2017 Wisconsin Act 185, which was passed to provide a process for closing the states prisons and building smaller youth correctional facilities around the state. The idea was to incarcerate youth offenders closer to home so it’s easier for them to stay in contact with family.

The county’s new 26,264-square-foot facility is being built as addition to the existing Vel R. Phillips Juvenile Justice Facility, 10201 W. Watertown Plank Rd., in Wauwatosa. It will have 32 beds and, functionally, will serve as an expansion of an existing youth corrections program called the Milwaukee County Accountability Program (MCAP). The MCAP program couples shorter periods of confinement with therapy and education, followed by supervised or monitored release back to their community. It is always full and has a waitlist.

“So if we take the kids in MCAP and those on the wait list that will fill our SRCCCY,” Pethke said.

The juvenile justice center is getting a handful of renovations as part of the project, Pethke said, including the dental suite, behavioral health facility and the gym.

Racine is the only other county in Wisconsin that is building out a SRCCCY. The eventual closure of the state’s juvenile prisons will depend on when the Racine and Milwaukee projects and a new state facility for serious juvenile offenders (including those convicted of violent crimes) are finished, Pethke said.

Eventually, county officials want to have zero Milwaukee children in state-run juvenile prisons. Over the past 10 years, the number of children sent to the state prisons has decreased, from over 100 in 2015 to 40 in 2024. There have been 20 children ordered to the state prisons so far in 2025, Pethke said.

Currently, the state charges the county approximately $1,268 per-day, per child, or $462,820 a year. As the population of county youth in state prisons sometimes fluctuates, this significant charge has the potential to cause the county’s Department of Health and Human Services to go into a budget deficit.

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