By Tina L. Scott
MMC Staff
MERRILL – The Wisconsin Senate Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety convened an Informational Hearing on Tuesday, Aug. 6, at Merrill High School, which ran an uninterrupted seven and one-half hours long before all testimony was heard.
The Senate Committee focused on a single topic: Lincoln Hills School and the recent death of Corey Proulx, who died on June 24, when he was attacked by a youth inmate at the facility.
Lincoln Hills School and Copper Lake School in Irma is currently Wisconsin’s only Type 1 secure juvenile correctional facility for male and female youth in Department of Corrections (DOC) custody.
The Senate Committee, comprised of Senators Van H. Wanggaard (Chair, from Senate District 21, R-Racine), André Jacque (Vice Chair, from District 1, R-De Pere, appearing remotely), Eric Wimberger (District 30, R-Green Bay), Jesse L. James (District 23, R-Altoona), Mary Felzkowski (District 12, R-Tomahawk), Kelda Roys (District 26, D-Madison), and LaTonya Johnson (District 6, D-Milwaukee), asked to hear from Wisconsin DOC Secretary Jared Hoy, DOC administration officials, current and former DOC staff who work at or had worked at Lincoln Hills School and/or Copper Lake School, and Proulx’s affected family members.
For those interested, the entire hearing was video-taped and can be viewed at: wiseye.org/2024/08/06/senate-committee-on-judiciary-and-public-safety-60/. You will need to set up a free user account to access the video.
DOC Secretary Hoy and the DOC/Lincoln Hills administration prepared presentation/testimony, and subsequent questions from the Senate Committee lasted more than three and a half hours. Members of the Senate Committee were pointed in questioning the DOC team. At times, the DOC team declined to answer some specific questions, citing the active and ongoing investigation into Proulx’s death and their own internal investigation.
Hoy’s team credited changes in how the Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake facilities have operated since the implementation of various aspects of a court-ordered consent decree that resulted from a 2017 lawsuit and investigation for creating a facility that has “maintained the safety of the youth detained as well as staff and administrators” and said, “We measure the effectiveness of what we are doing … by looking at things such as workplace injuries, restraint use, both physical and mechanical, and the overall safety of both staff and youth in which we provide services. From fiscal year ‘22 to fiscal year ‘23, we have seen a reduction of 1.4 million in worker compensation claims.”
Another nearly four hours of testimony followed from Proulx’s family, co-workers, and past and current employees at Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake.
Some of the testimony given by current and past employees working on the front lines at Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake differed from the information provided by the DOC team. Current employees who work at Lincoln Hills School openly shared that they were coming forward to talk about the real conditions at the juvenile correctional facility, even though they feared possible retaliation.