The online system Wisconsin prisoners rely on to receive money from loved ones recently crashed, leaving them unable to pay for items like extra food and hygiene products. 

The Wisconsin Department of Corrections contracts a private company, Access Corrections, to allow people outside of prison to transfer funds to those inside. Those transfers occur through the company’s app, website, phone system, mail and in-person options. But multiple people told WPR and Wisconsin Watch they could not make deposits beginning this week. 

The Access Corrections website and app display nothing more than a white screen and the message: “Sorry, the service you’re looking for is currently unavailable.”

Those who dial an Access Corrections phone number hear a recorded message saying the company can’t take deposits online or over the phone and that it is working to resolve the issue. 

In-person deposits at locations throughout Wisconsin are also unavailable, according to an affiliate’s website. It is unclear whether physical mail deposits still work. 

Access Corrections operates deposit systems nationwide, the Wisconsin Department of Corrections says on its website. The company is part of Keefe Group, a conglomerate that includes ICSolutions, which runs a glitchy prison phone system that has left Wisconsin families disconnected in recent months. 

A Department of Corrections spokesperson said she was working on a response, which did not arrive by this story’s deadline. 

The Keefe Group did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 

Robin Guenterberg typically sends his daughter at Taycheedah Correctional Institution $300 a month, with Access Corrections collecting a fee. 

His daughter, who he requested not be publicly named, uses most of that money to buy items  from the prison’s commissary. She has a chronic health condition and relies on commissary chicken and tuna packets to supplement regularly provided meals, Guenterberg said. 

The daughter has lost more than 20 pounds since entering prison late last year, Guenterberg said, adding that he and his wife purchase vending machine items during visits and make additional deposits to help their daughter maintain a healthy weight. 

If Access Corrections fails to quickly restart deposits, she may lack funds to place a commissary order for next week, Guenterberg said.

Sarah Liebzeit successfully added funds to her incarcerated son’s account late Monday night. But issues with his prison-provided electronic tablet have prevented him from spending it at Stanley Correctional Institution, she said.

“This is now another issue because the tablets have been just horrible,” Liebzeit said. 

Some incarcerated people work low-wage jobs inside their prison. Their pay falls short of covering phone calls, extra food, hygiene products and medical co-pays without outside deposits, multiple family members told WPR and Wisconsin Watch. 

Nicole Johnson said her incarcerated boyfriend earns $20 every two weeks at his Dodge Correctional Institution job. Wisconsin’s typical copay charge of $7.50 per face-to-face medical visit is among the highest in the country — more than half of his weekly earnings. 

Johnson said she tries to add $50 to her boyfriend’s account twice a month so he can purchase rice and beans to supplement regularly provided meals. 

“It’s just how I take care of him right now,” she said.

The Access Corrections crash, she added, “makes me sad because I don’t want him to be hungry all freaking week.”

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Vendor failure means Wisconsin prisoners can’t buy food or other items is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Wisconsin prisoners have struggled to connect with loved ones for weeks and even months as a state contractor fails to keep up with increasing demand for its call and messaging services. 

The Department of Corrections last year began working with Texas-based ICSolutions, the prison system’s phone provider, to make electronic tablets free for every state prisoner. The state allocated $2.5 million to cover some of the cost. The program aims to boost quality of life behind bars by making it easier for incarcerated people to connect with their loved ones and access resources.

Intermittent problems began after some prisons began distributing the tablets in March 2024. The issues worsened this spring, prisoners and their family members say, spreading across institutions that imprison more than 23,000. 

WPR and Wisconsin Watch heard from more than 25 people experiencing connection difficulties at multiple prisons. Incarcerated people described dialing a number multiple times before getting through and waiting more than an hour for calls to connect. Family members described hearing their phones ring but receiving no option to connect with the caller; some calls have dropped mid-conversation. 

Family members are airing frustrations in a nearly 300-member Facebook forum launched specifically to discuss the phone problems.

Brenda McIntyre, incarcerated at Robert E. Ellsworth Correctional Center, traditionally calls her grandchildren every weekend. But the overwhelmed system blocked a recent check-in.

“‘Grandma, why didn’t you call me? You said you’re going to call me,’” McIntyre recalled one  grandchild asking when they finally connected. 

Phone services somewhat improved late last week, McIntyre said. But she worries about missing updates about her sister’s cancer treatment.

“It’s been a living hell,” she said.

Neither ICSolutions nor its parent company responded to requests for comment. But in an undated statement on its website, the company promised improvements in the “coming weeks,” with “significant optimization coming this summer.” The statement recommended shifting calls to “off-peak hours” — before 5 p.m. or after 9 p.m. But family members say they are not always available at such hours. 

Corrections spokesperson Beth Hardtke squarely blamed ICSolutions, saying state-run infrastructure and Wi-Fi access played no role in the issue.

“To be very clear, the quality of service that ICSolutions is providing is not acceptable to the department. If reliability and customer service do not improve, the department will be forced to reevaluate our contract,” Hardtke wrote in an email.

The statement from ICSolutions blamed “unexpected challenges” from increased demand for calls. But Hardtke said the company previously assured the department it could handle higher call volume during the rollout.

Prisoners in nine of Wisconsin’s 36 adult institutions — including all three women’s facilities — still lack tablets. The glitches affect them, too, because ICSolutions services the entire phone system, not just tablets.

The corrections department is pausing tablet distribution while trying to fix the reliability problems, Hardtke said. 

Tablets mean more calls 

Emily Curtis said she was cautiously excited when her incarcerated fiance gained access to a tablet at Stanley Correctional Institution.

He previously could call only from the prison’s landlines and during limited hours. The tablet enabled calls most anytime, even during lockdowns. For about two months, the two talked daily — right before Curtis fell asleep and right after she woke up.

“It was great,” Curtis said. “Until everything kind of hit the fan.”

Wisconsin is not the only state prison system that has issued tablets. 

Unlike some states, however, Wisconsin allows people to make calls from their cells and doesn’t limit the number of calls they can make, Hartdke said via email. That policy, which the department communicated to ICSolutions during contract negotiations, naturally increased call volume, she added. 

Calls from Green Bay Correctional Institution, for instance, increased by nearly 200% after the tablet rollout, Hardtke wrote.

Curtis now hears from her fiance just once daily, usually very early in the morning. Their 14-year-old son has gone weeks without talking to his dad, Curtis said, because the phone lines are too jammed once he’s home from school.

Prison phone calls: costly for families, profitable for providers

ICSolutions and the prison system make millions each year from phone calls. The company charges six cents a minute and shares revenue with the state, adding nearly $4 million to its general fund in recent years. 

Curtis said she spends roughly $250 a month on calls.

Tablets present new revenue opportunities for prison contractors. An ICSolutions affiliate sold them to incarcerated Wisconsinites before the state made them free. And even with free tablets, prisoners pay for calls, messaging and other applications.

The high cost of phone calls has long burdened the incarcerated and their families. The Federal Communications Commission last year responded by capping fees. Apps for TV and music aren’t subject to the same regulations. That makes tablets a safer investment for prison telecommunication companies, said Wanda Bertram, a spokesperson for the nonprofit Prison Policy Initiative, which focuses on solutions to mass incarceration.

Incarcerated people often greet the rollout of tablets with excitement, Bertram said. But the attempt to improve virtual communication comes as Wisconsin, like other states, has restricted other communication — like physical mail. 

In December 2021, the corrections department began rerouting all prisoner-bound mail to Maryland, where a company called TextBehind scans each piece of mail and sends a digital copy to those incarcerated. The controversial effort aims to reduce the flow of drugs into prisons.

The change delays access to mail and boosts reliance on tablets. As a result, technology glitches have bigger consequences, Betram said.

‘We’re helpless’: Blocked calls mean lonely holidays

Charles Gill is incarcerated at Oshkosh Correctional Institution. His fiance lives in New York, and his adult son lives in New Jersey, too far to visit in person. Gill relies largely on his tablet for communication. But online texts have been delayed by two to three days, Gill said. 

“We’re helpless,” Gill said.“To be a father, not knowing what’s going on with your child, to be in a relationship with someone and not knowing what’s going on with them. God forbid something happens and somebody goes to the hospital, somebody gets hurt. We don’t know about it, and we can’t reach out to nobody and talk about it.”

Gill felt particularly helpless on Easter weekend, the anniversary of his brother’s death. He couldn’t reach any family members.

“The phones were just destroyed on (Easter) weekend, ” he said. “You could really feel the tension in the air because people weren’t able to call their families.”

He worries about a repeat around Mother’s Day.

“Having that ability to speak to someone who still sees you as a human being and not a number is vital,” said Marianne Oleson, the operations director for Ex-Incarcerated People Organizing of Wisconsin.

That’s especially the case for mothers who are incarcerated. The majority of women in prisons nationally have children under the age of 18, according to a 2016 U.S. Department of Justice report. Phone calls offer incarcerated women their only chance to act as parent, wife or daughter — ensuring their loved ones are safe, Oleson said.

The faulty phone system leaves incarcerated people with tough choices. 

“We even have to choose to try the phone over going to meals,” Christa Williams, who is incarcerated at Ellsworth prison, wrote in an email.

Shawnda Schultz said phone failures have left her incarcerated mother in tears during recent calls.

“It bothers me because their phone calls are the one thing that (prisoners) have to keep them going in there, and it keeps us going too, because that’s our mother,” Schultz said.

Schultz’s sister recently delivered her first baby. If the phones don’t improve, she worries her mother will miss hearing updates, like when her grandchild says his first word.

“I found myself actually in tears because I’m just like, ‘what if something happens to my mom?’” Schultz said.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.

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The Waupun prison sits in the middle of a residential neighborhood (Photo | Wisconsin Examiner)

Former Waupun Correctional Institution (WCI) warden Randall Hepp was convicted of a misdemeanor Monday in the death of Donald Maier and fined $500 and court costs. Hepp pleaded no contest.

In June, Hepp was charged in Maier’s death. Maier’s mother sued Wisconsin Department of Corrections Secretary Jared Hoy, Hepp and others Monday, seeking compensatory and punitive damages. 

The lawsuit alleges that the defendants’ “lack of accommodation, deliberate indifference, and negligence in ignoring his rapidly and obviously deteriorating physical and mental health while he was in their care” caused Maier’s death. 

In June, the Examiner reported that Hepp and eight members of his staff had been charged with crimes related to the treatment of people incarcerated in the prison. Six staff members were charged along with Hepp in the death of Maier, who authorities said died due to dehydration and malnutrition, the Examiner reported in June. Seven incarcerated people have died at WCI since 2023, the Associated Press reported. 

A statement in a criminal complaint said Hepp didn’t oversee his staff to make sure they followed all policies/procedures. 

“Randall Hepp did not follow through the requirements of his position required by law as the staff at WCI are poorly trained on many policies and procedures regarding missed meal(s), water restrictions, medication refusals, round checks, and more,” the complaint stated. 

DA, Maier lawsuit tell different stories about Hepp

Earlier in the case, Hepp was charged with felony misconduct in public office. Penalties for a Class I felony are a fine up to $10,000 or up to three and a half years’ imprisonment, or both.

Hepp was convicted of violating law governing state or county institutions. The Class C misdemeanor comes with a fine up to $500 and up to 30 days imprisonment, or both. Hepp was not sentenced to imprisonment.

The Associated Press reported that Dodge County Circuit Court Judge Martin De Vries cited Hepp’s service record, lack of a criminal record and “‘subpar employees’” who failed to follow policy. 

Dodge County District Attorney Andrea Will lowered the charge to a misdemeanor in exchange for a no contest plea, the AP reported. Will told De Vries that she lowered the charge because Hepp was well respected within the Wisconsin Department of Corrections and didn’t know guards weren’t following policy, according to the AP. 

De Vries said the criminal charge against Hepp was “‘to some extent…symbolic,” the Post-Crescent reported. 

According to the Associated Press, Maier’s mother, Jeannette Maier, called Hepp’s sentence a “‘slap on the wrist.’” She said her son had been treated worse than a caged animal.  

“Nothing can bring my son back but I like to think we as a society would at least learn something from this tragedy so it never happens to someone else’s son,” she said in a statement, according to the AP.  

The lawsuit from Jeannette Maier alleges Hepp was aware of a “systemic lapse in enforcement” of the hunger strike and water shut-off protocols. It alleges that Hepp did not take action to attempt to make sure that the protocols were followed. 

The lawsuit also says Hepp was deliberately indifferent to a substantial risk regarding the most at-risk incarcerated people in the restricted housing unit. 

The risk, as described by the lawsuit, was that they were not receiving the level of care and supervision needed in order to afford them adequate medical and mental health evaluation and treatment and did not have humane conditions of confinement.  

This risk was created by understaffing, low morale and lack of adequate training, the lawsuit alleges. 

Sheriff supports conviction

Dodge County Sheriff Dale Schmidt released a statement on Facebook in support of the settlement and conviction. 

“I can understand why some may feel additional sanctions are warranted, but our court system must be blind to ‘feelings’ and ‘agendas’ and decisions made solely on the facts of the case,” Schmidt said. 

Schmidt said that “investigating and arresting Randall Hepp was one of the most difficult cases I have been part of, leading to some of the most difficult decisions I have had to make during my time as sheriff.” He said Gov. Tony Evers and then-Department of Corrections Secretary Kevin Carr put Hepp in a very difficult position. 

“Don’t get me wrong, he was the warden and was by law administratively responsible for Waupun Correctional Institution, and as a result, two deaths that occurred,” Schmidt said. “While we explored it, no Wisconsin or federal law directly tied back to his bosses, who failed to provide adequate resources or leadership.”

A sentencing memorandum by an attorney for Hepp said the former warden “was chosen to run Waupun because of his history of building great work environments and teams, creating positive institution culture and improving operations.” 

According to the memorandum, “Waupun Correctional was known to be the most challenging institution for correctional officers to work.”

“This institution was in complete [dysfunction], there was an extreme understaffing of uniformed positions and no goal to improve the staffing,” the memorandum stated. “There was a historically high vacancy rate that existed over a lengthy period of time that required officers to work an extremely unheard-of number of forced shifts further aggravating an already difficult situation and burning out among staff members. This situation contributed to the staff’s concerning level of apathy, distraction and a desire to transfer to other institutions.”

The memorandum said Hepp “became the primary and recurring voice” for the need to improve staffing at Waupun.

“Unfortunately, his voice was not heard,” the memorandum stated. 

“Many pieces to this puzzle” have not yet gone through the criminal justice system, Schmidt said, since cases are still being processed through the courts. 

One former Waupun employee pleaded no contest in September and was fined $250. Charges were dismissed against another, and other cases are pending, the Associated Press reported.

The Wisconsin Department of Corrections did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on Hepp’s conviction on Tuesday afternoon.

Two women incarcerated at Taycheedah Correctional Institution have died following hospital stays that began Feb. 22. The Wisconsin Department of Corrections has shared limited information about their deaths, frustrating family members and those locked up at the maximum- and medium-security women’s prison. 

Shawnee Reed, 36, died Feb. 23, a day after arriving at an area hospital. Brittany Doescher, 33, died Thursday after spending nearly two weeks on life support, according to an online corrections database and family members. 

Both women were mothers, family members said. 

Two prisoners at Taycheedah told Wisconsin Watch and WPR that a third incarcerated woman was hospitalized around the same time as Reed and Doescher. The online corrections  database shows the woman they identified was “out to facility” on Feb. 23. She returned to Taycheedah in the same week.

Reed and Doescher’s official causes of death are pending, said Dr. Adam Covach, Fond du Lac County’s chief medical examiner. Family members of both women say hospital staff linked the deaths to pneumonia. Reed and Doescher’s relatives asked not to be identified to avoid drawing more attention to their families. 

Doescher’s relative said she learned of Doescher’s hospitalization two days after it began. She arrived to find Doescher chained to a bed with blisters around her ankles. 

Following discussions with doctors, Doescher’s family member believes earlier treatment could have prevented the death, particularly because she was so young. 

Asked about the deaths, department spokesperson Beth Hardtke wrote in an email to WPR and Wisconsin Watch: “The federal Centers for Disease Control is seeing ‘high’ numbers of respiratory illness cases in Wisconsin, and the Department of Corrections (DOC) is taking a number of steps to prevent the spread of respiratory illnesses to staff and persons in our care.”

People incarcerated at Wisconsin prisons, including Taycheedah, were recently tested and treated for Influenza A, Hardtke added.

Relatives said both women started mentioning health issues over the phone around a month ago.

Questions about the illnesses are swirling within the prison. Three incarcerated women told WPR and Wisconsin Watch they learned Reed had died but heard different versions of the cause. 

Corrections officials locked down part of Taycheedah — limiting prisoner movement — on Feb. 28. That was due to an increase in respiratory illnesses, according to an internal memo from Warden Michael Gierach. The department lifted the lockdown Thursday. 

Wisconsin typically charges prisoners a $7.50 copay for each face-to-face medical visit, among the highest in the country. Citing the surge of respiratory visits, the department lifted copays for visits beginning Feb. 28, five days after Reed died.

“DOC health care staff recently reminded employees and those in our care of ways to protect themselves as influenza, COVID-19, pneumonia and RSV continue to circulate,” Hardtke wrote.  

The prisons are providing vaccines, masks and soap for regular hand washing, Hardtke added. Anyone who tests positive for a respiratory illness is quarantined for at least seven days.

While women at Taycheedah did receive information about respiratory illness precautions, the department shared no details about the hospitalizations and deaths, said Kady Mehaffey, who is incarcerated.

“Which is kind of maddening because of the amount of people that are filling in the blanks about what happened,” Mehaffey said.

The department did not publicly announce the women’s deaths, which WPR and Wisconsin Watch learned about from women incarcerated at the facility.  

Online records showed the women had died but little other information. The department has since provided basic information, including the women’s names, ages, death dates, and that they died in an “area hospital.”

States including Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska publicly announce prisoner deaths, sharing the person’s name, prison, where they died, and in some cases, details related to their cause of death. 

Wisconsin is not the only state to limit the release of such details, but doing so is problematic, said Michele Deitch, director of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at the University of Texas at Austin.

“There’s no greater responsibility that prisons have than keeping the people inside safe and alive and when there’s a failure to do that the public has a right to know,” Deitch said.

Hardtke wrote that her department follows best practices to protect the privacy of people who are incarcerated and their families. What’s more, it’s up to county coroners or medical examiners to investigate causes of deaths.

The Department of Corrections does confirm deaths and release names after family is notified, but the department can’t release other details, including cause of death, because of privacy laws, Hardtke said.

Deitch said prison systems often interpret privacy laws broadly and then point to such protections to justify withholding information. 

While the department updates its online database to note prisoner deaths, someone seeking information about a death would first need to know the prisoner’s name. That database was used to confirm the March 4 death of a prisoner at Waupun Correctional Institution — Damien Evans, the seventh Waupun prisoner to die in custody since June 2023. 

Fourteen prisoners residing at Wisconsin’s adult institutions have died this year, Hardtke wrote. The prisons saw 61 deaths in all of 2024 and 54 deaths in 2023.  

Reed and Doescher both participated in a program to help with substance abuse and facilitate an early release, according to relatives and court documents. Doescher expected her release within months, her relative said.

“She was hoping to come home and start her own business,” the relative said. “She wanted to counsel other girls in situations like her.”

Both Reed and Doescher enjoyed jewelry making while at Taycheedah.

“I don’t know how (Reed) did it, but she would get like thread and threaded around like a plastic piece or something like that and she could make these really cool designs,” Mehaffey said. “She was good with the small intricate things.”

Both women have children.

“We’re going to miss her and I certainly hope the prison system can be reformed because there’s no call for this,” Doescher’s family member said. “I feel for any other parent that has to go through this.”

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.

Families seek answers after deaths of two women incarcerated at Taycheedah prison is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

A seventh inmate has died at Wisconsin’s oldest prison, less than a year after the then-warden and multiple members of his staff were charged with misconduct and felony inmate abuse.

The state Department of Corrections offender website notes that 23-year-old Damien Evans died Tuesday at the Waupun Correctional Institution. The site does not offer any details. A Corrections spokesperson didn’t immediately return a message Wednesday. Dodge County Sheriff Dale Schmidt said in an email to The Associated Press that his agency is investigating Evans’ death but he had no information to share.

Online court records indicate Evans was sentenced in 2019 to seven years in prison for armed robbery and an additional two years to be served concurrently for bail jumping. Both cases were filed in Racine County.

Evans is the seventh Waupun inmate to have died in custody since June 2023. One killed himself, one died of a fentanyl overdose, one died of a stroke, and one died of dehydration and malnutrition. Another inmate, 66-year-old Jay Adkins, died in May. A sixth prisoner, 57-year-old Christopher McDonald, died in August.

The Dodge County Sheriff’s Office has said McDonald’s death appears to have been a suicide. He was sentenced to 999 years after pleading no contest to being a party to first-degree intentional homicide in 1992. Schmidt didn’t immediately respond to follow-up emails Wednesday afternoon seeking updates on the investigations into Adkins’ and McDonald’s deaths.

Prosecutors last year charged warden Randall Hepp with misconduct and eight members of his staff with felony inmate abuse in connection with the deaths of two of the prisoners, Cameron Williams and Donald Maier. Three of the eight staff members also were charged with misconduct. Hepp subsequently retired.

According to criminal complaints, Williams died of a stroke in October 2023. His body went undiscovered for at least 12 hours.

Maier died of dehydration and malnutrition. He had severe mental health problems but either refused or wasn’t given his medication in the eight days leading up to his February 2024 death.

Federal investigators also have been looking into an alleged smuggling ring involving Waupun prison employees. Gov. Tony Evers office has said the probe has resulted in the suspension of nearly a dozen employees. A former prison worker pleaded guilty in September to smuggling cellphones, tobacco and drugs into the facility in exchange for money.

Waupun inmates have filed a class-action lawsuit alleging mistreatment and a lack of health care.

The maximum-security prison was built in the 1850s. Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike have been calling for years to close it. Concerns about local job losses and the cost of building a replacement prison have stymied progress.

Evers, a Democrat, last month proposed a multitiered, $500 million plan for the state’s prisons that includes converting Waupun to a medium-security center focused on job training for inmates.

This story has been updated to correct that Evans is the seventh inmate to die at Waupun Correctional Institution since June 2023, instead of the sixth inmate, and to correct that one inmate killed himself, not two.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup. This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.

Seventh inmate dies at Wisconsin’s Waupun Correctional Institution is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Wisconsin budgets nearly $463,000 a year to incarcerate each child at the state’s beleaguered juvenile prison complex in the North Woods, a figure that has ballooned over a decade as enrollment has plummeted.

A new Department of Corrections budget request would nearly double that figure to about $862,000 a year — 58 times what taxpayers spend on the average K-12 public school student.

It comes as efforts to close the Lincoln County complex — home to Lincoln Hills School for boys and Copper Lake School for girls — and build a new youth prison in Milwaukee have slowed to a crawl.  

Six years after the Legislature approved the closure plan, Republican lawmakers and Democratic Gov. Tony Evers are blaming each other during funding and policy disagreements that have delayed the closure. 

A 2018 legal settlement restricted how guards could discipline youth. That followed a series of scandals involving allegations of inhumane conditions, such as frequent use of pepper spray, strip searches and mechanical restraints and solitary confinement. 

Republicans earlier this year pushed to lift pepper spray restrictions after a 16-year-old incarcerated at Lincoln Hills struck a counselor in the face, resulting in his death. A judge denied requests to alter the settlement in a dispute that has added to closure delays, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

Meanwhile, the facility’s population is dwindling. As of late November, it served just 41 boys and 18 girls on a campus designed for more than 500 youth.  

Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service spoke to judges, lawmakers, former prison staff and researchers about the eye-popping price tag to incarcerate fewer young people. They attributed the trends to demographic changes, a paradigm shift from large youth prisons to smaller regional facilities and scandals on the campus that made judges hesitant to send teens to Lincoln Hills. 

“No judge wants to send a kid to Lincoln Hills,” said Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Laura Crivello, who has presided over juvenile cases. “You feel like you’re damning the kid. And if you look at the recidivism rates that come out of Lincoln Hills, you pretty much are damning a kid.” 

Here’s a closer look at the numbers. 

Who sets budgets for youth prisons? 

Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake schools are the state’s only youth prisons, but they are among four main state facilities for young people convicted of serious juvenile offenses. The others are Mendota Mental Health Institute, a psychiatric hospital in Madison that treats youth involved in the juvenile justice system, and Grow Academy, a residential incarceration-alternative program outside of Madison.

The Legislature sets uniform daily rates that counties pay to send youth to any of the locations — spreading costs across all facilities. 

In 2015, lawmakers approved a daily rate of $284 per juvenile across all four facilities, or nearly $104,000 a year. This year’s rate is $1,268 a day, or nearly $463,000 annually. 

The annual per-student rate would jump to about $841,000 in 2025 and nearly $862,000 in 2026 if the Legislature approves the latest Department of Corrections funding request. 

By contrast, Wisconsin spent an annual average of $14,882 per student in K-12 public schools in 2023, according to the Wisconsin Policy Forum. 

Why have costs ballooned? 

A campus built for more than 500 is mostly underused as enrollment declines, but taxpayers must still pay to maintain the same large space. It affects county budgets since they pay for youth they send to state juvenile correctional facilities.

Fixed infrastructure and staffing costs account for the largest share of expenses, said department spokesperson Beth Hardtke. Spreading the costs among fewer juveniles inflates the per capita price tag.

But taxpayers haven’t seen overall savings from the steep drop in enrollment either. The state in 2015 budgeted about $25.9 million for the Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake complex. That number climbed to about $31.3 million by 2023 with the addition of staff — a cost increase nearly in line with inflation during that period. 

Driving requests to further hike rates: The Department of Corrections seeks $19.4 million in 2026 and $19.8 million in 2027 to expand Mendota Mental Health Institute’s capacity from 29 beds for boys to 93 beds serving girls or boys — an expansion required by state law. 

The expansion requires adding 123 positions at the facility. Such additions affect calculations for the rates of all state facilities for incarcerated juveniles, including Lincoln Hills.  

Why are there fewer incarcerated students? 

The trends driving high costs at Lincoln Hills started more than 20 years ago, said Jason Stein, president of the Wisconsin Policy Forum.

First, Wisconsin is home to increasingly fewer young people. 

The state’s population of youth under 18 has been shrinking. The state saw a 3.2% dip between 2012 and 2021 — from 1,317,004 juveniles to 1,274,605 juveniles, according to a  Legislative Fiscal Bureau report.

Juvenile arrests in Wisconsin dropped by 66% during the same period.  

Meanwhile, judges became reluctant to sentence juveniles to Lincoln Hills —  even before abuse allegations escalated and prompted authorities to raid the campus in 2015.     

“I was the presiding judge at Children’s Court, when we blew open the fact that kids weren’t getting an education and they were having their arms broken,” said Mary Triggiano, an adjunct professor at Marquette University Law School and former District 1 Circuit Court chief judge.

“But we knew before that there were problems with Lincoln Hills because we watched the recidivism rates. We would bring in DOC and say: ‘Tell me what kind of services you’re going to give. Tell me why they’re not in school. Tell me why you’re keeping them in segregation for hours and hours and hours’ — when we know that’s awful for kids who experience trauma.”

Enrollment dropped and costs increased, but outcomes didn’t improve. 

More than 61% of the 131 boys who left Lincoln Hills in 2018 committed a new offense within three years, while about 47% of the 15 girls who left Copper Lake reoffended. The recidivism rate for boys during that period was roughly the same as it was for those released in 2014. The rate for girls was worse than the nearly 42% it was four years earlier. 

Stein compared Lincoln Hills to a restaurant that tries to compensate for lost customers by raising meal prices. If prices keep rising, customers will look for a different restaurant, he said. 

“That, in a nutshell, is how you get into this spiral where you’re seeing fewer residents, higher rates, and greater costs for counties,” Stein said. “Then it’s just rinse and repeat.”

How much do other states spend to incarcerate youth?  

Wisconsin is not the only state spending hundreds of thousands of dollars per juvenile it incarcerates. 

A 2020 Justice Policy Institute report showed Wisconsin spent less than the national average in 2020. But Wisconsin’s per-juvenile costs have since more than tripled as Lincoln Hills remains open and incarcerates fewer young people.  

Incarcerating juveniles is generally more expensive than it is for adults, said Ryan King, director of research and policy at Justice Policy Institute. Rehabilitation plays a bigger role in juvenile corrections, and those programs cost more. Incarcerated children typically access more  counseling, education and case management programs. 

States nationwide are rethinking their approach to youth incarceration as crime rates fall and more research shows how prison damages children, King said. 

“There was an acknowledgement that locking kids up was not only failing to make communities safer, but it was making kids worse, and really just putting them in a position where they were more likely to end up in the adult system,” he said.  

How is Wisconsin trying to reshape juvenile justice? 

In 2018, then-Gov. Scott Walker signed Act 185, designed to restructure the state’s juvenile justice system. The law kicked off plans for a new state youth prison in Milwaukee and authorized counties to build their own secure, residential care centers.

Milwaukee and Racine counties are moving forward on such plans to build these centers. The centers function similarly to county jails: County officials operate them under Department of Corrections oversight. Officials hope keeping youth closer to home will help them maintain family connections. 

“We have always pushed smaller is better. You can’t warehouse young people like you do adults,” said Sharlen Moore, a Milwaukee alderwoman and co-founder of Youth Justice Milwaukee. “Their brain just doesn’t comprehend things in that way.”

The law aimed to close troubled Lincoln Hills and give judges more options at sentencing while balancing the needs of juvenile offenders and the public. But those options have yet to fully develop. 

Today’s alternative programs typically have limited space and extensive waitlists. That won’t be fixed until more regional facilities go online. 

How else could Wisconsin spend on troubled youth? 

Triggiano, now director of the Marquette Law School’s Andrew Center for Restorative Justice, was astounded to learn youth incarceration costs could nearly double next year. 

“You just want to drop to your knees because if I had that money, we had that money, what could we do differently?” she said. 

She quickly offered ideas: programs that recognize how traumatic experiences shape behavior, violence prevention outreach in schools, community mentorship programs — evidence-based practices shown to help children and teens. Milwaukee County had worked to create some of those programs before funding was pulled, Triggiano said.

“It all got blown up in a variety of ways at every juncture,” she said. “Now there’s going to be an attachment to the secure detention facility because that’s all people could muster up after being slammed down every time we tried to do something that we thought was going to work.”

State Rep. Darrin Madison, D-Milwaukee, echoed Triggiano and offered additional spending suggestions, such as housing resources, mental health support and summer jobs programs. 

“The cost of sending one young person to Lincoln Hills would be enough to pay several young people working jobs over summer or the span of the school year,” Madison said.  

Wisconsin’s disproportionate spending on incarcerating its young people runs counter to the Wisconsin Idea, its historical commitment to education, he added. 

“We’re so committed to incarcerating people that we’re willing to eat the cost of doing so, as opposed to making investments in deterrence and getting at the root cause of the problems.” 

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One child, $463,000 per year: Ballooning costs of troubled Lincoln Hills youth prison is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Transfr, a New York company, seeks to put virtual reality technology in the hands of people who are incarcerated in Wisconsin, hoping they can overcome barriers to employment once released. 

“It’s life-changing for an individual to be able to come out of incarceration with actual career pathways,” said Ruben Gaona, executive director of My Way Out, an organization that supports people who are leaving reincarceration and one of Transfr’s local collaborators. 

“They’d be able to go out into the community and say, ‘OK, you know what: I’m not only here to get a job, I’m out here to get a career.’” 

Avoiding reincarceration

Research has found that a criminal record leads to a 50% reduction in callbacks and job offers. 

The Wisconsin Department of Corrections, among others, reports that the more likely someone with a criminal record is employed, the less likely the person is to return to incarceration. 

According to the department’s 2022 report, people who “completed vocational programming had lower rearrest, reconviction and reincarceration rates … compared to their peers who were identified as having a vocational programming need but who did not receive programming.” 

“From a personal and professional standpoint, I can tell you that a good-paying, career-supporting job is very essential to someone staying out and keeping that recidivism rate down,” said Andre Brown, employment specialist with Project RETURN, a reentry nonprofit established nearly 50 years ago.

For all the talk about pipelines into prison, Brown and his colleagues are trying to create a pipeline out of prison.

“If one can support themselves, pay their bills, take care of their family and have some fulfillment, one has no time to think of crime,” Brown said. 

Inside and outside

My Way Out provides six weeks of training and education to people inside Milwaukee County Community Reintegration Center, a county-run correctional facility. This support is designed to help people with job searches, including résumé writing and interviewing skills. 

With Transfr, Gaona and his team see an opportunity to expand their support by adding four weeks of virtual reality training for in-demand vocations, in fields such as construction, manufacturing,  hospitality and health care.

My Way Out staff also want to bring these resources to state prisons overseen by the Department of Corrections. 

“People will be able to come out (of incarceration) and take apprenticeship tests, so they’d start getting placement in apprenticeship programs and secure living-wage jobs,” said Gaona. 

Funding obstacle

Funding is the main obstacle to getting this technology into the hands of people who are incarcerated. 

The Department of Corrections does not have a budget for this type of technology but suggested that Transfr reach out to Wisconsin Workforce Development Boards, which partner with the department in reentry work, Beth Hardtke, director of communications for the Department of Corrections, said in an email. 

Ryan Leonhardt, state workforce manager for Transfr, said the company has had conversations with these boards but, for the most part, has heard that funding is not currently available from them as well.  

My Way Out applied for a grant that would help provide funding to work with Transfr, but its request was denied. 

Opportunities

Transfr offers more than 350 trainings, all 12 to 20 minutes, which teach foundational skills within various fields, Leonhardt said.

“If somebody is learning how to use calipers, they pick up calipers in the virtual environment. They set the calipers using the controls. They actually do the measurements,” said Leonhardt, explaining how Transfr users learn about this measurement tool common in engineering, metalworking and woodworking. “And then the final thing is they get step-by-step instruction from a digital coach, who then turns around and gives them an assessment.” 

Transfr also provides career explorations. Like the trainings, these are hands-on and guided by a coach but are five- to eight-minute experiences of a day in the life of a job “so people can get an idea of what it’s like,” Leonhardt said. 

Better trained workers are beneficial not just for the people getting trained but for the wider economy as well because of nationwide workforce shortages, Leonhardt said.

“Right now, the labor markets are such a way that if someone can come in and they have foundational skills … they’re going to have better chances for employment because they’re going to be able to meet their (employers’) needs right away,” he said. 

News414 is a service journalism collaboration between Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service that addresses the specific issues, interests, perspectives and information needs identified by residents of central city Milwaukee neighborhoods. Learn more at our website or sign up for our texting service here.

Virtual reality technology connects people who are incarcerated to a new type of job training is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.