Evers To Push Back Closure Of Lincoln Hills By 2 Years

Gov. Tony Evers wants to delay closing the state’s troubled juvenile prisons by two years.

The Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake prisons are now set to close by 2021 per a law passed unanimously through the Legislature last year and signed by then-Gov. Scott Walker.

Republican state Rep. Michael Schraa said Evers administration officials said in a Tuesday meeting the current timeline wasn’t workable. Instead, Schraa said Evers will propose moving closure back by two years, to 2023, a change the Legislature would have to approve.

The prisons, north of Wausau in Irma, would be replaced by smaller, regional facilities many of them run by county governments.

The prisons have been subject of a federal investigation into inmate abuse for four years and subject of multiple lawsuits.