Scott Walker pointing

Every once in a while, even I can be taken aback by the callousness of the Republican Party.

I knew the GOP’s health proposals cut hundreds of billions from Medicaid and transferred those billions to wealthy Americans. I did not know that among the many rewards for the rich is a capital gains tax cut the GOP made retroactive to the beginning of this year.

Imagine a greed so intense it operates retroactively, and the cruelty of balancing a budget by stealing from the poor to feed the rich. It makes me think about those villains in Charles Dickens’ novels who insist on squeezing every last penny out of their hapless victims not because they need it but because they can.

Here in Wisconsin, justice may be catching up to our own Dickensian system of youth incarceration. In June, a federal judge ordered changes in the operation of the Lincoln Hills School for Boys and the Copper Lake School for Girls, located in Irma, north of Wausau.

The ruling was in response to a suit brought on behalf of residents by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Juvenile Law Center. The plaintiffs claim they were subjected to cruel and unusual punishment and denied their due process rights.

U.S. District Judge James Peterson found evidence of excessive use of solitary confinement, pepper spray and restraints. Pepper spray was used on residents 220 times in 2016. At any time, 15 to 20 percent of residents may be in solitary confinement for periods that can last weeks or even months. The judge also found a lack of programming and mental health care.

Another challenge for residents is their distance from supportive family and friends. Most of the children are African Americans from southeastern Wisconsin. Family members want the state to return their loved ones to the Milwaukee area.

Early in his first term, Gov. Scott Walker decided to close two youth facilities in southeastern Wisconsin and transfer residents to Lincoln Hills-Copper Lake. The consolidation was meant to save money but created many problems. Mandatory overtime and low pay and morale among guards — whose union rights were gutted by Walker’s Act 10 — exacerbated the situation.

In 2012, the Wisconsin Department of Corrections began investigating reports of violence, sexual assault, abuse by guards, insufficient staffing and poor management. When Corrections Secretary Ed Wall visited, residents told him: “They’re torturing us.”

Under pressure, the state Department of Justice started a criminal probe in 2015. Ed Wall resigned and employees were replaced — but problems persisted. The FBI then intervened. Agents interviewed staff and residents and seized documents and videotapes.

Impatient with the pace of investigations, the ACLU sought immediate relief on behalf of Lincoln Hills-Copper Lake residents.

Peterson has ordered the ACLU and DOC to draw up a plan to curb the abuses and improve the environment at the schools and report back to him in July.

At the time the judge’s order came down, PBS aired I Go Home, an exposé about the abuse of residents at a state-run institution for the disabled in Pennsylvania. I was struck by the observation of one advocate who said: “Any time we segregate people and isolate them away from ourselves we open them to neglect and abuse.” It seems we have to learn that lesson over and over again.

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