Not our backyard: Northwest Side residents voice concerns about new youth prison

Rendering by BWBR Architects

Over the last four years, Wisconsin’s Department of Corrections (DOC) has been under legal pressure to relocate young people abused in unacceptable living conditions at Lincoln Hills School to new facilities. After years of scouting locations, Governor Tony Evers signed the 2021 Wisconsin Act 252, authorizing over $41.7 million to fund building a Type 1 Youth Detention Facility in Milwaukee County. Advisors from local groups, who had been advocating to not replace the Felmers O. Chaney Correctional Center with this new facility, submitted a list of sites to consider. After other sites received community opposition, the state arrived at the plan to build the prison at 7930 W. Clinton Avenue in the city of Milwaukee. The DOC says this is the proposed site, because it is not very residential and brings a continuum of care for the prison that involves culturally relevant programming, families nearby, and representative experts to support youth in the prison.  

Despite state leaders’ claims that the decision is not final, land for the build has been purchased on contingencies. Additionally, state leaders have barely engaged community members in a rushed process to move this project along while pointing fingers at city leaders when residents raise concerns. Consequently, Milwaukee residents in Aldermanic District 9 feel the inevitability of this prison’s construction near the Northwest Side’s old JoAnn Fabrics, and like others, we are not convinced the decision makes the most sense.

What the people want to know

Pastor Darryl Seay, a 20-year local, would love to hear more about why this location appears to be the best. He says, “I heard it's the one we can use, which is different from the best location … if it's nothing more than the communities don't want it [in other locations], then what makes this location any different from the others except that it's in an area that is unrepresented?" The proposed location comes at a time when our district has no alderperson in its seat. Our previous alderwoman, Chantia Lewis, had opposed the construction in the district in prior instances.

Other anchor residents echo this sentiment. Shirley Tucker, a decades-long district resident, articulated, “If most of these young [people] come from the inner city, then look for a place in the inner city to house them. What about the A.O. Smith building? Every time I drive past it, there are no cars, but it’s a new building.”

The state’s first public meeting around the Clinton site was held in person in September 2022 at nearby Abundant Faith Church of Integrity, and there were many people in attendance. State leaders, many of which are from Milwaukee – some near where the prison is proposed to be built, know that typical engagement strategies don’t yield significant input and leave residents unhappy. At the September meeting, state leaders and community advocates repeatedly alluded to this as residents likely to be most impacted expressed concerns about this, their safety and proximity to the proposed site, impacts for homeowners, transparency from elected officials and continuous divestment from the far Northwest Side. By the end of the meeting, many residents felt undermined by the vague fact checks offered by elected officials, advocates supporting the buildsite, and the Department of Corrections.

I attended this meeting and invited a 16 year-old person who also lives on Milwaukee’s Northwest Side to join me. This young lady seemed to be the only child present to represent some part of her peers’ interests. As DOC Secretary Kevin Carr, Senator Lena Taylor, and their allies hammered home the idea that it’s necessary to young folks redirection to bring them to Milwaukee, in order to be counseled and coached by people who looked like them, my guest felt differently.

“I don’t need people to look like me to be inspired by them,” she said, adding “They’re not listening to people. It feels like they already made a decision. Nothing we say is gonna stop this.”

This is where I first saw my entire community limited in how welcomed our input on this issue was going to be, and it was then that we collectively sensed this prison was a “done deal.”

Not our backyard. Not our babies. Not our solution.

At every input session I attended, the same narrative was enforced and residents had the same experience of feeling choiceless and unheard. I could not believe the gaslighting, other mind games, and lack of accountability I witnessed at each one.

When homeowners expressed concerns about their property values, abilities to sell in the future, and peace of mind, they were met with residents from other Milwaukee areas, with incomparable conditions to the Northwest Side’s, who felt planted to convince my neighbors and I that this prison was amazing. In response, Mrs. Tucker and so many others said, “That’s a different area!” Ultimately, our questions weren’t answered in detail, let alone in persuasive fashion. Mrs. Tucker added, “Our homes are already undervalued because of where we live, and if you bring a prison here, will that make people say, ‘Do I want to….?’”

What’s most telling for me is hearing the people name that the Northwest Side, especially AD 9’s, conditions are so divested from and desolate, that they can’t see a future in which a prison wouldn’t further contribute to the area’s demise. “The Northwest Side is still dealing with dislocation from 6th and Walnut. The city moved many of those people without jobs, put them in new buildings with no economic support or buslines to get to new employers, nor things to do. So this has led to problems on the Northwest Side,” explained Mrs. Tucker. This is in addition to the slow decline of Northridge Lakes and other Northwest Side neighborhoods. 

Mr. Seay expressed, "I just don't want to see a prison come to the area and destroy it." He added, “What are they going to do to ensure youth are safe and minimize the crowds that the prison could attract?”

During one week in November, the DOC held three, low-attended open house style input meetings at which the same things occurred. It didn’t feel like residents left with a good sense of the reasons for the proposed location, and state leaders appeared argumentative and dismissive of residents' concerns. The bulk of the conversation at a station around safety/ security went in circles around why the 79th Street location was best. Secretary Carr eventually reduced it to being less residential than other sites. He said, “[For example, people inside the facility] won’t be able to look out of the window and see families barbequing in their backyard” even though a church, Destiny High School, fast food restaurants, watering holes like Kiss Ultra Lounge, and Arbor Ridge Apartment Homes, and Fortitude Apartments are all located within three blocks. It is also very adjacent to Noyes Park and not far from Uihlein Soccer Park, where community events are often held. At this meeting, I also asked about the criteria for sentencing in this facility and learned of Serious Juvenile Offenses (SJOs), which could range from reckless driving to attempted murder, and that judges have discretion over convicting people under the age of 18 on a case-by-case basis.

At this point, residents continued to seek more detailed answers to questions around safety, community support, jobs, cultural programming, and impacts on homeowners. We awaited dates for public hearings to be held by Milwaukee's Zoning, Neighborhoods, & Development Committee and its City Planning Commission, where we hoped for better answers prior to the Common Council's vote on city-level support for the build.

Just the other day, the City Plan Commission discussed zoning for this project in a public hearing, where people hoped for their comments to be more seriously considered. After two hours of presenting, questions and answers, about 20 people testified. Most of the opposing comments were about the prison’s likely impact on our already economically declining district and the need to fund businesses and youth services before they get to the point of incarceration. Multiple speakers pleaded for the commissioners to simply listen to residents in our district, as we again sensed that those testifying in support lived in incomparable parts of the city and were working with advocates and state leaders in favor of the Clinton site.

Ultimately, the City Plan Commission recommends that the Zoning, Neighborhood, and Development (ZND) Committee approve rezoning the site for building a prison under the conditions that the DOC commits to its intended 32 bed count and have quarterly meetings with the Granville Advisory Board. 

What's next

As we await updates from the ZND committee, one resident’s comment from the September meeting sticks out to me as an “aha” moment. At that meeting, an elder man expressed, “We’ve come over [to the far Northwest Side], we’ve raised our children and grandchildren, we’ve built a sort of utopia for ourselves, and we just don’t want it over here.” In that moment, I saw my neighbor pouring his honest heart out about how elders have lived their lives and moved to a side of town where they can generally avoid the things that a prison might bring. While our elders, especially long-term residents and homeowners, care about what happens in their safe haven on the Northwest Side, we know they’ve given all the energy they’ve had to offer to social and community issues that arose in their lifetimes.  So wouldn’t it make most sense for something like this to happen in a place where the residents are younger and more energized by similar causes? This is where I started to wonder more deeply about the community’s involvement in the continuum of care that the DOC expects to establish around this new Milwaukee prison.

The DOC’s Youth Justice Assistant Administrator, Lance Horozewski, said this continuum of care will consist of social workers, teachers, psychologists/ therapists and others who are employed from the immediate area, will buy homes and contribute to the area's economy. However, residents don’t seem convinced that this is more than an idea.

Pastor Seay asks, “What will they do to intentionally recruit and retain Black and Brown folks? People may not be interested." This is considering higher turnover rates and a recent history of staffing shortages at the DOC and other governmental offices. Others alluded to the undercapacity police district that just won’t be able to provide additional surveillance to increase safety or minimize existing concerns residents may have near the prison’s proposed site. This yet again exemplifies more unsatisfactory responses from our state leaders rushing to a decision that the majority of us don’t feel comfortable supporting. Furthermore, I continue to wonder how the Department of Corrections expects our community to be involved in their continuum of care.

No true community input. No new prison.

Building a new prison in Milwaukee is no doubt a pivotal matter. It involves the livelihoods and peace of so many minds as well as the futures of our young people – from those currently charged with SJOs to those unborn. Therefore, the decision of where to build a new prison, or to even build one at all, impacts an entire community’s wellness, not to mention the kind of community that’s been neglected and divested from for decades. Ultimately, it calls for processes that proactively center residents, especially young peers. My community has loudly and clearly professed they don’t want this prison, and I encourage them to go a step further to consider no new prisons at all.

At the DOC’s most recent open house, a resident asked what the prison would bring to our community that would make us want it. The DOC secretary’s response was, “Do you think what we’re doing is working? I don’t.” He was likely referring to sending young folks to facilities farther from their families, implementing programs that aren’t culturally relevant, and employing service providers that those young folks couldn’t identify with. I would also argue that our criminal, legal and punitive, penal systems as a whole are not working, nor is responding to harmful behaviors rather than preventing them. If prisons haven’t worked in Irma, Waupun, and other parts of Wisconsin – if prisons haven’t worked anywhere for years, then a Milwaukee prison won’t work in 2022 or ever just because Black children are now policed by Black correctional officers and potentially Black service providers who operate under the same systems informed by white supremacy.

Where these service providers could be useful is in our young folks’ schools, parks, community programs, and restored enrichment programs or on their bus stops, street corners, and city blocks. We could shift the paradigm if our state leaders choose to do so in a way that is truly innovative, better, and proactive in terms of our young folks’ cultivation and decision making. This state made a bold decision to order Lincoln Hills to be closed in 2018. Why can’t it make braver decisions here and now, especially considering our climate around police and prisons? The DOC’s secretary also mentioned a potential change in the paradigm, which Milwaukee has already seen in conversations and initiatives around defunding police, no new prisons, alternative safety, education, and development programs.

So should the prison be anywhere in Milwaukee? Should it be built at all? Are there not alternatives to imagine and create?

According to the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service, after city approval is secured, the Wisconsin Department of Corrections must host a public listening session regarding the project. Once a site is selected and the design is at or near completion, the plan will then go to the State Building Commission for approval and to request authority to construct.

I encourage anyone concerned about this issue, and especially my neighbors, to use the African American Roundtable’s resource to craft comments to present at public hearings. You can use the same comments when calling and emailing Milwaukee’s Common Council, the Department of Corrections, the governors’ office, and relevant governmental leadership committees. Please share this toolkit with others as well. 

Ryeshia Farmer is the Community Programs Manager at the African American Roundtable.