MERRILL - In a hearing that stretched on for nearly eight hours, the family and colleagues of a man killed while working at an embattled northern Wisconsin prison pleaded with lawmakers to create change inside the facility.
Family of Corey Proulx gave testimony that was at times emotional, sharing how the guard who was killed on duty in June by a teen incarcerated there. Coworkers also pleaded with lawmakers and the Department of Corrections to create safer working conditions inside the Lincoln Hills School for Boys and the adjoining Copper Lake School for Girls.
Here are highlights from testimony before the state Senate Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety conducted Tuesday at the Merrill High School auditorium, down the road from the Lincoln Hills complex in the Lincoln County community of Irma.
Hearing focused on the death of guard Corey Proulx
Proulx, 49, died from injuries sustained during an assault by a 16-year-old boy housed at Lincoln Hills School for Boys.
Javarius M. Hurd, 16, was charged as an adultwith second-degree reckless homicide, felony murder and two felony counts of battery by a prisoner after assaulting a 25-year-old female staff member and then Proulx, who fell to the floor and hit his head on concrete. Another boy was also charged in relation to the incident, for supplying the conditioner in a small cup that was thrown into the face of the female guard to incapacitate her.
According to those at the hearing, Proulx and the women were partners assigned to watch each other's backs at the facility.
Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake Schools have faced issues for years
Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake have been the subject of years of lawsuits and abuse allegations claiming excessive use of pepper spray, strip searches and restraints against detainees. Several different instances of injuries to youth incarcerated at the facility led to a 2017 lawsuit, which led to the appointment of a court-ordered monitor to oversee conditions.
The state paid more than $25 million in court settlements and legal fees. The monitor is still overseeing the facilities, as the state has not met all of the outlined requirements.
Department of Corrections leaders called the death a tragedy
Before family and coworkers spoke, the secretary-designee of the DOC, Jared Hoy, along with several other leaders were grilled by lawmakers.
Hoy said he has visited Lincoln Hills often in the aftermath, and is working to improve the conditions for workers who now say they are scared to go to work for fear of being injured or killed by the youth housed there.
"Not every conversation has been easy, but each has been important," he said. "I'm going to continue to make sure staff have the support they need to feel heard and to see their feedback reflected in the operations of the facility."
One topic repeatedly raised during the testimony of workers and Proulx's family was OC spray, or pepper spray. Employees at Lincoln Hills say they would feel safer with access to pepper spray, in order to break up fights or protect themselves or even other students.
Under the terms of a consent decree, pepper spray was banned from the facility in 2017, along with excessive time in solitary confinement and the excessive use of mechanical restraints, due to overuse on the youth.
"I don't think there's one solution, and I think we heard that today," Hoy said in an interview after the hearing. "I don't think pepper spray is a magic bullet to bring back and have that fix our issues."
Family members share stories of a beloved uncle, a man who loved his job
Sarah Proulx, Corey Proulx's sister-in-law, said Corey's death could have been avoided.
"Our family has been suffering through unimaginable, unimaginable tragedy due to the loss of youth counselor Corey through a tragedy that we feel could have been prevented," she said, sitting alongside her husband, Tristan Proulx.
Sarah said the DOC could provide more counseling and mental health oversight for the youth at the facility, could provide guards with more personal protective equipment to keep them safe, and ensure the ratio of guards to inmates is not skewed so that inmates have the upper hand.
"(Corey) would always say that if his work at Lincoln Hills School could bring about a positive change in just one juvenile inmate, then his job would be worth it. And it was with that mentality that he lost his life," she said.
"He was powerless, defenseless because of decisions that were made. But now you have a chance to ensure that no other family endures the pure agony that our family is enduring. You have a chance to help change the course. There will never be a way to make this right. But you can help our family get justice."
Elizabeth Leander, a niece of Corey Proulx, told the committee "you may not realize is the impact that Corey Proulx had on those around him."
"He was a man who didn't have a mean bone in his body. A man who helped my disabled brother Justin out when he couldn't get a job elsewhere. A man who showed up no matter the circ*mstance, a man that fixed a car because he cared for your safety," Leander said.
She called for more personal protective gear for guards at Lincoln Hills, so that no one else endures what her uncle had to.
"When Corey arrived at the hospital they could not identify him. His wounds were so severe that he was a John Doe. When his fiancée arrived, she had to she had to identify him by the tattoos on his arms," Leander said.
"This is crucial for you to understand and realize to the extent of trauma that Corey had to undergo, and second, so you can better understand just what this inmate was capable of doing."
Lawmakers shift blame to Evers; partisan arguments continue
Sen. Mary Felzkowski, R-Tomahawk, highlighted that Hurd was on the transfer list to be moved to the Mendota Juvenile Treatment Center, where he could have received the mental health treatment guards had recommended for him. She said she's been told there were multiple red flags regarding Hurd's behavior in the days leading up to Proulx's death, a statement that earned noises of agreement and head nods from people in the crowd.
"Corey should be in this audience today," Felzkowski said. "So I hope that this investigation at Lincoln Hills is forthright and not tampered with."
Meanwhile, other lawmakers seemed to squabble about the role that Democrats and Republicans played in the Lincoln Hills tragedy.
Sen. LaTonya Johnson, D-Milwaukee, questioned whether Lincoln Hills would still be open if the Legislature's Joint Finance Committee had approved the requests made years ago by the DOC for the funding to build new youth facilities in Milwaukee and Dane counties.
"Not only did we deny those funds, we cost taxpayers an additional 30 plus million dollars because we denied those fund in 2019," she said, noting the rising costs for building the new facilities as years passed. "Yes, Joint Finance is responsible."
But Felzkowski disagreed, and said the DOC plans weren't complete, which is why the money wasn't released at the time.
"That's not honest," she said to Johnson.
Was any action taken at the hearing?
No.
Tuesday's hearing was only to allow a select number of speakers to share their thoughts and experiences with the members of the committee.
What comes next?
Lawmakers will be able to use the information they gleaned from the hearing to inform their next decisions.
Felzkowski said she is planning to write a letter to the judge that signed the consent decree and ask that guards at Lincoln Hills be allowed to carry pepper spray to protect themselves once more.
"We are going to draft a new letter, based on the circ*mstances and a lot of things we heard through today," she said. "My hope, although I don't have much of it, is that the governor's office would also revisit the consent decree based on a lot of things that were said today."
Laura Schulte can be reached atleschulte@jrn.comand on Twitter at@SchulteLaura.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Takeaways from emotional hearing on Lincoln Hills youth prison
