Members of the Milwaukee Plan Commission Monday approved to recommend rezoning at the development site near 79th and Clinton Avenue. That’s with the condition that the department of corrections will meet quarterly with the city’s Granville Advisory Committee and limit the facility’s occupancy to 32.
Within the site’s 16-foot walls, a gardening area and recreational yard would aim to provide educational and social opportunities for youths. Several residents, like Julio Cesar Ramos, voiced concerns about the facility during public comment at the meeting. Ramos says there’s been a lack of city services and programs in communities of color.
"When you guys talk about our communities and what our communities need, the first thing that you think about is putting them in prison, putting our children in chains, and then we can give them the services," he says. "What kind of message does that give to our children? What kind of message does that give to our community — that for them to get the services that they need, they first have to be put in chains and in a cell?"
If approved, it would be the first new juvenile detention facility in Milwaukee County in response to a state-wide effort to reduce the populations of youths at the Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake centers in northern Wisconsin. Department of Corrections secretary Kevin Carr calls those centers “geographically isolated.”
"We can finally bring the youth in our care closer to home," says Carr.
Michelle Bryant is a local resident who is in favor of the development. She has experience working in juvenile centers. Bryant says she’s seen profound emotional reactions from families who have made the hours-long trek to Lincoln Hills to visit loved ones.
"We would see people crying because they had not had an opportunity to see their loved ones," she says. "The difference that it made to have those young people have that family connection and what it does for attitude. What it did to make the staff safer to make the children safer, because when people felt like there was somebody physically invested and that cared, they responded differently and behaved differently. It made them look at getting released differently."
Milwaukee officials will discuss and possibly take action on the plan commission’s recommendation at a future meeting.
