A Democratic member on the state Senate Judiciary committee says the public deserves to know what’s going on at Wisconsin’s youth prison. Senator Lena Taylor was responding to the Republican committee’s chair’s rejection of her call for a hearing into allegations of inmate abuse at Lincoln Hills. “I’m going to be talking to the secretary (Corrections) to figure out what can be done to keep individuals informed. There is an investigation and we should not be in the way of it. But it does not mean that people do not deserve to know,” Taylor told AM 1170 WFDL’s Between the Lines program. Taylor says a staff shortage throughout the corrections system brings in many factors when it comes to the overall prison environment because it is very volatile. The Justice Department is investigating allegations of sexual and physical assaults of youth and evidence of tampering since January. The FBI has also joined the probe.
