A federal judge said it appears there is a "serious problem and an ongoing use" of pepper spray to restrain juvenile inmates at Wisconsin's youth prisons.
U.S. District Judge James Peterson during a Thursday hearing voiced numerous concerns with the state's use of pepper spray, solitary confinement and shackling of young inmates at the Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake prisons.
Civil rights groups are seeking a temporary restraining order to block the use of the disciplinary tactics while a lawsuit challenging their constitutionality is ongoing.
Department of Corrections attorney Sam Hall says the use of pepper spray has been going down all year. He says in June it was only used four times.
But Peterson says it appears the only reason its use dropped was because of the lawsuit.
The hearing Thursday comes in a lawsuit filed against the state Department of Corrections by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Juvenile Law Center.
An expert witness said juveniles do not need to be kept in solitary confinement, pepper sprayed or shackled at Wisconsin's youth prisons to maintain safety.
Vincent Schiraldi testified Thursday over whether solitary confinement and other disciplinary tactics used by the state Department of Corrections are constitutional. He is the former director of juvenile corrections in Washington, D.C. and is now a researcher at the Harvard Kennedy School.
He said 90 percent of prisons in the country don't use pepper spray, but he said some juveniles in Wisconsin have been sprayed more than a dozen times a piece.
He also said some juveniles at Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake prisons spend seven or more days in a row in isolation and sometimes are not released from their cells at all during a 24-hour period.
Corrections officials defend the practices, saying they're needed to maintain order and security at the prisons.
