Walker keeps escaping responsibility for Lincoln Hills prison atrocity

US District Court Judge James Peterson on Friday pledged remedial actions and had harsh words about management practices that have spawned brutal conditions which continue at the state's prison for juveniles:

In issuing his ruling, Peterson said DOC's practices of routinely using pepper spray on inmates, placing shackles on inmates without evaluating their need and keeping teen inmates locked up in solitary confinement sometimes for longer than two months likely violate their constitutional rights and said prison administrators demonstrated a "callous indifference" to the harm being inflicted on the inmates through the use of the practices.  

"This is the most severe and damaging type of solitary confinement that is used in the American penal system. Ted Kaczynski has less restrictive confinement than the youth at Lincoln Hills," Peterson said, referring to the domestic terrorist known as the Unabomber, currently held in a supermax prison in Colorado.

And while a probe into conditions there has been going on for two-and-a-half years, somehow GOP Gov. Scott Walker - - supposed supervisor of the Wisconsin Corrections Department Secretary - - has evaded all political and moral responsibility for what months ago I called a humanitarian crisis.

Why doesn't the buck stop with Walker and accountability begin there?

On Walker's watch, Lincoln Hills is a humanitarian crisis 

When it comes to the state-sponsored nightmare that has been festering at Wisconsin's Lincoln Hills youth prison, what language suits you? 

Humanitarian crisis too harsh? 

Given the power differential between the state and underage inmates, I don't think so... 

Why should it take a federal lawsuit to bring this nightmare more fully to public attention, and to the authorities to bring the nightmare to a close?

Does Walker have to be confronted with deaths there - - as have victims, their families and Milwaukee County taxpayers who endured four deaths last year in Sheriff David Clarke's jail - - before some serious remedial action is taken, or ordered?

Enough.