The daughter of a Wisconsin inmate who killed himself in solitary confinement has filed a federal lawsuit against state prison officials, alleging they failed to provide adequate mental health care and medications.
Dean Hoffmann was found dead in his cell at Waupun Correctional Institution in June on the ninth day of a stint in solitary confinement. He is one of at least three Waupun inmates who died in 2023. The other two deaths remain under investigation.
Hoffmann’s daughter, Megan Hoffmann Kolb, filed the lawsuit in Milwaukee on Tuesday seeking unspecified damages.
Hoffmann was sentenced to more than 20 years in prison in February 2023 for kidnapping a woman in 2018. His daughter alleges in the lawsuit that he was suffering from severe mental illness when he entered Waupun in April. He went weeks without seeing any mental health care providers due to a lockdown Warden Randall Hepp implemented in March and received medication only sporadically.