|
Detention Center For Girls |
The state will build a $15 million juvenile detention center for girls in Bridgeport so it can keep them out of adult prisons and other facilities scattered around the state, Gov. M. Jodi Rell announced Tuesday.
Finding space for juveniles has been a problem since the controversial closure of the Long Lane School in Middletown in 2003 under Gov. John G. Rowland. Since then, some teenage girls have been confined at the state's York Correctional Institution for adult women in Niantic, provoking sharp criticism from child-welfare officials.
In a related development Tuesday, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal issued a legal opinion that Rell's administration cannot shut down the High Meadows residential treatment center for troubled boys in Hamden because the legislature specifically allocated money for the program this year. Rell's budget office said Blumenthal's opinion "represents a fundamental misreading" of the state budget and subverts the governor's constitutional powers.
The new detention center for girls at 115 Virginia Ave. in Bridgeport is expected to be approved when the 10-member State Bond Commission meets Oct. 30. Rell chairs the commission and controls the agenda, virtually guaranteeing approval for any project that she proposes.
The state's child advocate, Jeanne Milstein, said the Bridgeport center is "long overdue." Long Lane closed in early 2003, and "it's now 2010, practically, and there hasn't been a facility for girls," she said.
However, Milstein said, "it does not solve the larger problem of DCF's poor planning, insufficient services, and a lack of understanding about the underlying needs of the girls and not just the behavior that led them" into DCF's supervision.
In the meantime, teenage girls who normally would have been sent to Long Lane, or to a new facility such as the one planned in Bridgeport, have had to go to the state's York prison for women in Niantic. There are now 12 girls at York under 18, some of whom would be eligible for the planned Bridgeport center, Milstein said. In addition, a small number of other girls in private treatment facilities, under contract with the state, could be moved to the new center.
State officials object to the use of the term "jail" or "prison" to describe the new treatment center, but a section of 16 beds that would be locked and secured will be reserved for girls who have been convicted of an offense. They will receive counseling and education at the center.
The center will hold 24 girls, including 16 in the locked setting and eight more in a non-locked area for "respite care" if they are having trouble in a community program, said Department of Children and Families spokesman Gary Kleeblatt. Construction is expected to be completed by June 2011, and the facility should open by September 2011.
The empty lot became available on Virginia Avenue in Bridgeport after crews knocked down an asbestos-contaminated, state-owned building that had been vacant for the past nine years. The building had been used as the southwestern regional office of the Department of Mental Retardation, and then was used as an office for addiction services. The building is easily accessible to Routes 8 and 15, making it easier for families to visit the girls, officials said.The annual cost of running the center was not available Tuesday.
Milstein said the delay in closing High Meadows, or perhaps reconsideration of that decision, would give officials time to address the needs of the 12 children remaining in the center instead of discharging them to wherever there is space — whether it is in a state-run facility or in a community-based program.
"We need to stop, take a deep breath, focus — and be guided by the needs of these children and not by pressure to close the facility," Milstein said. "There's a larger, systemic issue here," Milstein said, and that is "poor planning by DCF."
She said poor planning is evident in the "hasty" manner in which the agency has gone about emptying High Meadows — from 36 boys in February to 12 now. Milstein noted that the state has spent about $2 million in recent years on improvements at High Meadows, including more than $200,000 on a pool and $1.1 million on dormitories.
But Kleeblatt said the Bridgeport detention center is the result of the sort of planning that Milstein is calling for.
"This program for girls was designed along with a lot of input from members of the advocacy community," he said. "And the whole idea was to design a facility, and more importantly a program, that was going to specifically meet the girls' needs."
Finding space for juveniles has been a problem since the controversial closure of the Long Lane School in Middletown in 2003 under Gov. John G. Rowland. Since then, some teenage girls have been confined at the state's York Correctional Institution for adult women in Niantic, provoking sharp criticism from child-welfare officials.
In a related development Tuesday, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal issued a legal opinion that Rell's administration cannot shut down the High Meadows residential treatment center for troubled boys in Hamden because the legislature specifically allocated money for the program this year. Rell's budget office said Blumenthal's opinion "represents a fundamental misreading" of the state budget and subverts the governor's constitutional powers.
The new detention center for girls at 115 Virginia Ave. in Bridgeport is expected to be approved when the 10-member State Bond Commission meets Oct. 30. Rell chairs the commission and controls the agenda, virtually guaranteeing approval for any project that she proposes.
The state's child advocate, Jeanne Milstein, said the Bridgeport center is "long overdue." Long Lane closed in early 2003, and "it's now 2010, practically, and there hasn't been a facility for girls," she said.
However, Milstein said, "it does not solve the larger problem of DCF's poor planning, insufficient services, and a lack of understanding about the underlying needs of the girls and not just the behavior that led them" into DCF's supervision.
In the meantime, teenage girls who normally would have been sent to Long Lane, or to a new facility such as the one planned in Bridgeport, have had to go to the state's York prison for women in Niantic. There are now 12 girls at York under 18, some of whom would be eligible for the planned Bridgeport center, Milstein said. In addition, a small number of other girls in private treatment facilities, under contract with the state, could be moved to the new center.
State officials object to the use of the term "jail" or "prison" to describe the new treatment center, but a section of 16 beds that would be locked and secured will be reserved for girls who have been convicted of an offense. They will receive counseling and education at the center.
The center will hold 24 girls, including 16 in the locked setting and eight more in a non-locked area for "respite care" if they are having trouble in a community program, said Department of Children and Families spokesman Gary Kleeblatt. Construction is expected to be completed by June 2011, and the facility should open by September 2011.
The empty lot became available on Virginia Avenue in Bridgeport after crews knocked down an asbestos-contaminated, state-owned building that had been vacant for the past nine years. The building had been used as the southwestern regional office of the Department of Mental Retardation, and then was used as an office for addiction services. The building is easily accessible to Routes 8 and 15, making it easier for families to visit the girls, officials said.The annual cost of running the center was not available Tuesday.
High Meadows Opinion
Milstein welcomed the opinion by Blumenthal that Rell's administration cannot shut down the High Meadows facility because the legislature specifically allocated money for it this year. Blumenthal cited statements made on the House floor by state Rep. John Geragosian, a New Britain Democrat who co-chairs the budget-writing appropriations committee.Milstein said the delay in closing High Meadows, or perhaps reconsideration of that decision, would give officials time to address the needs of the 12 children remaining in the center instead of discharging them to wherever there is space — whether it is in a state-run facility or in a community-based program.
"We need to stop, take a deep breath, focus — and be guided by the needs of these children and not by pressure to close the facility," Milstein said. "There's a larger, systemic issue here," Milstein said, and that is "poor planning by DCF."
She said poor planning is evident in the "hasty" manner in which the agency has gone about emptying High Meadows — from 36 boys in February to 12 now. Milstein noted that the state has spent about $2 million in recent years on improvements at High Meadows, including more than $200,000 on a pool and $1.1 million on dormitories.
But Kleeblatt said the Bridgeport detention center is the result of the sort of planning that Milstein is calling for.
"This program for girls was designed along with a lot of input from members of the advocacy community," he said. "And the whole idea was to design a facility, and more importantly a program, that was going to specifically meet the girls' needs."
We need more prevention not more jails for the kids. They always like to spend money after not before.
CTRocks (10/21/2009, 10:57 AM )