The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

In a statement that took many by surprise, Mrs. Rell directed the state's Department of Children and Families to come up with a plan for the facility by Aug. 1. She said that the prison did not adequately serve the needs of the children who are sent there, and that "the cost of failing to provide meaningful change in these lives is far too high - too high in terms of dollars, wasted lives and defeated dreams."

One option, she made clear, included shutting it and "better serving its students by transferring as many as possible to community-based residential or other types of treatment programs."

"It's about time," said Travis Ruffin, a 17-year-old who lived at the school and returned last year as part of a film crew that made a critical documentary about it.

The option of placing children in small community settings had been on the table in 1998, after a teenager commited suicide at the previous, outmoded youth facility.

But many lawmakers and elected officials who favored small community-based centers remember being overruled by the Rowland administration. The governor and his aides chose instead to use land the state owned in Middletown to build one large prison for juveniles.

"Rowland wasn't really thinking about what was best for the children," said Domenique S. Thornton, Middletown's Democratic mayor. "I don't know what he was thinking."

The construction contract, like many in the Rowland years, went to the Tomasso family of New Britain, which had personal ties to Mr. Rowland and one 9f his co-chiefs of staff, Peter N. Ellef. The cost to taxpayers was $57 million, including the Tomassos' $3.3 million fee.

In December, Mr. Rowland pleaded guilty to having conspired to deprive taxpayers of his honest services and of committing tax fraud. As part of the plea, he acknowledged that he approved the juvenile prison as a member of the state bond commission without disclosing that he had previously accepted gifts worth $15,000 from the Tomassos.

Mr. Rowland also acknowledged that he failed to act after learning that William A. Tomasso had gained an edge in the bidding process when he accompanied Mr. Ellef on a tour, before the job was publicized, of some Ohio facilities that were likely to be the model for Connecticut.

Mr. Ellef, Mr. Tomasso and their associates have maintained their innocence as they face trial for fraud and racketeering.

Mrs. Rell's call for new ideas for the juvenile facility came on the same day that Mr. Rowland began serving his sentence of a year and a day in a minimum-security Pennsylvania prison camp.

The State Senate's president pro-tem, Donald E. Williams Jr., a Democrat, said he found it "somewhat fitting that we focus on this on the very day that former Gov. John Rowland is going to jail to a facility that is far less secure, I would add, than the juvenile training school for children."

Senator Williams said he found it "a great disappointment that we've reached the stage where we're looking at walking away from a $57 million investment. At the same time, I think it's confirmation that this project was pure folly from the outset."

From the day it opened in August 2001, the training school has had detractors who criticized its somber design, understocked library and cinder-block dorm rooms that often lacked windows. Senator Williams likened the rooms to "tiger cages." But at a speech last spring, Governor Rowland praised the facility, saying, "It's as nice as any college campus."

Recently, the state has been paying about $514,000 a year for housing, education and other services for each child at the Middletown center. State officials, meanwhile, have found other arrangements for some children and discouraged new admissions to lower the headcount while improvements to the design and the programs were considered. Although it was initially billed as a 240-bed facility, it serves only 64 boys, tended by a staff of 366.

Mrs. Rell, who has authorized $1.2 million to buy desks and books and widen the extremely narrow windows, noted in her press release that the prison's shortcomings "are painfully and expensively obvious." She promised that whatever the outcome, the state would "protect its construction investment" by finding a use for the campus.

Mayor Thornton, who said she had never supported the plan to build the juvenile facility in Middletown, said she was bracing herself for the possibility that the state would try to use the place as an adult prison or for short-term mental health assessment and treatment. She said her preference would be for the state to give the property to Middletown, much as it has made available other valuable parcels to Norwich, Newtown and Stratford for redevelopment.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Compa