The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

"But it became apparent all too soon that it simply wasn't working, and it simply wasn't happening here. There was too little programming and little opportunity and too much of a prisonlike atmosphere and far too much recidivism. You couldn't help but be terribly saddened by the failure of C.J.T.S. to fulfill its promise."

What Mrs. Rell did not say was that for all the faults of a juvenile detention center many corrections experts say reflected an obsolete approach even before it opened, the school also became a symbol - and hard evidence - of the folly and corruption that eventually put her predecessor, John G. Rowland, in federal prison.

The scandal that led Mr. Rowland to resign last summer amid an impeachment inquiry and later to plead guilty to a conspiracy charge was made sensational with tales of free vacations and home renovations he received. But at its core were connections between the governor and the contractor who gave many of those gifts, William A. Tomasso. His companies built the juvenile center in a "fast-track" process pushed through with the help of Mr. Rowland's former co-chief of staff, Peter N. Ellef.

"A lot of people look back on the impeachment and think it was all about a hot tub," said State Representative Michael P. Lawlor, a Democrat who is co-chairman of the legislature's judiciary committee. "It wasn't. It was about this."

Now, while Mr. Rowland is serving a year and a day in a Pennsylvania prison, Mr. Tomasso and Mr. Ellef still face federal charges. And Mrs. Rell, a Republican who is expected to announce soon whether she will run for governor next year, has taken a dramatic step to deal with a center some say was fatally flawed even before it opened in August 2001.

Many lawmakers and juvenile justice experts have been saying for years that the school, designed to hold 240 boys under 16 who have been convicted of largely nonviolent crimes, is out of step with evolving approaches to juvenile rehabilitation. They say the state should have smaller, less restrictive facilities with a heavy emphasis on educational programs to prepare the youths for life after confinement - thinking that has led the school's administrators to shrink its population to about 92 under Mrs. Rell.

Mrs. Rell said her decision to close the school was based on the conclusions of a report she ordered in April from the Department of Children and Families. It had nothing to do with hopes of finally banishing the ghost of Mr. Rowland, she said.

"This is not a political issue, and please don't make it one," she said. "We need to do what is best for these boys."

Often echoing the 13-page report, which was released on Monday, the governor proposed phasing out the school by 2008 and replacing it with three smaller facilities, called Treatment and Reintegration Education Centers. Two would house 36 to 45 boys each, and a third would hold about 12 girls. The report also recommends creating 16 places in "therapeutic group homes" and adding 7 places to "therapeutic foster care" homes.

The group homes and the new schools for boys could cost as little as $23.2 million, if the state finds existing sites to renovate. Building two centers on newly acquired land could cost as much as $39.9 million, according to the report. Costs for a girls' center were not estimated.

Running the two new centers for boys, the group homes and new counseling and educational services would cost $29.7 million a year, compared with $32.9 million currently spent to run the training school, said Gary Kleeblatt, spokesman for the Department of Children and Families.

The training school, behind barbed wire on a slope beside the Connecticut Valley Hospital, will probably be converted for use by the department of public safety or homeland security, the governor said, but it will not become a prison.

"You kind of have to scratch your head to figure out what to do with it," Representative Lawlor said.

Despite questions over financing and the future of the current school, Mr. Lawlor praised the decision, as did child advocates. Yet Senate President Pro Tempore Don Williams, a Democrat who has become Mrs. Rell's rival at the Capitol, suggested that Mrs. Rell had not done enough to improve programming at the training school.

Now, he said, she is trying to "put the best possible face on a $57 million disaster."

Several lawmakers recalled on Monday how Mr. Rowland refused to consider a less centralized approach to dealing with juvenile offenders in the late 1990's. The issue became urgent in September 1998, when a 15-year-old girl, Tabatha Brendle, hanged herself at the state's former juvenile detention center, known as Long Lane School, near the Wesleyan University campus in Middletown.

Two months after the suicide, Mr. Ellef, Mr. Tomasso and others in Mr. Rowland's administration, including Kristine Ragaglia, then the commissioner of the Department of Children and Families, went to Marion, Ohio, to inspect a high-security juvenile center viewed as a possible model for a new Connecticut complex. With the prodding of Mr. Ellef, the project was fast-tracked through the legislature the next spring, and the Tomasso companies, armed with inside information from the trip, submitted the winning proposal.

Mr. Rowland learned about the Ohio trip on Nov. 22, 1998, according to the plea agreement he signed two days before Christmas last year. In the eyes of federal prosecutors, his crime, in this instance, was doing nothing.

"Despite having learned that Tomasso and related entities had inappropriately received confidential and inside information about the C.J.T.S. project," the agreement read, "defendant John G. Rowland took no corrective action."

In March 1999, Mr. Rowland and his wife, Patricia, vacationed at Mr. Tomasso's Florida home for what the plea agreement called "a nominal amount" of money. In May 1999, Mr. Tomasso, along with Mr. Ellef and others, arranged and paid for a new heating system in the Rowlands' cottage on Bantam Lake in Litchfield.

Five years later, on June 21, 2004, Mr. Rowland announced his resignation. It was the same day that a legislative impeachment committee was to begin exploring the training school issue.

"I still believe that one of the reasons he announced it that day was to avoid the public presentation of this story," Mr. Lawlor said.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company