The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

For those who may have forgotten its genesis, the $57 million building that replaced the Long Lane School was supposed to help rehabilitate troubled boys. Instead it became a symbol of the corruption in the Rowland administration and an icon of poor planning by the state Department of Children and Families, which is responsible for young offenders. Its operation has been the subject of repeated investigations and scathing criticism by the state's attorney general and child advocate.

Gov. M. Jodi Rell was so fed up with worsening conditions there that she vowed to close the place in favor of smaller, community-based facilities where children would get counseling, schooling and other needs closer to home. Now, equally fed up with the lack of progress on alternatives, she wants to retool the facility and double the number of beds there to its capacity of 220.

The governor's catalyst is a pending surge in juvenile offenders that will result from a new law passed in June. As of 2010, the state will no longer treat 16- and 17-year-old offenders as adults unless they have committed certain violent crimes, such as murder or rape.

She's right that the state must plan now to accommodate the change, which is a good one. She complains that the legislative leadership has failed to act in favor of smaller treatment centers. Until it does, the Connecticut Juvenile Training School will have to do.

Certainly, creating smaller communities inside the training school and separating older from younger offenders is preferable to sending young people to adult prisons, where they have a greater chance of becoming hardened criminals. Perhaps the governor's request for $8 million to make room for more juveniles in the Connecticut Juvenile Training School would be acceptable with the right programs in place.

The most glaring hole in the juvenile detention system is the lack of facilities for girls. Long Lane has been closed for five years, and there has been little progress in helping female offenders under DCF care. Many are sent to York Correctional Institution for women in Niantic for lack of a more appropriate setting. Others are sent to states as far away as Utah and Iowa, where they are isolated from their families. This is a tacit admission that the state is giving up on girls at a critical time in their development. Girls can't wait years for the DCF to fulfill plans for a new facility.

Weaving older offenders into the current system requires planning. The goal is to help teenagers headed in the wrong direction get a second chance. So far, the state is not succeeding all that well. Up to half the youths released from the school eventually return.

While the state works out a better strategy, the Juvenile Training School will have to take in more children. But this isn't ideal.

Copyright © 2008, The Hartford Courant
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