After several months of contentious debate, Governor M. Jodi Rell announced in August that the Connecticut Juvenile Training School (CJTS) will close by 2008. This institution, located on the Connecticut Valley Hospital campus in Middletown, is a $57 million high-security center for troubled boys with a staff of 365 workers.
The facility has a 240-bed capacity, but since opening it has only housed an average of 60 to 80 boys at a time. According to the Hartford Courant, the state is spending more than $500,000 per year for each resident.
“They had overestimated the number of children that would need to be held there, so [the facility] was much bigger than they needed it to be,” said Middletown Mayor Domenique Thornton. “From the outside looking in, it would appear that the children could be provided with better services from smaller facilities.”
Before moving to its current location, CJTS was located on Long Lane Road. The University acquired the property in 2000, and the juvenile facility was relocated to the Connecticut Valley Hospital campus. It has been open there for only four years.
Rell aims to replace the school with three smaller treatment centers, two for boys and one for girls. Like Rell, Thornton supports the creation of smaller facilities in different areas of the state. She feels that placing troubled juveniles in large institutions, like CJTS, is not the best treatment approach.
“I always like to emphasize that if the facilities were in communities that the children came from, both the children and families could be helped,” Thornton said. “If you put the kids in an institution and reform them, and then send them back home, that doesn’t work. They come from a family unit that also needs assistance. I think that the state finally understands the need for these smaller facilities.”
Due to demand for institutions like CJTS, state officials have decided to utilize the building.
“The state has said that they would like to make use of all the security and technological improvements that have been placed there,” Thornton said. “The state made an investment on the property by installing security cameras, and so forth, and they feel the Department of Homeland Security might be an appropriate use. That department is also looking for a secure facility with all of the security equipment in place.”
Last April, Thornton traveled to Hartford to meet with Department of Children and Families (DCF) Commissioner Darlene Dunbar; DCF head of juvenile services Donald DeVore and Brenda Cisco, the legislative liaison for Governor Rell. At the meeting, Thornton said she expressed her discontent with the proposal to use the building as a jail. She offered other suggestions for the space, including turning it into a corporate center, a science and technology-magnet high school, a maritime-magnet high school, or a nursing school. Aside from government offices, it is currently unknown how the rest of the building will be used.
“I gave them my ideas, but the state will make it what they want to,” Thornton said. “They have to base it on the state’s needs. I went up there to make sure it wouldn’t turn into a prison.”
The rest, according to Thornton, is in the hands of the Connecticut Government.