The state should focus on improving its juvenile detention facilities in Middletown and doing a better job collecting data on how adolescents held there later fare, setting aside for now any discussion of closing the facilities in favor of a more benevolent model.

The General Assembly’s Committee on Children held the first in what is expected to be a series of hearings in Hartford concerning a troubling report on operations at the Connecticut Juvenile Training School for boys and the much smaller Pueblo unit for girls.

In her report, Child Advocate Sarah Eagan points to the frequent use of restraints to hold troublesome youth at the facilities in a prone — face-down — position. The report, released July 22, concluded that staff at the youth detention centers are too quick to turn to the use of restraints and abuse the use of seclusion to try to coerce misbehaving young people to comply.

Various advocacy groups have seized on the report as evidence that the incarceration model is outdated and ineffective. But the concept that every troubled adolescent, despite violent behavior and an unwillingness to follow authority, can be safely handled in non-secure community facilities strikes us as borderline utopian.

“Secure facilities are an important component of the juvenile justice system and no jurisdiction in the country has a juvenile justice system without secure facilities,” Department of Children and Families Commissioner Joette Katz told the children’s committee.

Some have called for the use of several smaller regional facilities. But an earlier assessment projected the cost at $15 million each and $9 million annually to operate each of them. And one can easily imagine the local opposition to any such proposed facility.

In other words, it’s not a practical solution.

The goal should be to utilize the locked-down training school facilities only when absolutely necessary, using when possible community-based programs to focus and address the root causes of the misbehavior, usually attributable to dysfunctional family backgrounds. Under Ms. Katz’s leadership, the DCF has been doing exactly that. The number of boys held at the training school has steadily decreased. Designed to hold more than 200, it has less than 70.

That is a small number when measured against the thousands of children who pass through the juvenile court system. But it also means that those few who have not responded to other intervention efforts, and who despite repeated attempts to curb dangerous behavior remain a threat to themselves and others, and have to be housed in a secure facility, present a particularly difficult challenge.

This does not excuse excessive use of restraints or the overuse of seclusion. The commissioner acknowledges a need to improve. She banned the use of face-down restraints on July 23. Counseling intervention is being made available evenings as well as days, with a greater emphasis placed on trying diffuse situations.

Ms. Katz has also pledged greater follow-up to document the outcomes of those who spend time at the detention center.

An internal report commissioned by Ms. Katz was also critical of what the author concluded was excessive use of restraints, calling them “an intervention failure,” often avoidable if problems are identified “upstream” and dealt with before matters turn ugly.

Yet the consultant, Dr. Robert Kinscherff, a national expert in juvenile justice and mental health issues, also pointed to educational and vocational programs at the training school that stand out as “extraordinary” compared with many other such facilities in the country.

State Rep. Diana Urban, D-North Stonington, the co-chair of the Committee on Children, told us her confidence in Ms. Katz to lead DCF and fix the problems at the training school is undiminished. How to deal with these young people is a complex challenge and the fact that problems should arise is not surprising. The question is whether the agency addresses them, and Rep. Urban said that is the case.

It would be a major mistake to replace Ms. Katz as commissioner, as some have called for, said the state representative. We wholeheartedly agree. Such a move would be unjustified and disruptive. In any event, the commissioner, only recently reappointed, has the continued support of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy.

As the hearings continue, the focus should be on helping DCF address the problems at the detention centers for boys and girls.