Since the Connecticut Juvenile Training School closed in April, the state has no secure facility for juveniles except for its detention centers in Hartford and Bridgeport, which are intended only to be used short term.

The result has been a patchwork approach that has proved inadequate for at least two teens from southeastern Connecticut and has resulted in longer stays in detention for other juveniles.

Earlier this month, a 16-year-old New London boy facing drug and weapons charges arranged to have somebody pick him up soon after he arrived at an unlocked facility in Litchfield. State police issued a Silver Alert for the youth, referring to him as an endangered runaway, and the alert remained active as of Friday. New London police Capt. Brian Wright said the city police department is familiar with the case.

A Groton teen who was the last juvenile transferred out of the Connecticut Juvenile Training School ran away from a less secure facility in East Windsor within a day of his arrival and remained missing for days. He eventually returned home but his parents couldn't stop him from leaving again. He was charged within days in connection with two armed robberies in Rhode Island. He is incarcerated at a Rhode Island training school for youth in Cranston and may be tried as an adult. He recently had his 17th birthday.

His mother, who is not being identified to protect the juvenile's confidentiality, said the state of Connecticut failed to protect her troubled son and the public.

"The governor portrayed to everyone that CJTS is closed, we're saving millions of dollars and the kids are taken care of," she said during a recent phone interview. "That's a bunch of lies. They put my son, who they know is a runner, in an unsecure facility."

State officials say about 200 girls and boys aged 12 to 17 are deemed delinquent and committed to state custody each year. The majority of the juveniles receive supervision and treatment in the community but judges order some of them to residential treatment.

The Department of Children and Families closed the Connecticut Juvenile Training School pursuant to an October 2017 vote by the General Assembly. The Judicial Branch, which wasn't slated to take over responsibility for delinquent juveniles until July, did not yet have funding and programs in place.

Most of the 172 juveniles in the system as of July 1 were in the community under the supervision of parole officers, according to Gary Roberge, executive director of the Judicial Branch's Court Support Services Division. Between 40 and 50 juveniles were in residential placements. The CSSD entered into contracts with most of the residential programs that the DCF had been using and juveniles were able to stay in those programs during the transition.

The branch still is seeking bidders to operate a locked facility, having had only one unsatisfactory response to its first request for proposals. Roberge said CSSD would be engaging in discussions with providers of secured facilities to learn their concerns about the initial request for proposals and will "rebid it in a different fashion."

The CSSD had better luck with its bidding process for staff-secure facilities, where staff attempts to de-escalate situations in which juveniles attempt to leave but the doors are not locked.

The Judicial Branch has issued letters of intent to award contracts to Connecticut Junior Republic for eight staff-secure beds at its Waterbury location for juveniles, and to the Boys and Girls Village for 12 beds at its Milford campus. The plan is to have the contracts in place by early September, according to Roberge.

Both institutions have had long-term relationships with the state and say they offer evidence-based programming that is individualized according to the needs of each child. Children shouldn't be away from their families for long periods of time, said Daniel Rezende, executive director of Connecticut Junior Republic, and the goal is to incorporate the families into the treatment process and return the kids home as soon as possible. The juveniles will receive academic and vocational services, along with family-based therapy and interventions. The services will continue when the youths leave the facilities.

"The most specific thing we think will be beneficial is that they will be assigned reintegration mentors," said Christine Jaffer, director of residential services for CJR. A person the juveniles have been working with at the facility will continue to help them as they go back to their communities.

Susan I. Hamilton, director of delinquency defense and child protection for the state Division of Public Defender Services, said public defenders are "guardedly optimistic" that the CSSD will get the programs up and running as soon as possible, but concerned about reports that some juveniles are staying at the detention centers longer while waiting for a placement.

According to the Judicial Branch, the average population at the detention centers on Aug. 1 was 67 in 2018 compared to 56 in August 2017. The number of juveniles in detention tends to increase in the summer.

Hamilton said a plan to create a separate unit at the detention centers for children ordered into longer term secure residential placements should not be a long-term solution. Under state law, juveniles who are being held at the detention centers must have their cases reviewed by a judge every week. The law is helpful, Hamilton said, because it "gets fire under everybody" to get a suitable disposition.

"We knew there were going to be some growing pains as we went through this transition process but we're hopeful the service array will be robust enough and have the quality of the level of care that these kids will ultimately need to be successful," Hamilton said.

The detention centers are essentially single buildings with fenced-in courtyards, while the juvenile training school, though deemed too big and expensive and poorly built, had a campus with multiple buildings, a school on the grounds, athletic fields and other amenities. The state has not yet decided what will be done with the vacant juvenile training school facility, which is in Middletown adjacent to Connecticut Valley Hospital.

Francis J. Carino, the supervisory juvenile prosecutor for the state, said prosecutors are trying harder to transfer some juvenile cases to adult court because of the lack of a secure treatment alternative to the training school. Losing the protection of the juvenile system, which enables youths to keep their offenses confidential and to receive the wider array of services, is the exact opposite outcome of what lawmakers and child advocates intended as they worked to reform the juvenile service. But Carino wrote in an email that sometimes the adult transfers are necessary.

"The thought is that these juveniles need treatment and rehabilitative services but they also need a secure setting in which to receive these services or they take off," Carino wrote in an email. "If such secure facilities are not available in the juvenile system, then transfer to the adult system, where such facilities are available, is in the best interests of the public and the juveniles."

k.florin@theday.com