Connecticut's Juvenile Justice Policy and Oversight Committee discussed a proposal on Thursday for the state to spend roughly $67 million renovating and reopening a former heavily scrutinized prisonlike facility for children that closed in 2018.
In its monthly meeting at the Legislative Office Bu
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Times were tough at the Hartford Juvenile Detention Center in 2016. Layoffs had slashed the staff of the Connecticut facility by more than one-third, and the remaining employees were taking out their stress on the children detained at the center as they awaited trial.
Disagreements between employees and detainees that previously were more likely to have been brushed off flared into more serious encounters. Increasingly, children were being restrained and demoralized employees were skipping work at the center, run at the time by the state’s Department of Children and Families. Worker compensation claims quadrupled from 18 in 2017 to 72 in 2019.
“If you have a lot of staff who have to work double shifts, you have more staff who are tired and frustrated, and that affects the kids,” said Catherine Foley Geib, deputy director of the Connecticut Judicial Branch, which took over responsibility for sentenced youths at Hartford and the state’s other juvenile detention facilities