The state's failure to aggressively treat this population, state officials acknowledge, has resulted in a high rate of troubled children cycling through the system again and again without getting proper treatment. It's become a revolving door and it's damaging to children. Nearly two-thirds of the juveniles at Long Lane School, the state correctional facility for youths, had been placed there at least once before, a recent study found. Typically, the youths had been returned to the facility for violating their probation, or had been arrested for other crimes. Within this population, at least half of the girls are suicidal, while 72 percent are victims of abuse and neglect.
Male offenders have many of the same issues, but have higher rates of substance abuse than girls.
Since that time, DCF has created a 60-bed secure treatment area for youths with emotional and behavioral problems and has improved its system for identifying mental illness among its juvenile population at Long Lane. But everyone from Ragaglia on down agrees that more needs to be done, especially when it comes to early intervention, a step many believe will keep children out of the court system. Youths awaiting trial at the state's detention centers have fared no better than those at Long Lane. Conditions at the three facilities are so poor, in fact, that the state was placed under a federal consent decree to make improvements. The same is true for youths at Long Lane, and at all other levels of the system.