Connecticut Juvenile Training School


The Connecticut Juvenile Training School was a juvenile detention center in Middletown, Connecticut that operated from 2003 to 2018. It was operated by the Connecticut Department of Children and Families.
CJTS was a treatment facility dedicated to delinquent boys from age 12-17. The CTJS facility had room for 240 inmates.
It was in proximity to the Connecticut Valley Hospital.

History

The state of Connecticut chose to build CTJS on land it already owned. Construction began in 1999. CTJS opened in August 2001, at a cost of $57 million. Built by the Tomasso Construction Company, its facility was described by Scott Poitras of the Hartford Courant as a "sprawling prison-like campus". The State of Connecticut modeled the facility after the Marion Juvenile Correctional Center in Marion, Ohio.
It was intended as a replacement for the Long Lane School, which was Connecticut's main correctional institution for youth. A suicide at Long Lane in 1998 prompted the state to speed up planning for a new correctional facility. The plan to offer contemporary rehabilitation programming for inmates.
In 2002 Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and child advocate Jeanne Milstein criticized the school, saying that its operations are unsatisfactory.
In 2003 it took delinquent boys previously held at Long Lane, which had closed that year.
There have been numerous controversies and scandals associated with CJTS and Long Lane School, between 1998-2005. In 2005, Governor Jodi Rell attempted to close the facility, but in 2008 she canceled her plans to close it.
In 2005 it had 80 prisoners. At one time it had 147 prisoners.

Corruption in construction contracting

The way in which the contract for building the Connecticut Juvenile Training School was awarded played a key role in the downfall of Connecticut Governor John G. Rowland. The $57m contract was steered to the Tomasso Group by Governor Rowland’s chief of staff Peter N. Ellef, deputy chief of staff Lawrence Alibozek, and head of the Connecticut Department of Children and Families Kristine Ragaglia. The Tomasso Group also financed an affair between Alibozek and Ragaglia, paying for tens of thousands of dollars worth of hotel stays for the couple including a $2,700 one night stay at the Waldorf Astoria the day after Tomasso was awarded the contract for the Juvenile Training School. In 2002 Alibozek pleaded guilty to bribery and was sentenced to prison. Ragaglia testified against Rowland, the Tomasso Group, Alibozek, and Ellef in court. She denied knowledge of the Tomasso Group paying for the services she and Alibozek used claiming that Alibozek said he was paying for it. She claimed to have known that she was steering the project to the Tomasso Group but didnt care as long as the facility got built. She was not prosecuted and continued to work for the state. In 2006 both Ellef and William A. Tomasso were sentenced to 30 months in prison.

Closure

In 2015 Governor Dannel Malloy announced a plan to close the School by July 2018. By that time the facility had 67 prisoners. The school was shut down on April 12, 2018. The closure was controversial because the School was closed before the network that was to replace it had even started being put together.