PROVIDENCE — The children who play in this sprawling gray Urban League building on Prairie Avenue are under constant guard.

There are video cameras monitoring the 20 or so boys and girls in the daycare center. A $5,000 security system ensures the doors cannot be opened without a key card. Security guards and trained staff patrol the classrooms. And a chainlink fence borders the outdoor playground.

The security is required because of the building’s other tenants.

As many as 30 “high-risk” sex offenders spend every Wednesday in a separate area on one side of the daycare. And another 10 or so sex offenders arrive at the homeless shelter on the other side at about the same time the children leave.

“If it wasn’t safe, trust me, we wouldn’t do it,” said Dennis Langley, director of the Urban League of Rhode Island, which owns the building and runs the daycare, the sex offender rehabilitation programs and the homeless shelter, one of the few in the state to accept known rapists and pedophiles.

The existence of the state-licensed daycare center in a complex that serves sex offenders has raised alarms among some state officials.

“Talk about waving a red flag,” Robert Griffith, a member of the State Properties Commission, said during a January hearing about the addition of a probation and parole center in the same Urban League building. “The fact that the homeless shelter is located in the same facility and accepts sex offenders is even a bigger red flag than probation.”

The daycare center was licensed in 2002 by the state Department of Children, Youth and Families, which makes no mention of the homeless shelter or the presence of sex offenders in the center’s original licensing application.

“Governor Carcieri was not aware that the Urban League was operating a daycare center and a homeless shelter in close proximity,” said the governor’s spokesman Jeff Neal. “On its face and without further review, the proximity of the daycare center to the homeless shelter appears to raise a number of potential questions about the safety of the affected children.”

Neal said the governor’s staff would “take another look at that arrangement to determine if the situation is, in fact, safe and appropriate.”

Meanwhile, the state Department of Corrections is pushing forward with plans to add a probation and parole center to the Urban League building, where local convicts would have regular meetings with state officials. The Properties Commission yesterday postponed a hearing on the matter initially scheduled for this morning and expects to reexamine the issue at its March 18 meeting.

Urban League staff largely dismissed concerns that the introduction of a probation and parole center for convicts would aggravate the current situation.

“Most of the people who are going to come from probation and parole that you’d really be concerned with, they’re already at our building,” Bentley said. “So anyone who thinks you’re bringing in this different group, you’re wrong. They’re there already. And every Wednesday they’re there all day. And that’s been going on for two years. We’d be happy to have just burglars and car thieves and drug dealers; that’s a nicer crowd …”

Bentley said the “community corrections” model suggests that services for residents in poor, urban communities be grouped together for convenience. Approximately one in seven males between the ages of 18 and 59 living in the Urban League’s Upper South Providence neighborhood is on probation or parole, according to data released by the Department of Corrections in December. The state average is 1 in 22 males.

“This is all part of community corrections — making sure they have support systems. It’s a comprehensive approach,” Bentley said.

During a recent tour of the neighborhood, he pointed out various examples of homeless shelters, drug rehabilitation centers and food pantries located alongside schools and daycare centers.

“They got to live somewhere,” Bentley said of the sex offenders and criminals.

The Urban League says it has taken adequate security measures to protect the children. There is a separate locked entrance for the daycare, which is monitored by Urban League staff. Only those who show a driver’s license proving they are on a pre-approved list are allowed to enter, according to Bentley.

He said there have been no problems reported since the 2002 opening of the childcare center. The homeless shelter that serves sex offenders has been open since 1977. And sex offender rehabilitative programs have been offered in the building for the last two years.

But both Langley and Bentley said they issue no official notice to parents about the type of offenders treated at the building.

“Parents are aware because they know there’s a shelter,” Langley said.

There are no laws in Rhode Island that restrict the proximity of sex offenders and children, although local police departments notify neighbors, schools and daycare providers about the locations of some high-risk offenders as they are released from prison.

Langley said there is little risk for the children under the Urban League’s current arrangement.

The children and homeless sex offenders aren’t usually in the building at the same time, he said. The homeless shelter opens at 6:30 p.m. and closes at 6:30 a.m. The daycare center opens at about 6:30 a.m. and closes at around 6 p.m.

And the Urban League offers group therapy for sex offenders only on Wednesdays, in which offenders are in constant contact with staff.

Properties Commission members suggested that the timing may be a problem.

“You can say that’s just fine, the kids are in a chainlink fence. But that doesn’t mean that somebody’s not waiting for the bus, or loitering waiting for the next bus,” said commission member John A Pagliarini during the January meeting.

The Urban League is under contract to work with more than 100 sex offenders — including those classified as “high risk,” such as rapists and pedophiles — after they leave prison. Only the “high risk” offenders visit the Urban League building on Wednesdays.

“No one else wants them, and we do the best we can with them,” said Judy A. Galmer, the coordinator of the sex offender programs. “If one person is missing, we pick up the phone. We don’t mess around.”

The Providence Police Department is planning to install a police substation in the Urban League building when the probation and parole center opens, should the Properties Commission approve the lease, according to Bentley.

The DCYF, which reviews the daycare center’s license each year, doesn’t believe there is a security problem, according to a Nov. 29 letter by Brenda J. Almeida, a senior casework supervisor for the division of licensing.

“The distance and security precautions the Urban League has in place appears to be adequate to ensure the safety of the children attending the child care center,” she wrote.

speoples@projo.com