A wing of the new Training School, where a guard is able to watch the entire area from a center station.

The Providence Journal / Kathy Borchers

CRANSTON — There are hardwoods in some hallways, huge windows with garden views and flat-screen TVs extending from the 18-foot ceilings.

Each unit offers study areas with computer access and a private outdoor basketball court just off the common area. An indoor recreation center features a weight room and a regulation-size basketball court equipped for volleyball.

And there’s a top-of-the line security system.

Welcome to Rhode Island’s new juvenile-detention center, a bright and airy $61-million complex in the Pastore Complex that state officials say will be operational by June.

“The kids are never going to want to leave the Training School!” exclaimed Patricia Martinez, director of the Department of Children, Youth and Families, while walking under one of the many skylights during a recent tour.

The new Training School, which consists of a 52-bed temporary detention center and a 96-bed building for more-serious offenders, is a model for a juvenile justice system that favors rehabilitation over simple detention, according to state officials. There’s an on-site medical and dental clinic. Educational facilities include a computer lab, a science lab, and a stainless-steel teaching kitchen with a built-in projector and video screen.

But all is not well.

There are concerns that the state-of-the art center — built in accordance with a 1979 federal court order that cited overcrowding and poor living conditions at the current complex — is too small.

“Unless drastic steps are taken, the new institutions will be overcrowded the day they open. Rather than being a beacon of reform, they may become yet another symbol of DCYF’s inability to properly manage those entrusted to its care,” Michael K. Lewis, the special master appointed by the federal court to monitor the construction, warned in a Feb. 26 letter to key lawmakers.

The new buildings are designed to hold 148 juveniles. The population in the existing facility on Friday was 145, but it has hovered around 200 for much of the past two decades.

THE NEW COMPLEX does not have cots in the hallways. The current one does, and not long ago children were sleeping on the floor. State Child Advocate Jametta Alston knows the old Training School, built in 1960, well.

“Last time I was out there, it was a horror show. A couple years ago I walk in and I see, like, 10 or 15 children on the floor,” she said. “I threw a hissy fit.”

Like Lewis, she has serious concerns that the new complex may end up as crowded as the one it will replace.

“I believe they’re setting it up for failure,” Alston said. “If I’m looking at that beautiful [new] building and I hear that gorgeous plan, of course I support it, but I happen to be someone who is practical.”

She acknowledges that state officials are working furiously to reduce the number of children who are locked up. That’s a goal that she and Lewis support. But Alston fears that state officials are trying to force reforms that are poorly planned and possibly dangerous for children.

Governor Carcieri has introduced a budget provision that would cap the number of detainees at the Training School at 148 males as soon as July. (He proposess maintaining beds for 12 girls in an old Training School building to be overseen by a private firm.) That plan depends on the cooperation of a skeptical Family Court ( whose chief judge, Jeremiah S. Jeremiah Jr., has openly said he opposes the plan), and the state’s ability to divert dozens of youth into local programs for troubled youth.

And Alston, who has been regularly briefed on the DCYF’s progress, says that the state isn’t ready to handle an influx of troubled teens.

For example, the DCYF has contracted with Tides Family Services to open a “Day Reporting Center” on Broad Street, in South Providence, that would serve 50 troubled youth (as many as 20 at a time) diverted from the Training School. Aside from being a place where the offenders check in, the center would offer tutoring, vocational training, therapy and recreation, according to DCYF Deputy Director Jorge Garcia.

“This program is located in neighborhoods where many of the participants reside,” he said.

But Alston notes that it’s also an area known to have a large gang presence.

“My concern is that if you’re asking kids to come into gang territory, then you’re endangering that child,” she said. “I know that [they] will make arrangements or talk to the different gang leaders and maybe create a safe passage, and that the center may be safe, but that doesn’t make the two-block radius around it safer.”

Garcia said the state was “working with the Providence Police Department Juvenile Division and the Providence Police Gang Unit to ensure the safety of all youth.”

To keep the Training School population down, the state also plans to make greater use of residential programs known as Temporary Custody Placements, which currently serve as an alternate sentence for about 150 troubled youth. State law prevents the staff in those programs from locking the doors or physically preventing the offenders from leaving.

Records obtained by The Journal this month show nine juveniles classified as “eloped,” or escaped. Their criminal histories included first-degree sexual assault, assault with a dangerous weapon, gun possession, and burglary.

The DCYF reports that on average, between 6 and 10 percent of all those sentenced to TCPs are classified as escaped, although Garcia says that technical reporting requirements may inflate the numbers.

“We strongly differ with the child advocate’s conclusion that we are setting up the new facility for failure,” Garcia said.

THE STORY of how taxpayers subsidized a $61-million juvenile-detention center that may be too small spans three decades.

The U.S. District Court issued a decree in 1979 that required Rhode Island to improve living conditions at the Training School. In the 30 years since, three court-appointed special masters have monitored the state’s progress.

A 2004 report by the second master, Matthew A. Lopes, Jr., suggested that the state had been working toward a solution.

“The defendants [the state] remain out of compliance with only a few essential elements of the consent decree, but they remain genuinely committed to doing whatever is needed to achieve compliance,” Lopes wrote. “The continued physical deterioration and obsolescence of the [current] facility, however, thwarts their best efforts.”

State officials knew for years that they needed to build a new detention center. A “needs analysis” produced by architects and consultants in August 2003, which addressed population projections through the year 2012, estimated a new center would need 228 beds.

But by the time builders broke ground, in November 2005, the DCYF had changed the plan to include the current design — two buildings with a 148-bed capacity — to be supplemented by seven “community rehabilitation homes” across the state. That plan depended on the willingness of the General Assembly to change zoning laws that capped the number of children allowed in “community residences” at eight.

But the Assembly, facing resistance from communities, did not change the law as proposed in a budget article proposed by the governor in 2006.

Although the plan for community rehabilitation homes was a central piece of the DCYF’s plans for a new Training School, the state did not modify its construction plans after the legislature refused to act.

Ever since, state officials have been scrambling to reduce the Training School population to fit a facility that was never intended to hold all young offenders.

Last year, the Assembly adopted a law that conferred adult status on all 17-year-old offenders, meaning they could be sent to the state prison instead. That law was reversed four months after passage when officials questioned the policy implications and projected savings.

And now, Carcieri has introduced an elaborate plan to cap the population at 148, relying on existing community programs such as TCPs and the Tides Family Services’ drop-in center to work with troubled youth.

The current special master, Lewis, acknowledges the plan is being rushed, but he wrote that it may just work.

“The cap … might provide just the impetus needed by the stakeholders to collaborate on developing a full-blown continuum of care — one that is based on a child’s needs rather than on the fact that there is an empty bed in an institution,” he suggested in the Feb. 26 letter.

“The new institutions … should be symbols of progress, not of business as usual.”

speoples@projo.com