HARTFORD — Connecticut’s only high-security detention center for delinquent boys is the closest it has ever been to being shut down after repeated complaints about mistreatment of youths and high costs.
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s budget chief, Ben Barnes, said Tuesday that administration officials are committed to getting the population at the Connecticut Juvenile Training School in Middletown “down to zero,” but gave no timetable.
The Department of Children and Families has reduced the population at the training school to 67, half of last year’s total.
The state child advocate’s office reported this year that staff members were illegally using restraints and isolation — findings similar to ones made just a year after the facility opened in 2001.
Former Gov. M. Jodi Rell had called in 2005 for closing the facility.
