As part of a state cutback on juvenile residential centers - in a push to find alternatives to incarceration - Auburn Residential Center, a non-secure facility for girls from 13 to 17 years old, on Pineridge Road, is scheduled to close on Jan. 11, 2009.

The 24-bed facility currently works with only three children and employs a full-time staff of 25. None of its residents come from Cayuga County.

Sandy Gilliland, director of temporary placement assistance at the Cayuga County Department of Social Services, said, “Not in the last two or three years have we had a child placed in the Auburn facility from our own county.”

Peter Amankwaah, director of the Auburn center, said he was not authorized on the facility's status.

The past six years show between 17 and 21 students at the facility.

Because the state requires a year's notice for such a facility to close, most of the children incarcerated will have been released prior to closure.

“The average stay of the children is 18 months,” Edward Borges, director of communications for the New York State Office of Children & Family Services, said, “sometimes half as much. The likelihood is that no one is being released as a result of these closings.” Someone still assigned to a facility when it closed would be transferred to a comparable institution.

Employees at the center will have a year to find new jobs.

“We just informed them today,” Borges said. Civil service, human resources, and labor departments will all work to help them find new jobs. Whether or not they would be able to remain in this area was not known.

Borges said $16 million spent on empty beds would be reapplied to community-based alternatives to incarceration.

“This is about the kids,” he said. “We're looking to help the kids.”

While many of those placed in residential centers have problems with mental health, substance abuse, and learning disabilities, he said it's not just about therapy. “It's health services, crisis management services, and working with homes and schools,” he said. “It's not like we're blindly putting them back into the same schools.”

Wraparound services such as caseworkers, mental health workers, substance abuse treatment facilities, job training, and educational services to help children graduate from high school are all programs to support their needs.

Redirected funds would be used to beef up these areas in order to help children re-enter their communities.

While five other facilities will close, Lansing Residential Center on Auburn Road in Tompkins County will be cut back. A limited secure facility for female juveniles, it has 100 beds but only 48 children and employs 32 full-time people. Its capacity will be halved to 50 beds.

With evidence that the juvenile justice system in New York state is failing, mainly because of recidivism, a habitual relapse into crime. OCFS shifted its focus to prevention and rehabilitation. One estimate says that 80 percent of the children who enter the system return or go to prison within three years of their release.

Originally the system was designed to rehabilitate children who got in trouble by removing them from the environments where they first got into trouble.

Since 2002, OCFS has reduced 379 beds in its residential facilities. When these closings occur next year, the total reduction will be 620.

Staff writer Kathleen Barran can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 238 or kathleen.barran@lee.net