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CURTIS KRUEGERDemand for such space was high a few years ago, but as the need dipped, construction went on.
INDIANTOWN - The concrete block building rising from the scrub of rural Martin County has all the features of a modern prison: sophisticated surveillance system, master control room, full kitchen, basketball courts, easy-to-clean tile floors and tall fences topped with razor wire.
But this Department of Juvenile Justice facility lacks one key ingredient: juveniles.
The $18.1-million, 256-bed complex that was designed to house "high-risk" juvenile offenders is empty except for a few spiders catching dragonflies in vacant walkways. Still, the state spends more than $3,000 a month for electricity and to air condition the building to keep mold away.
The state has no clear plan on when to operate the facility, and it's unclear if it ever will.
Workers finished building the cellblocks and offices in January 2003. They are putting finishing touches on vocational classrooms, but they're empty, too.
The story is similar in Key West, where a 30-bed, $2.1-million section of a juvenile complex has sat empty since it was built in August 2002.
And in Okeechobee County, a 50-bed, $3.6-million facility also has been sitting empty since it was finished in August 2002, except for temporarily housing some youths displaced by a hurricane.
Why isn't the state using prisons it spent millions of federal and state dollars to build?
Juvenile justice officials say it was unavoidable. The waiting list for youths going into juvenile programs dropped just as construction started. Seeing the trend, they halted construction on nine other projects that would have added more than 800 beds.
But critics say the situation was completely avoidable. They accuse the Department of Juvenile Justice's previous leaders of overbuilding prison-like facilities while ignoring prevention programs such as counseling, runaway shelters and others.
Says former state Rep. Sandra Murman, R-Tampa: "It is frustrating to see taxpayer dollars get wasted. It's very frustrating."
These juvenile prisons are part of a Juvenile Justice buildup that has been a decade in the making.
Florida began paying more attention to juvenile delinquency programs in 1994, spurred by the murders of tourists, some committed by juveniles. The Legislature created a new Department of Juvenile Justice and added tough-sounding programs such as boot camps.
The state launched and expanded programs that were part prisons, part schools. Like prisons, many were securely locked and topped with razor wire. But by law, these programs for kids also featured classrooms, schoolteachers and staff trained to work toward rehabilitating youths.
Through the late 1990s, the department kept building.
But the waiting list for juveniles who had committed crimes serious enough to enter these programs seemed to remain high, even as new facilities went up, said Craig Chown, the department's director of general services.
"No matter how many beds we built, the waiting list would stay above 1,200," Chown said.
DJJ statistics show that one day in November 1996, as many as 1,324 juveniles were waiting to be sent to residential programs. The number was 972 a year later, 973 in 1998, 1,134 in 1999 and 872 in 2000.
Later, those numbers started to decline - 557 in 2001, 410 in 2002, 392 last year and 381 this year.
But by the time the trend was apparent, plans already were in the works for several DJJ facilities, including the three new ones that have been vacant.
Not everyone buys the theory that DJJ couldn't have seen that the new facilities wouldn't be needed.
The agency's own Web site points out that juvenile crimes fell from 7,760 to 6,750 per 100,000 youth in the latter half of the 1990s; and that juvenile felonies dropped 11 percent during that time.
"The previous Juvenile Justice administration in Florida misled policymakers into believing it was necessary," said Roy Miller, president of the Children's Campaign, an advocacy group.
In at least one instance, the department started a new building project after other buildings already were standing empty.
Workers finished building the Martin County prison, as it was originally designed, in January 2003. But in March of this year contractors began adding a vocational education wing at a cost of $657,607, of which the federal government paid $589,435.
Why add an empty wing to an empty building that had no scheduled opening date?
Chown said it made sense to use the federal and state funds for the project because it's likely that however this facility is used, it will need a vocational component. "Vocational training, particularly in this population, is so important," Chown said. A study had recently shown that DJJ facilities needed more educational space, he added.
"To me it would have been a blown opportunity" not to add the wing, Chown said.
Federal money earmarked for adult and juvenile prisons helped pay much of the cost of many DJJ buildings. Asked if the federal government would seek repayment of the money it used to finance empty buildings, two Department of Justice spokeswomen were unable to find an answer.
Miller has another objection to the Martin County center: Smaller programs have proven far more effective for juveniles than large prisons. "Its size completely flew in the face of what would be effective residential programming for troubled youth."
At the same same time the department proposed slashing funding for a network of runaway shelters, family counseling programs and highly regarded rehabilitation programs such as the PACE centers for Girls and the Associated Marine Institutes.
The previous DJJ secretary, Bill Bankhead, stepped down because of health reasons earlier this year and a top deputy, Frank Alarcon, also left. They could not be reached for comment.
Asked late last week if the new DJJ secretary, Anthony J. Schembri, thought building the three facilities was a mistake, agency spokesman Tom Denham said he did not have time to get an answer.
State Rep. Gus Bilirakis, R-Palm Harbor, chaired the committee that set DJJ's budget and said he worked hard to change the agency's focus from prisons and to rehabilitation. But a taxpayer-financed empty building doesn't sit well.
"We need to utilize these buildings," he said.
Miller's opinion now?
"Leave them empty," he said. "They're not needed. Their construction was misguided and there's no credible reason to manufacture reasons to put children in them."
A hurricane sent about 50 youths into the Okeechobee facility, but that's a temporary situation. Another group of about that size stayed for about a week in the Martin County center.
On Stock Island, next to Key West, the 30-bed Monroe County juvenile facility is closed, although it is part of a center that includes separate, active juvenile programs.
There has been some talk of using the Martin County building as an adult prison. There's already an adult prison within sight, the Martin Correctional Institution.
But at the moment, says DOC spokesman Sterling Ivey, "We don't have any formal discussions with them about moving into that facility."
Besides, he said, he understands there is an issue as to whether the water system is adequate for the full juvenile facility.
Chown said it's also possible that the vacant buildings could be used by one of the private organizations that operate programs for DJJ; or that they could replace portable buildings used elsewhere for the department's programs. But none of those ideas has been finalized.
So for the time being, the Martin County juvenile facility remains empty.
The department recently agreed to let the St. Petersburg Times tour the facility. Chown led a reporter into the master control room, where computer monitors dutifully showed video images of empty rooms and hallways where no one walked by.
The air conditioning was turned on. Leaving it off would invite in Florida's humid air, and the harmful mold that would come with it, Chown explained.
"If we don't, the building deteriorates fast in Florida," Chown said.
"These wooden doors, they would soak up the moisture and then the doors are shot," said Jim Videtich, superintendent on the job for Biltmore Construction.
Inside the kitchen, the walk-in refrigerator was chilly. The walk-in freezer was even colder.
Maintaining the complex, which consists mostly of the electric bill, costs about $3,800 per month, Chown said.
In the 1990s, when the waiting lists stayed so high, "no one would have ever dreamt we'd be in a situation like this," Chown said.
Because of the way these things cycle around, Chown wonders what might happen in the future.
"Sure as I'm sitting here, five to eight years, we'll need beds," Chown said.
Curtis Krueger can be reached at krueger@sptimes.com or 727 893-8232.