COUNTY IN SEARCH OF NEW JUVENILE CENTER SITE

Not in my backyard.

County commissioners say they have gotten that message in their efforts to find a suitable site in Cape Girardeau for a new juvenile justice center.

In September, the commissioners looked at buying an 11-acre site on Clark Street sandwiched between the Cape Girardeau Senior Center and the Christian School for the Young Years. The Notre Dame High School Booster Club owns the property.

When the news came out, some neighbors voiced opposition to the idea.

Neighborhood opposition is a concern because the county would have to obtain a special-use permit from the City Council before it could construct a new juvenile center within the Cape Girardeau city limits.

The commission has moved on to other possible sites.

Presiding Commissioner Gerald Jones said Monday that the commission won't publicly discuss possible sites for fear that it would generate neighborhood opposition.

"We won't discuss them publicly anymore until we decide on a location," he said.

Jones voiced frustration over the difficulty in finding a site in Cape Girardeau for the new juvenile center.

The commission wants to build a juvenile justice center that would house a detention area, juvenile court, juvenile department employees and several classrooms. Plans call for the center to have 24 cells with room for expansion to 40 if needed in the future.

The center would house 12- to-17-year-old offenders from the state's 32nd Judicial Circuit, encompassing Cape Girardeau, Perry and Bollinger counties.

The existing juvenile center is in Cape Girardeau. Jones said the commission would like to build a new center in Cape Girardeau because a majority of the troubled juveniles come from the city.

"Why should I take flak over that?" he asked.

Jones said the center wouldn't pose a threat to Cape Girardeau residents.

"The existing eight-bed detention center at 325 Merriwether sits on a two-acre site in the middle of a downtown residential neighborhood. That center hasn't posed any problems for the neighborhood, Jones said. "Nobody has escaped or raped or pillaged the neighborhood," he said.

Jones said the new center won't look like a prison. "You won't know it is a detention center," he said.

But so far the county has yet to find a suitable site.

Neighborhood opposition isn't the only concern: There is always a matter of price. "We can't pay $50,000 to $100,000 an acre," Jones said.

At some point the commission may consider building the juvenile center elsewhere. Jones said there is land in the county that could be suitable for a juvenile center.

But Randy Rhodes, the chief juvenile officer for the circuit, said county officials won't make a hasty decision.

"We are not going to build it out of frustration," said Rhodes. "It is going to be done right."

Rhodes and the commissioners continue to look at possible sites in Cape Girardeau. Last Tuesday they spent half a day looking at four possible sites.

Rhodes said any new center in Cape Girardeau should be built on the west side of the city, allowing law enforcement officers easy access from Interstate 55. The center needs to be accessible to law enforcement agencies in Cape Girardeau County as well as Perry and Bollinger counties.

Juveniles typically are transported to the existing center between 4-11 p.m., Rhodes said. Law enforcement agencies don't want their officers spending a lot of time on the road transporting juveniles to the center, said Rhodes.

Ultimately, a site outside the Cape Girardeau might make sense, he said.

The bulk of the juveniles referred to the juvenile center still come from Cape Girardeau, but an increasing number is coming from the Jackson area and Perry County, Rhodes said.

In 1993, 81 percent of the 1,356 juvenile referrals dealt with by Rhodes' office came from within Cape Girardeau. That amounted to 1,010 juvenile referrals.

Since then the percentage has declined steadily. Last year 64 percent of 1,410 referrals came from Cape Girardeau.

Juvenile referrals from the Jackson area have climbed from 56 in 1993 to 197 last year.

Perry County referrals have jumped from 190 six years ago to 308 in 1998.

Rhodes said he is looking at census data and other statistics in an effort to forecast if that trend will continue. The data could help determine where a juvenile center should be built.

Rhodes said the new center should be designed to meet juvenile-service needs for 20 years.

Rhodes said county officials have been looking for a site for a new juvenile center for three years, but he isn't concerned about the lengthy site-selection process.