Ysi

Youth Services International Inc. said yesterday that it was awarded a contract with the Colorado Department of Corrections worth about $1.8 million in revenue for the company.The Owings Mills company will provide alternative sentencing for Colorado juveniles convicted of a violent felony other than murder. Most of the juveniles will be sent to Youth Services International's Springfield and Chamberlain Academies in South Dakota, Forest Ridge in Iowa and Tradkio Academy in Missouri. The length of the program for juveniles is two to five years.

Jerry Phipps, who has 29 years of experience in coaching and athletic administration, has been appointed interim athletic director at the Victor Cullen Academy in the Frederick County community of Sabillasville.The school, one of several operating nationwide under the banner of Youth Services International Inc., is a residential treatment center for adjudicated young men, most of them ages 14 to 18. Its mission is to change their attitudes and values, helping them become law-abiding citizens.

Youth Services International Inc. of Owings Mills has been chosen by the state of Florida to run a residential program for juveniles in Daytona Beach, the company said yesterday.Youth Services is to take over the contract today for the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice to manage the 30-bed Timberline Youth Center, an academy for young women serving sentences of nine to 12 months.Timberline is the third troubled facility that Florida has asked Youth Services to take over.The company will hire an executive director and staff to operate an accredited school that offers treatment programs, athletics and vocational skills.

Two teen-agers have escaped from the Charles H. Hickey Jr. School in Baltimore County, the third security breach at one of the state's privately run juvenile detention centers in the past week.State police say the pair, 17 and 15 years old, kicked out a window screen in the room they shared and squeezed through a pad-locked gate shortly before midnight Thursday.They were seen yesterday in Baltimore, police said, but had not been apprehended as of last night.Authorities refused to identify the youths or say what offenses had prompted their assignment to Hickey.

The description reads like a riot scene from a prison movie: inmates on a rampage, attacking each other with chairs and mop handles. A guard fuels the chaos by opening a locked door to let one side attack the other. Another guard kicks through two doors in pursuit of an inmate, who repels him with a fire extinguisher. Substitute the word students for inmates and you've got reality, as depicted in a report on Incident 11473 at the Charles H. Hickey Jr. School for juveniles, in Baltimore County.

The 16-year-old delinquent accused of raping a woman at the Charles H. Hickey Jr. School was a security risk with a violent past and was left unguarded when the rape occurred, two people with knowledge of his juvenile record said yesterday.The incident Friday and an escape by three juveniles Sunday from the Victor Cullen Academy in Frederick County pushed Maryland's top juvenile justice official yesterday to threaten to fire the operators of the facilities unless major security improvements are made.

Making good on a campaign promise, County Executive-elect John G. Gary said he will resurrect the Careers Center, a vocational program for troubled teen-agers that was a victim of the budget ax.Under Mr. Gary's proposal, the as yet unnamed program would offer educational and vocational training to about 40 youths who are under the supervision of the juvenile justice system, as was done at the old Careers Center. It would even be housed in the same place, the Winterode Building in Crownsville.

Faced with a shortage of facilities that offer specialized help for juvenile offenders, the state Department of Juvenile Justice will add two intensive-treatment centers for sex offenders and severely emotionally disturbed adolescents at the Charles H. Hickey Jr. School in Baltimore County.The plan -- published without fanfare last month -- has angered child advocates and local residents who say the state is breaking a long-standing promise not to use Hickey for the treatment of such offenders.

Three Baltimore youths escaped early yesterday from a Frederick County juvenile detention facility in the second breach of security to be reported in fewer than 48 hours at state-owned centers run by Youth Services International Inc., a private contractor.The youths escaped from one of 10 single-story residential buildings at the Victor Cullen Academy in Sabillasville by prying open the security screens on two dormitory windows, according to Bob Kannenberg, spokesman for the state Department of Juvenile Justice.

Maryland juvenile justice officials have stopped, at least temporarily, looking for a private contractor to run the Charles H. Hickey Jr. School and may continue to operate the Baltimore County school themselves rather than seek a new vendor, state officials said yesterday. The move was sharply criticized by some advocates who questioned the state's ability to properly run the facility for troubled youths. "It's challenging to know which thing Juvenile Services would do worse - overseeing someone else running Hickey or running it themselves - because they've done both things so abjectly poorly," said Vincent Schiraldi, executive director of the Washington-based Justice Policy Institute.